How do we know?
a matter of agreement and belief
rarely on personal experience and discovery.
accept what everybody around us "knows" is so.
what is the basis of knowledge
agreement
epistemology
the science of knowing; systems of knowledge
methodology
the science of finding out; procedures for scientific investigation
what is scientific observation
paying conscious attention
overgeneralization
observed patterns are often mistaken for generalizability
what do overgeneralizations do?
misdirect and impede inquiry
Safeguarding
large and representative samples
Replication
repeating a research study to test and confirm / reject
Selective Observations
Observed overgeneralized pattern
we tend to focus on future events and situations that fit the pattern
we tend to ignore those that do not.
Avoid looking for "deviant" cases.
cases that don't fit
Gambler's fallacy
assume good or bad luck foreshadows its opposite
Illogical Reasoning
the exception that proves the rule."
doesn't make any sense
can draw attention
but not validate the rule it contradicts.
The foundations of social science are
logic and observation
what is logic and observation
Theory
Data collection
Analysis
Theory
A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life
what does social theory have to do with?
social theory has to do with what is not what should be
ex: capitalism vs socialism
what does social research aim to find?
find patterns of regularity in social life
The Charge of Triviality
documenting the obvious is a valuable function of any science
the obvious all to often turns out to be wrong
What About Exceptions?
just because there are exceptions to a social regularity ,does not mean the regularity is unreal or unimportant.
People Could Interfere
the conscious will of social actors to upset social regularities does not pose a serious challenge to social science.
Variables
Logical groupings of attributes.
varies from person to person
individuals are the carriers of variables
Attributes
characteristics of people or things
categories that make up the variable
Independent Variable -
A variable with values that are not problematical in an analysis, but are taken as simply given.
Presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.
Dependent Variable
A variable assumed to depend on or be caused by another / independent
The independent variable example
characteristics of the date.
attributes
attractiveness, punctuality, etc
the dependent variable example
Quality of the date.
attributes
good, good, fair, poor, awful
Idiographic Explanation
individualistic
unique, separate, peculiar, or distinct
limited to the single case
explain one case fully
Nomothetic Explanations
identify a few causal factors that generally impact a class of conditions of event.
settles for a partial rather than a full explanation.
Inductive Reasoning
specific to general
deductive reasoning
general to specific
Ethics of Social Research
1. do no harm
2. informed consent
3. voluntary participation
1. Your friend notices that after two coworkers take a sick day, their work hours are cut in the following weeks. Your friend concludes that management punishes all workers who take sick days.
What error in inquiry has your friend committed?
a. Inaccurate
b. overgerneralization
2. Nora observed people in her Sunday School for several months and then determined if there was a pattern in the different responses of men and women. Which one of the following approaches is reflected?
a. applied
b. reductice
c. transductive
d. inductiv
d. inductive
3. In comparison to nonscientific inquiry, scientific inquiry
a. is an activity where we are less concerned about making mistakes.
b. follows popular public trends.
c. is a semiconscious activity.
d. guards against all errors.
e. takes special precaution
e. takes special precaution to avoid error
4. Which of the following does NOT suggest the misuse of authority?
a. Social scientists who discuss inequality in their classrooms.
b. Celebrities who promote specific vitamin supplements.
c. Movie stars who are paid to evaluate the taste of different co
a. social scientists who discuss inequality in their classrooms
5. We can predict without understanding.
a. True
b. False
a. true
6. Theory that is logically inconsistent is acceptable as long as it is empirically accurate.
a. True
b. False
b. false
7. A researcher conducts a national survey, collecting information on religious affiliation and same-sex marriage attitudes. Based on this data, the researcher theorizes on the influence of religion on attitudes. This is an example of what kind of researc
b. Inductive
Paradigms
a model or frame of reference through which to observe and understand
seem more like "the way things are" than like one possible point of view among many
conservative vs liberal vs socialist
Individual vs. collective
Benefits of recognizing paradigm position
we can better understand the views of others.
stepping outside of our paradigm.
easily mistaken for reality
are paradigms true or false
they are neither truth nor false
Macrotheory
a theory aimed at understanding the "big picture" of institutions, whole societies, and the interactions among societies
Microtheory
a theory aimed at understanding social life at the intimate level of individuals and their interactions
who is the founder of early positivism
Auguste comte
what did auguste comte believe
Society is a phenomenon that can be studied scientifically
Positivistic
a philosophical system grounded on the rational proof/disproof of scientific assertions.
assumes a knowable objective reality
Structural Functionalism
Society is made up of parts
each of which serves a function for the operation of the whole.
