Purpose

The main goal of this assignment is to strengthen your skills as an independent researcher. Specifically, the assignment will help you develop your ability to:

• define a research topic from a broad subject
• identify different sources of information and choose the most appropriate ones for the topic
• create a bibliography using the standard ASA style

This assignment will help you prepare for the Critical Review and plan and write a Final Paper.

Instructions

Requirements

The assignment consists of a 250- to 500-word document which includes:

• the research topic you’ve selected and your motivation/relationship to the topic.  
• a bibliography with a total of 5 appropriate sources for your topic.
  • 2 course readings. 
  • 3 sources from outside the course, one (1) which can be non-scholarly. 

Formatting

• Main headings are centred and bold (e.g., assignment title, your name)
• Sub-headings are left-justified and bold (e.g., Topic Selection and Motivation, Bibliography)
• Bibliography and any in-text citations must use an ASA standard form/style. 
• Throughout the document, use 1-inch page margins, Times New Roman font, 12-point font size, and line spacing at 1.5

Your first paper should answer one question from the first part of the course, Formative Moments (weeks 2-4). 

Your second paper should answer one question from the second part of the course Development of Modern Representative Democracy and its Challenges (weeks 5-7). 

Each question below presumes you have carefully read and understood the set material for the topic in question, and expects you to develop an argument that draws on the readings, citing them where necessary. Your papers should be submitted to the assigned folders on D2L.

Formative Moments

• Ancient democracy was itself an attempt to extend genuine freedom, the ability to shape their own destinies, to men whose background or skills suggested they were incapable of autonomy. — Cynthia Farrar, “Ancient Greek political theory as a response to democracy.”

Discuss.

• What were the “diseases most incident to republican government” according to Madison? What were its various remedies? Were they sufficient to rid such ‘diseases’ from the body politic?

• Unless you do everything for liberty, you have done nothing. There are no two ways of being free: one must be entirely free, or become a slave once more. —Maximilien Robespierre.

Discuss with reference to the causes and consequences of the French Revolution.

The Development of Modern Representative Democracy and its Challenges

• And so in capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority. – Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution (1917).

Discuss with reference to the Paris Commune and the Soviet Union.

• Fascism was a counter-revolution against a [socialist] revolution that never took place. – Ignazio Silone.

Discuss.

• “The establishment of modern representative democracy in India was a consequence of British colonial rule.”

Discuss.

The Organization, Its Mission, & Codes of Conduct. (2-3 pages) Summarize the organization’s current focus, background/history, and the professional/ethical codes that govern it. The goal is for you to gain a deeper understanding of this organization and how it operates. Make sure to write a coherent/flowing entry (don’t just document the answers to the prompts below).  < You might have to talk with several people in the organization to get all the information you will need to write this entry >  Within the entry: 

• Identify the organization’s mission statement (quote it completely and accurately) and reflect on the mission (is there a mission, vision, values statement for the org? if so, get it and know it!) Is the organization accomplishing its mission?  Is it a helpful statement?  Do employees seem aware of the mission?  Why or why not?  Is there a motto?
• What are you learning about the culture and how the system works?
• Discuss the codes of conduct operating in this workplace.  Does the organization have an unspoken code OR a specific code of conduct?  Is there a mix?  Is there a larger ethical code at work from a professional association?  If so (& most do!), find & read them and comment on the policies

link to website:

