Egnlish

The assignment
Essay (word limit: 1500 words; 100 per cent of marks)
Evaluate the claim that social science investigations of elections and voting help to enact participation in political processes.
What to submit
A 1500-word essay (100 per cent). Please note that 10 per cent of marks for this TMA are awarded for effective and accurate referencing.

Student notes
The purpose of Assignment 05 is to assess your ability to write longer essays, and more particularly to invite you to demonstrate your skills of evaluating evidence. There is also particular focus on accurate referencing in this assignment.
Your job is to evaluate how far social scientific research into elections and voting actually influences whether or not people do, or do not, participate in these political practices.
There are various things to keep in mind as you go about preparing for and writing your essay. First, you should remind yourself of what is meant in this block by enactment – it refers to both informing and shaping social worlds. Second, you should bear in mind that voting in an election is just one of a range of types of participation that you have learnt about in this block. Weeks 20 and 23 place voting in broader contexts where people can and do seek to express their ‘voice’ in all sorts of ways. Third, Weeks 20, 21 and 23 also provide plenty of discussion about the different factors that may influence whether people take part in elections, and how they vote when they do take part.
So, ensure that you make use of materials from across the block in addressing this question. You should seek to use these materials to evaluate the arguments which are made in Week 21, and not least in Chapter 7, about what role social scientists do play in enacting elections.
In previous assignments, you were largely asked to outline or present both sides of an argument without necessarily evaluating them. The difference with this assignment is that you are required to present evidence and to evaluate an argument about the importance of social science in enacting social worlds, by making judgments about its accuracy, reliability and whether you believe or accept its claims. Evaluation is a key social scientific skill, used by all disciplines, so this essay is a useful way to build your own evaluation skills prior to the final assignment.

Information sources
The main sources of information for this essay will be:
Week 21 and Chapter 7 of the textbook by Richard Heffernan, where you find arguments about the role of social science in enacting elections and voting
Social science in action audio 9 in Week 21 which discusses the influence of psephologists
Week 20, by Clive Barnett, Richard Heffernan and Stephanie Taylor, especially Sections 20.1 and 20.2 which consider elections and voting in the wider context of participation practices
Week 23, by Karim Murji and Clive Barnett, not least Sections 23.2 and 23.4, which provide resources for evaluating the degree to which social science enacts participation in practices such as voting.
Chapter 7 of the textbook begins by discussing the various ways in which social scientists contribute to describing and understanding electoral processes. The chapter looks at how social scientists have used different theories and methods to try to explain why some types of people participate in elections more than others, and also to explain why different types of people vote for particular parties. Implicit here is a sense of social science enactment, as researchers seek to inform wider understandings of elections and voting. You should also note that Sections 5 and 6 of Chapter 7 look explicitly at the role of social scientists in communicating to the public how elections work and why they matter. These sections are therefore particularly concerned with outlining how social scientific research might inform or shape public debate – which might or might not have some effect on participation in electoral processes.
Week 21 also contains other materials in which the potential role of social science in informing and shaping participation in electoral practices is discussed, for example in the discussion of the work undertaken by Coleman and in further material on Butler and MacKenzie.
Weeks 21 and 23 also contain various materials in which the different types of participation, of which voting in elections is just one, are discussed, and in which the influences affecting participation, in elections and other practices, are also considered.
Remember that you should think of these materials as resources for helping you to evaluate the extent to which social science helps to enact participation in voting and electoral practices – so this necessarily involves thinking about some of the possible limits to social science enactment in this case. Week 23 (especially Section 23.4) provides information on evaluating how far social scientific research, on its own, can enact social worlds – or contribute in particular to enhancing participation in processes like elections and voting. Evaluation requires that you weigh up the evidence both for and against the idea that social science enacts participation in voting and electoral processes.
While you should use these materials as the primary source for evaluating the argument about social science helping to enact participation in elections and voting, you may also draw on other module materials to support your answer as you see appropriate.
Structure
You will be familiar by now with the need to ensure that your essay has a title, an introduction and a conclusion. In terms of presenting the main content of an evaluation essay of this kind, there are some further important issues to consider.
‘Evaluation’ indicates that you have to look at different viewpoints before coming to a conclusion that will weigh up the evidence. There are different ways you can structure an evaluation essay. The most common is to look at one ‘side’ of an argument in the first part of the essay, then the opposing ‘side’ in the next, before summing up in your conclusion. Since you are required to come to your own view regarding the contribution that social science makes to participation, you need to critically engage with the debates about electoral studies discussed in Week 21 and draw on evidence of the effects of social science when planning and writing your assignment.
Please note that you are not required to come down firmly on one side or another in your conclusion (although you can do so if you wish), but rather to evaluate the argument that social science does make a difference, or that it does not. It may be that you have mixed views, or see some claims as being more accurate and well supported than others. Whatever you decide, the important thing is that your conclusion is based on the evidence you have presented.
Referencing in Assignment 05
At this stage your referencing skills should be well developed – but remember that this essay offers 10 per cent of its marks for effective and accurate referencing. Reference your material, in the body of the text and in your reference list, showing where your evidence and academic arguments have come from.
In Assingment 05, your tutor will be looking for you to:
demonstrate your skills in evaluating evidence and drawing conclusions
present a structured and coherent argument in essay format
show effective and accurate referencing.

Assignment 05 Learning outcomes
Elements of the following module learning outcomes are addressed by Assingment 05:
understand how social science questions taken-for-granted arrangements and assumptions, imagines alternatives and shapes the social worlds in which we live
compare, contrast, and critically evaluate different approaches to social scientific inquiry and synthesise material from a range of sources
construct arguments that relate to the uses of social science, applying appropriate evidence, concepts and theories
effectively communicate coherent arguments using a range of presentation styles suitable for different audiences, including essays, reports and presentations
find, interpret, evaluate and present information and convey arguments in appropriate formats, including reports, presentations and essays.