Survey

Setting Up a Thesis and Internal Citations for the Report Essay

Your report’s thesis will be an unbiased one, therefore this thesis will show both sides of an argument. To do this, you will adapt the SIRS Issues Researcher question atop the two columns of suggested YES and NO articles that appear when you click on your chosen topic.

Sample on “Popular Culture” from the SIRS List

Does the spread of pop culture harm society?

YES NO

Pop culture is responsible for a large degree Pop culture has the ability to broaden

of social deviance. learning methods.

Both perspectives should be covered in a two-sided thesis, as below:

Regarding the question of whether pop culture harms society, opinions are split. As detractors argue that pop culture is behind social deviance, supporters argue that pop culture increases the spectrum of ways to learn.

In a similar manner, take the SIRS question affixed to your own topic and convert it to a two sentence thesis by using paraphrase and summary skills.*

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*NOTE: This will not be the thesis for your argument essay. After you have written a thesis, take a fact from the first article in the YES column, and write a sentence incorporating that fact (as quote, summary, or paraphrase). As below, you will correctly cite the source before the period ending the sentence. Use the author’s last name or the title (in quotation marks) and the page number, unless the source has no pages. Use titles when authors are not listed.

Rebecca Collins of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls says that pop stars are “rebroadcasting (…) a broader societal message that women’s value is in their sexuality” (qtd by Oldenburg and Thompson A1).

As done here, you will cite a fact and tell its source:

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English 1301 Report Survey and Paragraph Samples

Constructed with Facts from They Say Articles:

“Confronting Inequality” (Krugman 561-78) and

“The Upside of Inequality” (Becker and Murphy 581-88)

The following surveys of fact (T/F) and opinion (Y/N) are models to use for your own

surveys of fact and opinion in personal research on your chosen SIRS topic. As below, you will

construct paragraphs to describe and analyze the responses to your statements of knowledge and

opinion. The paper does not need to show the survey questions in their original format, so

long as it faithfully records the statements, responses by your ten respondents, and your

analysis—as shown after the survey below.

Mark each statement below as true or false to show knowledge of facts.

T/F 1. From the early 1980s to 2005, the number of families filing for bankruptcy in the US

grew to five times its earlier level.

T/F 2. Economic mobility is now higher in Scandinavia than America.

T/F 3. Only 3% of eighth graders from poor families scoring in the bottom fourth of their

class finished college, although 30% of eighth graders from rich families scoring in the

bottom fourth of their class finished college.

T/F 4. Oddly, though economic inequality has risen in China, the poverty rate has fallen.

T/F 5. On average, higher education and non-cognitive skills (study habits, timeliness, and

a work ethic) do not raise income.

Mark each statement below as yes or no to show opinions.

Y/N 1. Reaching a higher social class is as possible as ever in the USA.

Y/N 2. The American Middle Class is shrinking.

Y/N 3. All people graduating from college are especially smart.

Y/N 4. All college entrants can graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

Y/N 5. Everyone in the United States needs a bachelor’s degree to survive.

Sample Reporting on the Survey within a Paper on Economic Inequality

The knowledge of economic mobility and inequality was uneven among respondents to a

survey of fact and opinion. Ten people were surveyed. Fifty percent* of those surveyed did not

realize that bankruptcies became five times more common from the early 1980s to 2005. Most

people (80%) disbelieved the fact that economic mobility is now greater in Scandinavia than in

America. And most people (70%) did not believe that with growing economic inequality came

less poverty in China. But most people (90%) did realize that higher education does create a

higher wage potential over a lifetime.

As to opinions, some people matched the facts they knew to corresponding opinions, and

some did not. Eighty percent agreed that the Ameriican Middle Class is shrinking. And most

people (70%) correctly guessed or knew that 30% (nearly one third) of the rich that score low in

the eighth grade still finish college. But, despite this, 90% of the same survey group opined that

“All people graduating from college are especially smart.” Likewise, although half of those

surveyed knew that the percentage of bankruptcies has grown to five times its pre-80s rate, only

20% registered a belief that the American Middle Class is shrinking.

*Facts reported here would have been previously established and cited by source in an earlier section of the paper. Otherwise they must be cited here. Also note that numbers that start a sentence must be spelled out, although the numbers beyond ten incorporated later in the sentence can be typed as Arabic numbers. From this data, it appears that people’s sense of facts does not always match with or sway

their opinions. So those responding to the survey portray a cognitive dissonance between what

they know to be facts and what they feel to be their opinions. The ideas of ever-increasing social

mobility and richness as a reward for intelligence may be mythical, but these people still seemed

to hold these views despite some knowledge of the facts. And many seemed confused by the fact

that rising economic inequality in China could not cancel any gains for the poorest. The belief

that a more capitalist system can benefit both rich and poor does not apparently register, as if all

income fits a zero-sum model where any gain to one hurts another. In fact, the reports back a

belief that all boats rise in a tide of economic prosperity.