Because your paper will be only about 4-5 pages (double-spaced), you will inevitably not use all of the
information you collect in your interview – and this is normal in any research (qualitative or
quantitative). Your task will be to select excerpts from the interviews in order to illustrate several main
points.
As you begin to think about organizing your collected data and writing your paper, you will need to pull
out themes running through the interviews. In particular, think about similarities and differences in your
informants’ experiences of being a woman/man/other gender. For instance, perhaps you find that their
experiences in paid work are vastly different, but their experiences in intimate relationships have some
similarities. If so, you can use direct quotes from the interviewees to illustrate the discussion of these
themes. The organization of your paper will be very important to your overall grade on this assignment;
the paper should include the following sections (clearly labeled):
1.An Introduction to the paper in which you briefly discuss what you see as your major findings (i.e.,
what interesting issues about family emerged from your interviews). The introduction should include a
brief description of the key informants.
2.Results of the data will form the bulk of the paper. It is critical that you link your data to concepts,
theories, and issues that we’ve been discussing and reading about in class. *Put each concept or theory
you use in your paper in bold font the first time you use it (and normal font subsequent times). You
can’t discuss all issues; you’ll need to select the ones that are most clearly related to your interviewees
and your data. Do not simply describe the interviews from start to finish, and don’t try to include all the date you collect.
3.The Conclusion should very briefly summarize your interview experiences.
You should address questions like the following: What was the interview experience like? Did it give
you any new insight on issues you learned about this semester?
References: For any works that you need to cite in your paper (for example, the textbook or any
supplemental materials you used in making the points in your paper), please use the American
Sociological Association formatting. If you google “American Sociological Association format,” you’ll
find examples.
The paper is due the last week of class. You’ll submit it through a Turnitin link. Any materials
referenced in your paper need to be cited. This includes the textbook, other books or articles, and any
other printed or electronic resources. If material is directly quoted, it should be placed in quotation
marks and the reference cited. If you are conveying the ideas of an author’s work but not using direct
quotes, you still need to provide a citation. Otherwise, the ideas are incorrectly attributed to you – which
constitutes plagiarism. For more information, see this page on our library’s website:
http://guides.lib.fsu.edu/plagiarism. Please let me know if you have any questions at all!