Cause and Effect Analysis

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Cause and Effect Analysis
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Sample Step One Topics

• Why has there been a resurgence of the Taliban in
  Afghanistan?
• Why do many South American heads of state dislike
  the current U.S. administration?
• What are the effects of post-partum depression on
  fathers?
• How has violence impacted the game of hockey?
• Why is the net population in Detroit proper in
  decline?
• What if grades were abolished?

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Isolating Cause Effect Topics

• Answering questions like this means that you are
  engaging in the process of cause and effect
  analysis.
• Whenever a question asks why, answering it will
  require discovering a cause or a series of causes
  for a particular effect.
• Whenever a questions asks what if, what are or
  how, its answer will point out the effects that
  can result from a particular event (what if
  questions are difficult to research)

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Why Do Cause/Effect Analysis?

• Its a way of discovering important relationships
  between events and circumstances surrounding
  events.
• The point is to inform, to isolate underpinnings,
  to speculate, and to argue as with descriptive
  and biographical, you are to argue a given
  position or point-of-view that is uniquely your
  own insight, resulting from in-depth scrutiny of
  research literature.

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Example Draft Thesis Statements

• Americas increasing focus on outward appearances
  is a major cause in the rising number of teen
  girls who choose to undergo cosmetic surgery.
• Martin Luthers actions inaugurating the
  Protestant Reformation caused sweeping, world
  changing effects that spurred the beginning of
  mass literacy, encouraged an attitude of
  resentment and rebellion toward European
  political and theological authority, planted the
  seeds of groups who would later settle the New
  World in search of religious and political
  freedom, and split Christendom over theological
  differences.
• Americas most hated war, the legacy of Vietnam,
  split the social nation in half and left its
  eternal mark on the country as well as its people
  from every part of the public, and the effects of
  the violence changed the United States forever.

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Steps

• Finding a topic your topic can include an
  event, a person, a place, a shift in attitudes.
• 2. Narrowing and deciding whether to focus on
  Causes or effects
• 3. How identifiable are the causes or effects?

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Causes

• Causes
• Causes
• Causes

Event
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Causal Chain

• Cause
• Cause Cause Cause
• Cause

Event
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Detroit Riot of 1967

• Unaffordable housing for African Americans
• Economic inequalitites (car companies began
  outsourcing)
• Police Brutality

Detroit Riot
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Draft of Thesis?

• What do all of these points/causes add up to?
• The riots in Detroit, in 1967, escalated because
  of the disadvantages African Americans were
  experiencing before that fateful night in July.

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Effects

• Effects
• Effects
• Effects

Event
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Should television cameras be allowed in the
courtroom?

• Cases are exaggerated in order to attract an
  audience
• Place strain on the jurors
• Influences witnesses involved-unable to testify

Cameras in the courtroom
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What do these points add up to?

• Draft Thesis?
• Television channels, such as Court T.V. are more
  concerned with ratings than justice therefore,
  cameras should not be allowed in the courtroom.
• Statement of condition?
• The judicial process is undermined by the
  publics obsession with reality T.V.

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T1 Attitude about subject

• 1. Identify a school subject (math, English,
  art)
• 2. Write 20 lines discussing the causes and
  effects of your attitude toward one of these
  subjects. Label them C and E.
• Questions to consider
• What events or relationships in your past have
  led you to feel the way you do?
• How does this attitude determine the kinds of
  choices you make and other aspects of your
  behavior?

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Library R.L. step 1

• Using handout for the Dewey Decimal system
  identify 4 categories of interest to you.
• Write down 4 specific questions for each category
  (you will have a total of 16 topics-due tomorrow
  at the beginning of the hour)
• Example
• Category 100 Philosophy and Psychology
• Why do people develop bulimia?
• Why are some people more intelligent than others?
• What if.
• What if.