Mark Nelson Sociology Independent Study

10/03/24

Thanks for visiting my sociology independent study blog! This week I completed several tutorials on Zotero, Taguette and QualCoder. If you’re curious about what these are – read on.

Zotero
Zotero, and all reference managers, help to collect, organize, cite, and share research sources. These are critical tools in social research.  Perhaps even moreso when working on a group project which requires increased collaboration and standardization.  The research team that I’m embedded with for a portion of this independent study is using Zotero, and thus I’ll be using it as well for literature review. 

I’d found my way to Zotero when I first started the sociology program at SPS.  Joseph Hartnett, from the Newman Library, was hosting a Zotero workshop on Zoom and I signed up for it at the prompting of a professor.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, so I followed up by watching Steven Bradburn’s fast introduction to Zotero on YouTube instead.

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However, the small number of references used on my discussion board posts and essays didn’t require anything more than a few open browser tabs on scholar.google.com.  So my Zotero skills languished. 

This is how things remained until Professor Lorek, as part of my sociology independent study, invited me to her team’s Zotero account, and asked me to provide a few literature references on her research subject.  I rewatched Bradburn’s video and used Professor Lorek’s project as a training task, bringing my Zotero skills up an adequate level by adding 6 documents along with PDFs, links, abstracts and notes.  I used a combination of automated and manual methods to ensure I had a proper understanding of the tool.

Taquette and QualCoder
I hope that I have a chance to use a coding tool like Atlast.ti during my independent study.  However, I also am determined to learn an affordable/free option that I’m likely to use on smaller or personal projects.  After a small amount of research I settled on Taguette and QualCoder.  Both programs can be used (purportedly) with Atlas.ti, due to their ability to export into the open REFI-QDA data standard, which enables interoperability between qualitative data analysis software programs.

Taguette is the simpler of the two.  It took me only 30 minutes to run through a web tutorial and practice with the tool on a public dataset (Thomas Paine’s Common Sense).  It took me about an hour to do the same with QualCoder, since it is a more fully featured tool, to be used with more complex coding tasks.  This YouTube video was an excellent introduction to them both – teaching their functionality while comparing and contrasting the programs.

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At this point I don’t think I’ll need to practice with them further until I actually have a dataset from an official focus group or interview.

09/26/24

As I mentioned in my “welcome” blog post, a key goal of my independent study is to gain real world skill in social research. Thus the week was a busy one for me as I worked on fulfilling my first official obligations to this program, while also pursuing several other interests.

CITI HSR Certification
This week I completed my CITI Program course “HSR for Social & Behavioral Faculty, Graduate Students & Postdoctoral Scholars,” and received my official certification.  The CITI HSR program provides core training in human subjects research, ethical issues, and regulatory guidance. To complete the training I had to prograss through a significant amount of reading and multiple choice tests (reminiscent of my SOC201 course.)  The prize was a nifty digital certificate that makes a wonderful addition to my LinkedIn page…  Actually, the MORE IMPORTANT aspect of this certification is that it’s a stepping stone towards the completion of my independent study for this semester, where I will be conducting a focus group with the support of my advisor, Professor Melanie Lorek, as well as Professor Sara Martucci.

R Programming
This week I also began my study of the “R” programming language within the RStudio integrated development environment.  R is a coding languague primarily used for statistical analysis – the kind social researchers find themselves frequently engaged in. My goal is to become proficient with R before my graduation next semester.  So I’ve started watching YouTube videos, with the following two channels being my favorites.  I’ve spent about 8 hours learning and practicing so far and intend to keep up with about 4 hours per week until I start a more structured certificate program (see below).

Google Data Analytics Professional
I’ve also signed up with the Queensborough Community College CEWD Grants Program in order to obtain free access to the Google Data Analytics Professional program.  The skills provided through this certification are directly related to some fairly technical aspects of quantitative social research.  While I feel comfortable learning these skills on my own, in today’s credential-addicted society it is probably better to have this certification on my LinkedIn profile than to not have it… (Note that “R” is a component of the Google Data Analytics Professional program.)

9/15/24

My name is Mark Nelson, and I am a sociology major here at CUNY SPS in my final year of study. I’d like to outline my interests, my educational goals, and why I’m taking an independent study (SOC 380).

I’ve returned to college to study sociology because it has always been an interest of mine. I have literally been a bonafide armchair sociologist since middle school. For every social issue presented in the news, little Marky had a “why” question or “what if” scenario. In my home, “Shut up Mark” became a common refrain shortly after the nightly TV news program started… Even as I grew older and my life and career progressed, my continual naive sociologizing remained a constant.

Now, as I construct my sociological imagination brick-by-conceptual-brick at SPS, I find the academic destination is not to seek employment as a school counselor, or as a human resources professional, but to continue to a graduate degree and ultimately engage in social research using quantitative methods. In this light, I have several academic and professional goals I hope to achieve through independent study. The first is being involved in actual research outside the classroom. Many students go through their entire undergraduate experience without inhabiting professional spaces associated with their major. As a person from the workforce, returning to college, I have a sense of how important it is for the student to develop professional-level abilities, sooner rather than later.

In the workforce, I am a game developer and visual designer. Through these careers I have obtained expertise with a large number of software applications such as Illustrator, PhotoShop and AfterEffects, among others. For social science, the software tools of choice are Excel, R studio, SPSS, Qualtrics, Python, SQL, etc. Unfortunately, while these are commonly used in the field of sociology, my coursework at CUNY SPS will not provide significant exposure to these tools at the undergraduate level. Since I am hoping to work in or adjacent to the field of sociology when I graduate, and while I am in a graduate program, I hope this independent study will give me an opportunity to open a few of these tools and produce work product that I can build upon.

Through this independent study, I also anticipate beginning to build a professional network in the social sciences. For example, fellow sociology students, sociology professors, and others engaged in social research in adjacent fields (psychology, urban planning, data science, etc.). I can’t expect to work on anyone’s public policy proposal with only references from the last icon design project I worked on.

Ultimately, I expect that this independent study will provide me with experiences as close to real-world sociology as possible, using the opportunities available to me at CUNY SPS.