Preparing for Comprehensive Exams

The comprehensive examination should be taken the semester after students have completed core course work. The exam is offered twice a year on pre-selected days, generally a Saturday (dates will be announced by the Graduate Director): once in fall and once in spring.  Students planning to take the comprehensive examination must notify the Graduate Director one month prior to the scheduled exam date and must be enrolled in the semester in which they plan to take comps.

All students will take the exam in the same place at the same time.  Exams will be proctored by a member of the graduate committee.  The exam requires students to answer essay questions, half on theories and half on research methods.  They should, therefore, come into the exam fully prepared to apply their knowledge in written form. Students are allowed three hours per section and are permitted to bring up to five pages of typed notes (one side only, 1 inch margins, minimum 10 point font) with them into the exam.  The notes will be collected at the end of the exam.

As you prepare for the comprehensive exams, keep in mind that your answers will be evaluated along the following four dimensions: 

(1) the completeness and breadth of your answers
(2) the accuracy and depth of your answers
(3) the effective and appropriate use of evidence in your answers (citations where appropriate), and
(4) the logic and organization of your answers.

Preparing for the Comprehensive Exam in Methods and Statistics

Carefully review your notes and other course materials. You may include formulas on your five pages of notes.

Below is a list of the concepts, techniques, and analytic issues you should focus on:

• Quantitative methods ~ types, strengths and weaknesses (especially in terms of generalizability and establishing causality)
• Causality ~ ruling out spuriousness, identifying mediating and interaction effects
• Sampling ~ strengths and weaknesses of various methods, central limit theorem
• Issues in survey administration and design (types of surveys, questionnaire construction)
• Which statistical methods are required for univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis, depending on whether variables are categorical or continuous
• Measures of central tendency
• OLS regression ~ assumptions, interpreting equation parameters (for categorical and continuous independent variables)
• Familiarity with logistic regression for dichotomous dependent variables
• Structural equation modeling ~ specifying complex casual relationships in terms of exogenous and endogenous variables, calculating and interpreting direct, indirect and total effects

• Qualitative methods ~ types, strengths and weaknesses
• Interpretivism ~ Hermeneutic tradition; Emic vs. etic analysis
• Thick description ~ Context for social action; in-depth analysis of small sample v. large-scale quantitative studies
• Sociological analysis as "constructions of constructions" ~ Researcher's understanding of people she's studying built on those people's understandings of themselves; Relativist/postmodernist vs. objectivist/positivist
• Some helpful readings: Becker  "Epistemology of Qualitative Research"; Ellis "Emotional and Ethical Quagmires in Returning to the Field"; Fine "Ten Lies of Ethnography"; Geertz "Thick Description" and "Deep Play"; Katz "Ethnography's Warrants"; Lofland et al. Analyzing Social Settings; Alford The Craft of Inquiry  

Be prepared to design a hypothetical research project and data analysis, thinking through the issues of specifying hypotheses, appropriate methodologies, measurement (including reliability and validity assessment), data analysis techniques, establishing causality (internal validity), complex causal relationships, external validity (generalizability), and study limitations.

Sample methods comprehensive exam questions here.

Preparing for the Comprehensive Exam in Theory

Before taking the comprehensive exam in theory, you should know the following:

• Classical theorists: concepts and paradigms
• How classical concepts are connected to each other
• How those concepts have developed over the years, spawning neo-classical traditions
• Contemporary theorists--their roots and contributions
• Interconnections between contemporary theorists
• Current examples/applications of both classic and contemporary theories

Sample theory comprehensive exam questions here.

Reading list: 

Alexander, Jeffrey.  Neofunctionalism and after. London: Blackwell, 1998

Baudrillard, Jean.  The consumer society. London:Sage, 1998

Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas. The social construction of reality. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1967.

Blau, Peter. Exchange and power in social life. New York: J. Wiley. 1964.

Blumer, Herbert. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. University of CA Press. 1986.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1984.

Collins, Patricia. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, counciousness and empowerment. Boxton: Unwin Hyman, 1990.

Darendorf, Ralf. Class and class conflict in industrial society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959.

Davis, Kingsley and Wilbert E, Moore. 1945. "Some Principles of Stratification." American Sociological Review Vol. 10 (2): 242:249

Durkheim, Emile. The division of labor in society. New York: Free Press, 1964.

_____. Suicide. New York: Free Press, 1951.
_____. The elementary forms of religious life. New York: Free Press, 1965.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Philadelphia negro: A social study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
 
Emerson, Richard. “Power-Dependence Relations.” American Sociological Review 27:31-40, 1962.
 
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and  punishment: the birth of the prison. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright (eds.). From Max Weber:  New York: Oxford University Press, 1958.
 
Giddens, Anthony. The constitution of society. University of California Press. 1984.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1959.

Habermas, Jurgen. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press 1975.

Homans, George. Social behavior: its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Mead, George. Mind, Self and Society: from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Merton, Robert. Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press, 1968.

Mills, C. W. The power elite. New York: Oxford University Press. 1956.

Parsons, Talcott and Edward Shils. 1951.  Toward a general theory of social action.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1951.

------“Sex Roes in the American Kinship System” In: The kinship system of the contemporary United States. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, College Division. 1960.

Simmel, Georg. Conflict and the web of group affiliations. New York: Free Press, 1955.

Smith, Dorothy.  The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.

Tucker, Robert (ed.). The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, 170.

Veblen, Thorstein. The theory of the leisure class. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. World-systems analysis: an introduction.  Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2004.

Weber, Max. The protestant ethnics and the spirit of capitalism. New York: Scribner’s, 1958.

______. General economic history. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transactions Books, 1981.
 
Secondary Sources:

Burrell, Gibson and Gareth Morgan. Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis.  1979.

Collins, Randall.  Four Sociological Traditions.  1994.

Coser, Lewis. Masters of Sociological Thought.  1971.

Appelrouth, Scott and Laura Desfor Edles.   Sociological Theory in the Classical Era (text and reader).  2011.

_______________.  Sociological Theory in the Contemporary Era (text and reader).  2009.

Kuhn, Thomas (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

*This list is not exhaustive.