Interview questions about family life

This project should take you the greater part of the term to complete since you will be incorporating practical applications, critical thinking skills and writing skills into a demonstration of your knowledge and understanding of some of the key concepts of sociology.

You will submit a formally written paper of 4-5 pages in length describing and analyzing the functioning of a family. You will study marital/family interaction by personally interviewing and observing the members of a specific family of your own choosing. This will not include your immediate family, howev- er, you will develop a set of interview questions prior to the interview (minimum of 15 questions).

Your interview questions will be worth 10 of the 60 points.

You can interview any type of family, including a nuclear family, single parent family, child-free couple, foster family, cohabitating couple, etc. You can interview anyone except your family of orientation, mean- ing the family into which you were born, or your family of procreation, meaning the family a person forms by marrying or having or adopting children. In other words, you cannot interview your parents or your own spouse/partner. You can interview anyone else you know, including your grandparents (unless they have raised you), brother or sister’s family, or other family member’s family or friend’s family. Please see me if you need clarification about this.

You will analyze the data that you collect using concepts covered in this course, including class discussion and text material. For each description of an event, offer an interpretation of the meaning of the event using various sociological ideas. At least fifteen applications of course concepts from diverse sections of class discussion and/or text are expected.

Do not write this paper in first person; in other words, do not refer to yourself in the context of the paper (do not say “I” or “my,” etc.). This paper should be completely objective; do not refer to your experiences and do not state your opinion in this paper.

Also, do not refer to the interview questions in the context of the paper. You are to include the list of your 15 interview questions as a separate page at the end of your paper (worth 10 of the 60 points total). I will see the answers to your questions as you write about the family. For example, I do not want to see, “I asked the family who is primarily responsible for the household chores... and they said...” Instead you would say, “Mrs. Smith is primarily responsible for the household chores...”