The purpose of this assignment is to give students the opportunity to develop a feasible plan for the
research essay due at the end of the term. Moreover, the research proposal also gives the course
director the chance to provide productive, ongoing feedback and advice on the project.
Students should select and delimit a topic related to religion, drawing on concepts from the sociology
of religion combined with their own intellectual curiosity and background. Students will also need
to find and present a selection of relevant academic research on the topic, and present this research
in the form of an annotated bibliography.
The proposal should be structured as follows:
1) a well-defined topic, question, issue, or problem
2) two or three research questions (simply, what do you want to find out about the topic?)
3) a preliminary argument or hypothesis
4) a theoretical framework for the project, including keysociological concepts with which you want
to work
The above elements need to be written in prose form (about one-and-a-half to two pages, or more
if necessary). Bullet points or lists will not be accepted.
5) an annotated bibliography with at least three academic, peer-reviewed sources (ex. journal
articles, book chapters, books, etc.) other than Dawson’s and Thiessen’s Sociology of Religion.
Each item in the annotated bibliography should be properly referenced. Students can choose to use
any academic referencing style, so long as the selected style is used consistently and, of course,
correctly. The main elements of each bibliography item should be described in approximately 200-
300 words. Make sure to discuss briefly how you expect each piece of research to be helpful for the
topic.
Please review the “Annotated BibliographyOverview” section of York UniversityLibrary’s SPARK:
Student Papers & Academic Research Kit, attached at the end of these instructions. This document
is also available at the following link:
https://spark.library.yorku.ca/wp-content/themes/glendonits-spark-20151125/resources/Annotate
d%20Bibliography%20Overview.pdf
SOCI 2672 Religion and Society; Research Proposal and Research Essay Instructions 2
Due date: Wednesday, May 22, 2019, in class
Approximate length: 4-5 pages
The research proposal must be submitted in hard copy form. Emailed assignments will not be
accepted.
The research proposal will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
1) evidence of creative, original thought
2) selection of research sources directly relevant to the topic
3) feasibility of the proposal
Research Essay
The research essay is a further development and elaboration of the ideas, argument(s), concepts, and
analyses presented in the research proposal. The essay needs to include two additional peerreviewed academic sources, in addition to the three presented in the research proposal. Other
material, including Dawson’s and Thiessen’s Sociology of Religion, can certainly be used. However,
material from Wikipedia or similar sources are not permitted, as these are not peer-reviewed
academic sources. Finally, students can incorporate what they have written in the proposal.
Due date: Monday, June 10, 2019, in class
Length: 8-10 pages (excluding the bibliography page)
The research essay must be submitted in hard copy form. Emailed assignments will not be
accepted.
Research Proposal and Research Essay Presentation and Formatting Guidelines
There are general formatting and presentation standards for written academic work. For both the
research proposal and essay, students are required to use the following formatting elements:
1) page size: Letter (8½” x 11″)
2) all margins (top, bottom, left, and right) set at 2.54 cm or 1 inch
3) page numbers on the assignment pages
4) line spacing set to double-space
5) remove Microsoft Word’s default addition of extra space between paragraphs, by using the
following steps:
a) On the menu across the top, go to “Layout”
b) In the “Indent”/“Spacing” block, select “Paragraph” at the bottom of the block
c) Click on the small arrow to the right of “Paragraph”
d) In the window that comes up, go to “Line spacing” and select “Double”
e) Very important: Check the “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” box
When you write your assignments, do not add extra spacing between paragraphs. Spacing
SOCI 2672 Religion and Society; Research Proposal and Research Essay Instructions 3
between paragraphs should be double-spaced (the same spacing as the lines inside paragraphs).
6) separate bibliography page
Please select a referencing style from the following York Library link, and use this style correctly
for references and direct citations in the research proposal and especially in the essay.
http://researchguides.library.yorku.ca/styleguides
Please re-read these instructions.
Please proceed to the next page.
1
Annotated Bibliography Overview
Annotated bibliographies vary in size, depth, and scope according to their purpose. Generally an annotated
bibliography consists of two parts:
Part 1: A list of books, articles, and documents which are most often organized alphabetically by the
author’s last name using a particular bibliographic style (i.e., MLA, APA or Chicago).
Part 2: Each item in the list is followed by an annotation. The annotation may include such things as a
summary of the item, an evaluation of the item, and a description of how the item might be used.
Annotations can vary in length from a few sentences to several pages. Most commonly, instructors ask for
100-400 word annotations.
Preparing Annotated Bibliographies
In order to represent a work well, it is usually necessary to:
• read the entire text or applicable chapter
• describe and/or evaluate the work using full sentences
• paraphrase, summarize or quote the author directly
• compare the work with similar writings and others in your bibliography
• include information about the author’s background and views
• review and edit your annotations, strive for accuracy and clarity.
- Descriptive Information
Descriptive information in an annotation may include the following:
• Content (What are the main themes/arguments/findings? How do they relate to each other and to the
other items in the bibliography?)
• Breadth (What is the scope of the work? Is it an historical overview or a discussion of a small aspect
of a field?)
