Research Assignment: Writing Up Your Analysis
Note: This sample first paragraph is not based on actual sources. It may or may not be accurate
Finding a job during the Great Depression depended not only on professional but also on personal qualities, such as appearance and ethnicity. A survey of fifty job ads for from 1929 to 1940 shows that the typical employer in household or clerical fields was able to pick and choose among qualified employees according to precise religious, racial, and aesthetic requirements. Because of Depression-era unemployment, household and clerical workers in 1929 and 1940 had few opportunities to bargain for their job conditions. So it seems household and clerical workers would not have been interested in participating in the labor unrest of the 1930s.
Let's review this paragraph. The first sentence establishes that while the reader may have believed one thing about employers—that they want only qualified candidates—this is not true. It also lays out some of the author's observations about the job ads. The second sentence adds an addional point: although we may think that personal requirements are simply a product of employers' prejudice, they may also denote a glut of qualified applicants. It also describes how many ads were studied, and the period of time the survey covers. Having established the contradiction, the third sentence suggests why employers had such an easy time choosing employees, and shows that the author has looked for changes over time and found none. The final sentence gives the thesis in a simple form, and leads the reader into the next paragraph.
To be effective, this paper would now present its evidence: a series of paragraphs describing the evidence that led to these conclusions. The evidence would take the form of quotations from the ads we looked at, or of summaries of the categories in the database. All quotations must be accompanied by footnotes or endotes. When you cite newspaper ads, use the first two or three worlds in the ad as a title. The footnote form should look like this:
"CHAUFFEUR, white," New York Times, 5 January 1930, W1.
There may not be enough evidence in the ads to prove this thesis. It is acceptable to simply analyze what you find, and then suggest what it might mean. You should strive to write a thoughtful, creative paper that makes claims based on tangible, solid evidence from the newspaper ads, which it presents in the form of quotations or summaries of data.