For this paper, we will be identifying the causes of a certain social issue or problem. This is very different from a standard cause and effect papers that in most cases focus heavily on effect.

Causal Analysis Topic Selection:

For this paper, we will be identifying the causes of a certain social issue or problem. This is very different from a standard cause and effect papers that in most cases focus heavily on effect.
Cause #1 (BP1)
A simple diagram would look like this: Body Paragraphs
Cause #3 (Bp3)
Cause #2 (BP2)
Introduction Paragraph Problem
(effect) Cause #4 (BP4)
• Your topic needs to be a major issue or problem, remember, you will need to research this, “kids knocking down mailboxes in my neighborhood” is not significant enough.
• Make sure this is a social issue, avoid, environmental and health issues. IE no “causes of global warming”, “causes of traffic”, “causes of obesity”.
• Ideally this essay will be linked to the next essay, the proposal, so having an issue that could be fixed or lessened through certain actions will tie into the next essay better.

• Make sure your causes merit discussion and are not obvious. For example when examining the causes of teen pregnancy, if you were to argue that a cause of this is lack of education that is an interesting point that could be covered. However, if one of your causes is “intercourse”, of course this causes a baby, it does not merit discussion and would not make a strong paragraph in your paper.
• Your topic should look something like this: “The causes of X in Baton Rouge”, “There are several reasons why X occurs in the United States”.

• Some possible topics could be:
crime, high school dropouts, college drop outs, unemployment, opioid addiction, teen pregnancy, systematic racism, etc.
These are merely meant to be ideas, I would prefer you to come up with your own topic.

YOU MAY NOT WRITE ABOUT: Environmental Issues, Health Issues (this means ANYTHING related to Covid-19), and anything related to traffic, roads, etc.
Choose your topic and upload it to Canvas by next class.
On a blank word document, with a heading and title, you will need to send your thesis and four possible causes (causes may change once you research).
It should look something like this :
The causes of X in ________. (X is the issue, the blank is where it occurs)
Causes:
1. ____
2. _____
3. _____
4. ______

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