Assignment 1: "What's the Problem" Scenarios

To complete this assignment successfully, you should:

1. Study the assignment carefully
2. Respond to each question in the space provided
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4. Send the Assignment

For each of the following situations:

1. Apply the brainstorming "add a variable" method (but feel free to add more than a single variable if you like!) to focus the topic of study and depict some relationships among the variables. Please review the narrative regarding the three general classes or categories of these variables to help you get in the "right mind-set" for such brainstorming.
   
   You may either sketch them out graphically -- e.g, as shapes and arrows the way I did in my embedded figures -- or if you prefer, you can use a word processor to indicate the variables and arrows, something such as the following:
   
   legislation - > parents living in home - > perceptions
   of elderly
   
   Either way will give me the general idea!
   
   
2. Also, please write out the corresponding research questions or sub problems (e.g., in interrogative question or declarative sentence form -- the choice is yours) corresponding to the variables and their relationships that you've shown in part (a), preceding page.
   
   Please apply (a) and (b) to each of the following three (3) scenarios or situations:
   

1. Begin with an interest in citizen participation in city council meetings. List variables or phenomena that might influence, be influenced by, or be related to this variable. A sample might look as follows:

2. Begin with an interest in the relationship between physical attractiveness and self-esteem. Identify variables that might influence and/or amplify the relationship between these two variables. For instance:

3. This will be YOUR eventual dissertation topic! (or tentative one, at least!) Please provide a similar sketch of the main variable(s) of your focus, some "bounding" variables, their interrelationships, and the related research questions/sub problems.

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E-mail M. Dereshiwsky at statcatmd@aol.com
Call M. Dereshiwsky at (520) 523-1892

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