Paper Overview
● Select a topic or question related to CVD, cancer or diabetes
○ This could be a specific risk factor or determinant (physiological,
social, environmental)
○ Intervention, policy or program
○ How knowledge/risk factors/programs etc have changed over
time
● Format
○ Eight pages, double spaced (excluding references, figures and
title page)
○ At least six high quality references, most of which should be
from within the last decade
○ Written at the level of the audience
○ MLA format
The paper consists of three separate assignment submissions
● Outline (2%) due January 31st
● Draft (6%)
● Final paper (12%)
Componentǒ anǁ BreakdowǏ
Outlinǂ
● Meant to indicate focus/question of final paper
● Format
○ Three pages maximum including six to eight peer-reviewed sources
○ Either paragraph or bullet point structure is fine
● Structure
○ Title page (your name, title of your paper, instructor and TA’s name)
○ Introduction
○ Literature review
○ Discussion
○ Conclusion
○ References
IntroductioǏ
• Three to four points covering introduction/background of problem
• Relevant stats can go here
• Thesis statement or research question
• Main idea of your essay, one-two sentences
• Considered a road map for the paper
Title of Paper: “The association between nulliparity and breast cancer”
Introduction:
● One in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime (Naavi et al., 2021)
● Most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the US (Rowan et al., 2021)
● Among women with breast cancer, 15% have never been pregnant (Juno et al.,
2021)
Thesis: This paper will explore the association between women who have never been pregnant and risk of breast cancer
IntroductioǏ ǘamplǂ
Literaturǂ Review
● Theme 1: expansion on the main point of your paper
● Theme 2: expansion on another main point of you
paper
● Theme 3: if applicable
● Should be around two to three bullet points each
LiǓ Review ǘamplǂ
• Nulliparity and breast cancer
• Mila et al., (2021) found that 20% of the BC+ women in their study
had never had a child
• Elsa et al., (2021) found that women who had children at an early
age reported a greater number of negative mammograms
• Use of hormonal contraceptive and BC risk
• Lloyd et al., (2021) reported that women who used hormonal
contraceptive for over a decade had a 1.5 higher incidence rate
than women who had never used hormonal contraceptive
Two or three ideas/findings you’d like to discuss regarding the study results
from the lit review
Example:
● Evidence based explanation on how nulliparity may be related to breast
cancer
● Compare and contrast various findings on why nulliparity may be related
to BC
● Any population that may be inordinately impacted by this association
● Any gaps in literature regarding your topic

Could be a policy/program recommendation based on the literature
you found, a statement about the need for further research or a
summary of your findings.
Example:
● Clinicians should know about the association between
nulliparity and BC to identify any at-risk patients
● Future research should utilize larger databases to strengthen
the association between nulliparity and BC

Question

First Local Bank would like to improve customer service at its drive-in facility by reducing waiting and transaction times. On the basis of a pilot study, the bank’s process manager estimates the average rate of customer arrivals is 15 cars per hour. All arriving cars line up in front of a window and are served on a first-come, first-served basis. Each transaction requires on average 3 minutes to complete. Assume that the arrival of cars follows a Poisson process, and that the transaction times are exponentially distributed.

The bank now has one window that serves the drive-in customers. It costs $20 an hour to staff this window. The customer relations (CR) manager estimates that the cost (loss of goodwill and future business, etc.) due to a customer’s waiting in the queue has a linear form, i.e., the bank incurs a cost of 10 dollars per hour per customer in queue. On the other hand, as soon as a customer goes into service, the bank does not incur any goodwill loss.

1. What is the average time (in minutes) a customer spends in queue?

• What is the probability that a customer needs to wait before being served?

• What is the average number of customers in the system (including the ones waiting in line and the ones receiving service at the window)?

• What is the probability that there are 3 customers in the system (including the ones waiting in line and the ones receiving service at the window)?

• What is the utilization of the customer service representative at the window?

• The bank is considering the possibility of leasing high-speed information- retrieval and communication equipment that costs $20 an hour. The equipment is operated by the original staff employee. As a result, the average transaction time will be reduced by one minute. To minimize the total cost of staffing, equipment, and customer waiting, should the bank lease the communications equipment? That is, how does the total cost after leasing compare to that before?

• Another way to improve customer service is to open a second window instead of leasing high-speed information-retrieval and communication equipment. It costs $20 an hour to staff the second window, and both windows have the same average service time, 3 minutes. The customers will form two separate lines, each in front of one window. Upon arrival, a customer will choose one of the windows to line up with equal probability (i.e., 50% chance), and jockeying between queues is not allowed. The service discipline is first-come, first-served. Based on the total cost of staffing and customer waiting, is this alternative better than status quo? What is the total cost now?

The manager realized that letting customers form two separate lines is not an efficient queue layout. Instead, the customers, upon arrival, are asked to form one single line in front of the two windows. (There are still two windows open).

• Comparing to the two separate lines layout, what is the difference, if any, in the average number of customers waiting in line when using the single line layout? Explain the difference (or indifference) with intuition.

1. Comparing to the two separate lines layout, what is the difference, if any, in the utilization of the service windows when using the single line layout? Explain the difference (or indifference) with intuition.

• Now, suppose the customers form a single queue, and the service discipline is first-come, first-served. Based on the total cost of staffing and customer waiting, is this alternative better than the status quo? What is the total cost now?