__How do you make social science research methods come alive for your students?

Karen Sternheimer, USC sociology professor and Everyday Sociology Blog writer and Natasha Zabohonski of W. W. Norton Sociology have a solution: Put methods in context with interesting new research on the fashion industry, hip-hop, families, and more. Below are a series of interviews where notable researchers illuminate the world of research.

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Questions for students after viewing this interview with Ashley Mears:

• What challenges do you think researchers might face as participant observers?
• How do you think actually working in the modeling industry might help or hinder Mears’ research?
• What are the limitations of the findings of an ethnography like this?

Writing assignment:

• What world you would immerse yourself in order to do ethnography? What would your main strategies be? What challenges would you anticipate?

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Questions for students after viewing this interview with Jooyoung Lee:

• What other challenges might Lee have faced while doing this research?
• How does the researcher’s identity (i.e. race, class, gender) shape the ethnographic process?
• What are the benefits of being an “outsider” while conducting ethnography? Limitations?

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Questions for students after viewing this interview with Brian Powell:

• What are the advantages of research using phone interviews? Disadvantages?
• According to Powell, why is the wording of questions so important to consider in survey research?
• What questions that you would ask Americans about family?

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Questions for students after viewing this interview with Joel Best:

• What motivated Best to research the myth of Halloween candy poisoning?
• Why do myths persist despite evidence to the contrary?
• What other myths would you investigate? Create a short list, then look for press coverage online to see how news stories have covered this issue. Search online for research on this topic; how do the results of research compare with the news coverage?

See the full “Methods in Context” series of videos here, and for more videos, activities, and everyday sociology, check out the Everyday Sociology Blog. Finally, Norton Sociology’s YouTube channel is another great source of videos, which might be of use in a sociology class.

Karen Sternheimer and Natasha Zabohonski