Soci–269
Final Presentation and Term Paper

The Term Paper

Drawing on the applied examples featured in Module I of our class, students must submit a 10-15 page term paper on a topic related to one of the following areas of sociological inquiry:

Gender and Sexuality

Race, Ethnicity and Nation

Class and Social Stratification

Culture

To earn an A, students must also submit at least one companion data visualization using data from the General Social Survey (GSS) Cumulative Data File, one of three three-wave GSS panels¹, or the American National Election Studies (ANES) Cumulative File. Students are free to create their visualizations in either or Python .

The Data

Note

• gss_cumulative is the GSS Cumulative Data File.
• gss_2006_2008_2010 is the 2006 GSS Panel.
• gss_2008_2010_2012 is the 2008 GSS Panel.
• gss_2010_2012_2014 is the 2010 GSS Panel.

Each dataset was prepared using the {gssr} package in .

Accessing the Data Files

Using RStudio

GSS

You can access GSS data by copying and pasting the script below directly into RStudio:

load(url("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/gss_269.RData"))

ANES

Similarly, you can access ANES data by copying, pasting and running the script below:

readRDS(url("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/anes_cumulative.rds"))

Using Colab

GSS

You can access GSS data by copying and pasting the script below directly into your Colab session.

import pandas as pd

## GSS Cumulative File

pd.read_csv("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/gss_cumulative.csv")

## GSS 2006 Panel

pd.read_csv("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/gss_2006_2008_2010.csv")

## GSS 2008 Panel

pd.read_csv("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/gss_2008_2010_2012.csv")

## GSS 2010 Panel

pd.read_csv("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/gss_2010_2012_2014.csv)

ANES

Similarly, you can access ANES data by copying, pasting and running the script below:

import pandas as pd

pd.read_csv("https://github.com/sakeefkarim/soci-269-f25/raw/refs/heads/main/data/assignments/term%20paper/anes_cumulative.csv")

Variables of Interest

GSS

Using a GSS Panel?

While the interactive table below is associated with the GSS Cumulative Data File, it includes most of the information—i.e., indicator names, labels and so on—needed to work with the three GSS panels mentioned in the preceding section.

GSS Cumulative Data File

Codebooks

For more information, please peruse the codebooks below:

GSS Panel Codebook (Click to Expand or Close)

GSS Codebook, 1972-2018 (Click to Expand or Close)

Other GSS codebooks can be accessed here.

ANES

Note (Click to Expand or Close)

The Description and Text columns are scrollable.