Research Assignment 2. Global Gender Gap Assignment

Research Assignment 2 Intro to WGS
This week, you will do a deeper investigation into one statistic, map, or data set presented by Joni Seager in The Women’s Atlas. As with our previous assignment, you should spend a few days doing quick but quality research to find information.  You should not spend more than a day or two searching for a source to complete this assignment, and you should not write a lot about it. These are not essays or research papers! They are “research notes” on one thing that you’re making for both yourself and your classmates. Your main objective is to create a short, encyclopedia-type note providing more context or additional information on your chosen citation from Seager’s book. 
You can choose from any map or data set in the book. As you think about how to do your research, keep the following things in mind: 
1. Your sources should be academic or at least from professional source. The goal is to find reliable, instructional content. While blogs, social media posts, and other popular sources have their place in both research and activism, the goal of this exercise is instructional. You are seeking to educate yourself more on a topic, and in turn to educate your classmates on it as well. How do you know this is the best/trusted source on this information? Be sure to have some evidence of the credibility of the source in your presentation. Can you provide a citation? Give us a sentence or two on why it’s trustworthy, or how you found it? You should not exceed 1-2 sources for your information, so they should be top quality. Remember, this is not a “research paper”!
2. You should present this source (or the 2 sources) by creating some text and bulleted info or  1-2 paragraphs maximum that contain the following: 
a. Your objective. “I found the data from ______ intriguing/upsetting/surprising, and I wanted to learn more about this issue” is a good way to begin!
b. Your source or method of searching. How did you go about finding those details? Why did you choose this source or these sources to put together this information? 
c. 1-2 key take-aways from what you’ve read. What did you learn about the data? Does it match Seager’s? Does it provide confirmation, or challenge her finding? Does it provide context, or help fill in a gap you didn’t know about? Be sure your information clearly connects to the map or data you announced as your starting point. 
d. An image or visual data if possible. What can we look at that will help us understand that major idea you’d like us to remember from your presentation? 
3. You will present this information in one post to the Discussion Board (“Research Assignment” forum, organized by last name) no later than Thursday, June 25th. You should respond to a classmate’s post offering a comment and/or critique no later than Sunday, June 28th. 
How Should I Begin?
A great way is to flip through Seager’s book! We have read and will read some sections as they relate to our other assigned readings or videos. But what do you find intriguing? Why? This could be a good topic to follow up on with additional research!