Scholarship examining the educational potential of semester-long research projects in non-methods undergraduate sociology courses is limited. To address this gap in knowledge, I drew from active learning and problem-based learning literatures to develop a term research project in two sections of an undergraduate sociology course at a large public university in the Midwest. This study assesses the efficacy of that research project by addressing two main areas in need of further discussion in the teaching sociology literature: (1) the ability of full-scale research projects to develop students’ sociological imaginations and (2) the effectiveness of incorporating a full-scale research project in a non-methods course. Panel survey methods reveal that completing the research project contributed to the improvement of students’ sociological understanding of inequalities. The findings also suggest that completing the project increased students’ confidence in their abilities to conduct social research even though the project took place in a non-methods course.
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