Organism
crimes and their punishment provide an opportunity to reaffirm society's values
welfare reduces crimes
Symbolic Interactionism
human behavior as the creation of meaning through social interactions, with those meanings conditioning subsequent interaction.
interacted with one another, a micro approach.
Mead
taking the role of the other.
Cooley
looking-glass self," primary groups
Social Conflict
Dominate others and to avoid being dominated.
social behavior is best explained as the process of conflict.
owner vs worker
conflicts among members of a tightly knit group tended to be more intense than those among people who did not share feelings of bel
Feminist Paradigms
1) view and understand society through the experiences of women and/or
(2) examine the generally deprived status of women in society.
Critical Race Theory
Grounded in race awareness and an intention to achieve racial justice.
DuBoise (Critical Race Theory)
African Americans lived their lives through a "dual consciousness:" as Americans and as Black people.
who came up with interest convergence
Derrick Bell
Interest Convergence
majority group members will only support the interests of minorities when those actions also support the interests of the majority group
Paradigm
points from which to view
Concepts
abstract elements representing classes of phenomena within the field of study.
Axioms or Postulates
- fundamental assertions on which a theory is grounded.
Propositions
- specific conclusions, derived from the axiomatic groundwork, about the relationships among concepts.
Hypothesis
- a specified, testable expectation about the empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition
Operationalization
the process of developing operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a variable
Observation
specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a variable
1. A researcher studying prejudice seeks to determine how racial prejudices are used by some groups to dominate other groups. What paradigm is this researcher using?
A. Conflict theory
B. Symbolic Interactionism
C. Structural Functionalism
D. Feminism
A. conflict theory
2. The three main elements of the traditional model of science are:
A. theory, operationalization, observation.
B. operationalization, hypothesis testing, theory.
C. observation, experimentation, operationalization.
D. theory, observation, hypothesis test
A. theory, operationalism, observation
Which of the following is the best example of a hypothesis?
A. The greater the level of education, the greater the tolerance for alternative lifestyles.
B. Socialization in childhood has a significant impact on adolescent gender-role identify.
C. There ar
A. the greater level of education, the greater the tolerance for alternative lifestyles
4. The paradigm that accounts for the impact of economic conditions on family structures is:
A. symbolic interactionism.
B. structural functionalism.
C. positivism.
D. conflict.
E. critical race.
B. structural functionalism.
5. Which of the following is not a step in deductive theory construction?
A. Specify the topic
B. Identify propositions about the relationships among those variables
C. Reason logically from those propositions to the specific topic one is examining
D. Ide
D. Identify the major concepts and variable
6. ______ are fundamental assertions that are taken to be true.
A. Hypotheses
B. Propositions
C. Axioms
D. Paradigms
C. Axioms
Three purposes of research
1. Exploration
2. Description
3. Explanation
goal of nomothetic explanation
to find a few factors that can account for many of the variations in a given phenomenon
Criteria for Nomothetic Causality
The variables must be correlated
Correlation
changes in one variable are associated with changes in the other
Spurious Relationship
a coincidental statistical correlation between two variables shown to be caused by some third variable
necessary cause
A necessary cause represents a condition that must be present for the effect to follow.
sufficient cause
A sufficient cause represents a condition that, if it is present, guarantees the effect in question.
units of analysis
individuals, groups, organizations, social interactions, social artifacts
The Ecological Fallacy
erroneously drawing conclusions about individuals solely from the observations of groups.
Reductionism
a strict limitation (reduction) of the kinds of concepts to be considered relevant to the phenomenon under study.
Cross-Sectional Study
observations representing a single point in time, a cross section of a population.