• Thesis and arguments (What does the author claim and what evidence is provided?)
• Information to explain the authority and/or qualifications of the author
• Currency (if the work is older, subsequent researchers may have analyzed and commented on this
text)
• Location (Where was the research conducted (if relevant)?)
• Audience (Who is the intended audience and what is their level of reading difficulty?)
• Format (Is the format of the work unique or does it have special features, i.e. maps, graphs, etc.?)
The description should contain enough information to allow the reader to decide if they would find the
material useful for their purposes. If unelaborated, phrases such as “much information,” “various ways,”
“several theories,” “interesting consequences” will carry little meaning for your reader. Focus on the actual
content and organization of the material you are describing. - Evaluative Information
Evaluative information in an annotation may include the following:
• Theoretical basis and currency of the author’s argument
• Value and significance of the work
• Shortcomings or bias in the work
2
• Your own brief impression of the work
• Compare or contrast this work with another you have cited (While A argues this, B proposes that..)
• A summary comment
The evaluative content may also contain a discussion of what you find useful about the article in the
specific context of your writing assignment. How will you use it? How does it support your discussion of the
topic?
Example of a short annotation:
Paul, R. J. & Weinbach, A. P. (2011). Determinants of attendance in the Quebec major junior hockey
league: role of winning, scoring and fighting. Atlantic Economic Journal, 39(3), 303-311. doi:
10.1007/s11293-011-9275-1
Economics professors Paul and Weinbach study the role of various factors on attendance at all Quebec
Major Junior Hockey League games for one specific year. They consider, for example, whether the average
number of total goals scored in a team’s previous games influences the number of people who attend that
team’s next home game. They are particularly interested in whether the number of fights a team has had in
previous games increases attendance, a result they claim has been found for NHL games. Paul and
Weinbach combine all of their hypothesized influences on attendance in a regression analysis and determine
that the most significant influences are the percentage of previous games the home team has won, day of the
week of the game (higher attendance on weekends), and month in which game played (higher attendance
later in the season). No support is found for the hypothesis that fighting influences attendance. Despite their
results, the authors write a great deal about their sense of the importance of fighting to hockey fans. More
interesting for further study is their brief mention in conclusion that hockey may have important cultural
significance for rural Quebecers and that attendance may be closely related to these cultural meanings.
Example of a long annotation:
Paul, R. J. & Weinbach, A. P. (2011). Determinants of attendance in the Quebec major junior hockey
league: role of winning, scoring and fighting. Atlantic Economic Journal, 39(3), 303-311. doi:
10.1007/s11293-011-9275-1
Paul and Weinbach, professors of Economics with research interests in the economic study of sports,
examine attendance for one season of Quebec Major Junior Hockey League games and several factors
hypothesized to influence attendance. The factors considered as possible influences are limited to ones that
can be obtained from the official box scores of each game in the season, but these do include important ones
considered in other studies. The specific variables that Paul and Weinbach define and calculate for each
game of the season as possible influences are: average number of fights per game for previous games,
average total goals per game for previous games, percentage of previous games won, month of the season
when game played, day of the week when game played, which team provides the opposition. The primary
3
concern of the authors was whether relevant factors in attendance would be the same at the major junior
hockey level as have been found for the NHL, particularly whether fighting is a major factor on attendance.
Paul and Weinbach include each of the variables listed above in a regression analysis to determine which
ones were most closely associated with attendance. In contrast to findings from studies focused on the NHL,
they found that fighting did not attract more fans to games at the major junior hockey level. Neither did
teams that played higher scoring games attract more fans to their games. Teams that won frequently during
the regular season, however, did attract more fans. Attendance also was higher on weekends and towards the
end of the season. The home team’s opposition was not generally related to attendance, but an exception was
that in two of the league’s four divisions attendance was higher when the opposing team was the division
leader.
The study has several limitations: it focuses on only one of the 3 leagues in the Canadian Hockey League, so
findings may not apply to other regions; and data is analysed for only one season, so trends over time cannot
be ascertained. The authors acknowledge these shortcomings and call for further research on the subject.
The literature review in the article is quite limited. Although the authors point out that there have been few
studies about attendance in hockey compared to other sports, they fail to cite any relevant research about
other sports. The authors seem reluctant to give up on the idea that Quebec junior hockey league fans enjoy
fighting. They drift quite far from their results to devote a considerable portion of their article to a
description of notorious past fights in the league; they even speculate that their own finding (that fighting
does not increase attendance) is nothing more than a short-term reaction to a few of those incidents and will
not persist into future seasons.
Paul and Weinbach’s study confirms some seemingly obvious factors in hockey game attendance (winning
percentage, for example) but calls others into question (fighting, scoring) and thus sets the stage for
additional research on the subject. Particularly interesting for such research would be pursuit of the cultural
meaning of hockey attendance for rural Quebecers, a topic Paul and Weinbach mention briefly toward the
end of their article.
Ask at the reference desk for help finding appropriate biographical reference materials and book
review sources.
SPARK content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Copyright SPARK at York University 2013
www.yorku.ca/spark
Sample Solution
