- Your presentation should last approximately 20 minutes, including a 12-15-minute description of your project and a 5-8 minute period for questions and answers.
- Your presentation should include a succinct, but clear, summary of the following:
- The purpose of your research, including specific objectives and research questions, as well as hypotheses, if any.
- A brief description of the central theoretical arguments guiding your research and/or the most relevant studies done on your topic.
- Your methods of data collection, including:
- Population, sample and sampling strategies, as well as an explanation of how generalizable your findings will be depending on the way you selected your sample.
- A description of your methods of data collection (surveys, in-depth interviews, case studies, observation, secondary analysis, etc.)
- A description of the way you have conceptualized and operationalized your main variables.
- If you do field research, a description of your recruitment strategies, including:
- Location, context, activity, or events that normally take place in this area
- Usual flow of people in the area
- Strategies that helped you or might help you develop rapport with your informants
- Problems you encountered or anticipate you might encounter in the process
- If you have started the data collection process, a description of what you have found. This may include:
- If doing surveys, a sociodemographic profile of your informant(s)
- If doing in-depth interviews, content analysis of documents, or observation, a description of salient themes or patterns you have identified or discovered
- A case study, especially if you are conducting in-depth interviews and have interviewed only one person
- An explanation of what your findings mean or say in answer to your central research questions.
- If appropriate, a brief discussion of ethical issues that you have encountered or anticipate in carrying out your research.
- I expect your presentation to be formal and professional, as it is the norm in anthropology and sociology meetings and symposiums. This means that you should:
- Demonstrate that you are prepared by giving an organized, clear, and methodologically and conceptually sound presentation.
- Pay attention to your demeanor (for example, avoid being too casual or informal in your speech and interaction with your audience).
- Use power point or other appropriate media to illustrate your major points, for example, your research objective and questions, your population and sample, and your central findings)
- Be responsive to your audience and prepared to answer all questions in a respectful way.