Overview
You have two things to do this week: (1) identify the elementary unit that is appropriate for your hypotheses, and (2) select a sampling method that you can use in your study. Refer back to Chapter 5 if you need help. The elementary unit – also known as your unit of analysis – is typically one of four things: an individual, an organization/group, a geographic region, or a social artifact. Select the one that is appropriate for each hypothesis. Write 1-2 sentences in which you say explicitly which one you are choosing and then explain why that is the appropriate unit. The sampling method is the process you will use to draw a sample from a larger population that interests you. For example, let’s say I am interested in NYPD officers. My elementary unit is the individual police officer. The population that interests me is all NYPD officers. Rather than use all NYPD officers in my study, I need to draw a smaller sample of them. The various sampling methods that you can choose from are described in pgs. 128-142 of your book. Once you have chosen the sampling method you wish to use, write 2-3 sentences in which you say explicitly which one you are choosing for each hypothesis, why you have chosen it, and how you might implement it in your study. So, to recap, this proposal section should include information about your elementary unit (select the one that is appropriate for your hypotheses and write 1-2 sentences in which you say explicitly which one you are choosing and then explain why that is the appropriate unit) and your sampling method (write 2-3 sentences in which you say explicitly which one you are choosing for each hypothesis, why you have chosen it, and how you might implement it in your study). See my example on Brightspace if you’d like a model. Please take the document that you previously turned in – including all three previous sections of the proposal – and under the end of the “Hypotheses and Variables” section, create a new section header called “Elementary Unit and Sampling Method.” Then include the text that you wrote for this part of the proposal. Turn in the entire document, not just the part that you wrote this week, including citations at the end.