Longitudinal Study
the collection of data at different points in time
Conceptualization
produces a specific, agreed-on meaning for a concept for the purposes of research
Levels of Measurement
Nominal
Ordinal
Interval
Ratio
Nominal
Variables whose attributes are merely different
they have only the characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutually exclusiveness.
Ordinal
Variables with attributes we can logically rank in order.
Interval
Variables whose attributes are rank-ordered and have equal distances between adjacent attributes.
Ratio
Variables whose attributes meet the requirements of an interval measure and have a true zero point.
Indexes versus Scales
(Commonalities)
both ordinal measures of variables.
measurements based on more than one data item.
Indexes vs Scales (index difference)
Index
rank-orders several specific observations and represents some more general dimensions.
point system
indexes vs scales (scales difference)
Scales
not all indicators of a variable are equally important or equally strong
intensity of structures among the indicator
what is generally superior, indexes or scales?
scales
Bogardus Social Distance Scale
determines the willingness of people to participate in social relations
of varying degrees of closeness
with other kinds of people.
Likert Scaling
designed to improve the levels of measurement I
standardized response categories
determine the relative intensity.
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree strongly disagree
Semantic Differential
respondent asked to rate something in terms of two, opposite adjectives
Guttman Scaling
summarize several discrete observations and to represent more general variables.
anyone giving strong indicator of some variable will also give the weaker indicators.
Typology
nominal composite measure
used as independent variables
True or False: Scales and indexes are differentiated by the fact that scales are measured at the interval level and indexes are measured at the ordinal level.
False: Scales and indexes are both measured at the ordinal level.
Criteria of Measurement Quality
precision, accuracy, reliability, validity
Reliability
same data would have been collected each time in repeated observations of the same phenomenon.
consistency
Test-Retest Method
To make the same measurement more than once.
Split-Half Method
Multiple sets of randomly assigned variables should produce the same classifications
Validity
a measure that accurately reflects the concept it is intended to measure
Face Validity
Reasonable in face value
Criterion-Related Validity
the degree to which a measure relates to some external criterion
Construct Validity
a measure relates to other variables as expected within a system of theoretical relationships
Content Validity
a measure covers the range of meanings included within a concept
Sampling
deciding what to observe & what not to
random selection
Nonprobability Sampling
any technique in which samples are selected in some way not suggested by probability theory
Purposive or Judgmental Sampling
The observed are selected on the basis of the researcher's judgment about which ones will be the most useful or representative.
Convenience sampling
Journalists stopping people on street
Snowball Sampling
Each person interviewed may be asked to suggest additional people for interviewing.
Often used in field research, special populations
Quota Sampling
selected into a sample on the basis of pre-specified characteristics
A researcher studying college success knows that a particular university's student body is 40% first years, 25% second years, 20% third years, and 15% fourth years. The researcher selects cases to match this distribution. What kind of nonprobability sampl
quota sampling
probability sampling
A sample of individuals from a population must contain the same variations that exist in the population.
Conscious and Subconscious Sampling Bias
Bias - those selected are not typical nor representative of the larger population
Representativeness and Probability of Selection
a sample of having the same distribution of characteristics as the population from which it was selected.
Advantages of Probability Sampling
1. Probability samples are typically more representative than other types of samples because biases are avoided.
2. Probability theory permits researchers to estimate the accuracy or representativeness of the sample.
Random Selection
each element has an equal chance of selection independent of any other event in the selection process.
Sampling Unit
that element or set of elements considered for selection in some stage of sampling
Simple Random Sampling
the units composing a population are assigned numbers.
set of random numbers is generated and the units having those numbers are included in the sample.
Not necessarily the most accurate sampling method
Sampling Interval
- the standard distance between elements selected from a population in the sample.
Every kth element
systematic sample with a random start
how to get the sampling interval
population size/sample size
Stratified Sampling
Grouping of units composing a population into homogenous groups
what does stratified sampling help do?
obtaining a greater degree of representativeness by decreasing the probable sampling error
2 methods of stratification
1)sort the population elements into discrete groups
2)group sample and then put those groups together in a continuous list
what does probability sampling always carry?
a risk of error
Nonprobability sampling
obtain the breadth of variations in a population.