Examples: MA Research

To help you understand what the design spine involves, here are examples of design spines produced by two first year MA Sociology students, Jennifer Snoeks and Kent Hall, in the second half of their winter term Logic of the Research Process course. For our Sociology MA students, the thinking, exploration and decision-making involved in successive versions of the design spine feed into the writing of a thesis proposal due as soon as possible after the completion of their first year course work. Thank you Jennifer and Kent for your permission to post your work.

Design Spines Produced by MA Student Jennifer Snoeks

Jennifer’s first three design spines show the development of a research focus and specific research questions typical of the early stages of the research design process.

Design Spine Produced by MA Student Kent Hall

This is Kent’s final design spine produced for the Logic of the Research Process course. It sets out a research project that has a well-articulated and sociologically-located research question, with a research strategy tightly linked to this question. The rationale for specific research sites was set out in the research proposal developed from this design spine.