Sociological Research
Science refers to the application of systematic methods of observation to obtain knowledge and the knowledge obtained by those methods.
Science possesses the following four elements:
- Objective procedures
- Precise measurement
- Full disclosure and replication
- Empirically falsifiable propositions
Non-scientific Ways of Knowing
- Authority
- Media Myths
- Tradition
- Common Sense
- Personal Experience
- Faith
The Research Process
- Selecting a Topic
- Defining the Problem
- Reviewing the Literature
- Formulating a Hypothesis
- Choosing a Research Method
- Collecting the Data
- Analyzing the Data
- Reporting the Results
Components of Scientific Theory
- Research questions (or propositions): statements that inter-relate two or more variables.
- Hypothesis: a testable formulation of a research question.
- Theory: a set of logically inter-related propositions that explain some process or set of phenomenon in a testable fashion.
- Validity: the extent to which an operational definition measures what it was intended to measure
- Reliability: the extent to which research produces consistent results
- It is possible to have reliability without validity, but not validity without reliability
- Correlation: a consistent association between two or more variables. (e.g., income and health)
- Positive correlation: when an increase in one variable is associated with an increase in another variable. (e.g., income and health)
- Negative correlation: when an increase in one variable is associated with a decrease in another variable (e.g., income and number of cigarettes smoked per month)
- Minimal requirements for establishing a causal relationship:
- Correlation or association between variables
- Temporal priority of causal variable
- Relationship between variables is not spurious
- Quantitative research methods - research in which the emphasis is placed on precise measurement and the use of statistics and numbers to describe results
- Qualitative research methods - research in which the emphasis is placed on observing, describing, and interpreting people's behavior
Sociological Research Methods
- Experiments
- Survey Research
- Field Research
- Content Analysis
- Secondary Analysis
- Unobtrusive Measures
- Experimental Method
- The experiment is unique in its control over variables; it is useful for determining cause and effect.
- Independent variables: those variables that are thought to produce a change in some variable.
- Dependent variables: those variables that are influenced by independent variables. Example: smoking (as a dependent variable) is presumed to be influenced by income and education (independent variables).
- Experimental group: the group of subjects exposed to the independent variable
- Control group: the group of subjects not exposed to the independent variable
- Steps in the experimental method:
- Randomly assign participants to the experimental and control groups
- Measure the dependent variable for the experimental and control groups
- Apply the independent variable to the experimental group only
- Measure the dependent variable for the experimental and control groups
- Classic experiments in sociology and social psychology include:
- Stanley Milgram's "shocking" findings about obedience
- Solomon Asch's study of conformity
- Phillip Zimbardo's prison study
- Elton Mayo's discovery of the Hawthorne Effect
- Survey Method
- In a survey, data is collected by having people answer a series of questions
- It is important to properly sample the population (the target group to be studied) in order to ensure that the research can be generalized to the population of interest.
- There are two main ways to conduct survey research:
- Questionnaires - respondents answer questions on their own (e.g., mail surveys)
- Interviews- respondents are directly questioned by researchers (e.g., telephone surveys, in-person interviews)
- Notable examples of the survey method include:
- Scully and Marolla - Convicted Rapists' Vocabulary of Motives
- Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape
- Field Research/Participant Observation
- In participant observation, the researcher participates in a research setting while observing what is happening in that setting
- The researcher may choose whether or not to disclose his or her identity and motives to the subjects
- Prominent examples of field research include:
- Elliot Liebow - Tally's Corner
- Donald Stull & Michael Broadway - Slaughterhouse Blues
- Laud Humphreys - Tearoom Trade
- Content Analysis, Secondary Analysis, and Unobtrusive Measures
- Content analysis involves the examination of written sources that provide data (e.g., books, newspapers, magazines) as well as photographs, movies, television programs, and other archival material.
- Secondary analysis involves the analysis of data already collected by other researchers.
- Unobtrusive measures include various ways of observing people who do not know they are being studied.
Measures of central tendency
- The Mean: the sum of scores divided by the number of cases; the mean is strongly influenced by extreme scores, either high or low
- The Median: the middle case in a series of numbers; when there is an even number of cases, take the mean of the two middle cases
- The Mode: the cases that occur with the most frequency
- In the series 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 10, 17:
- The mean is 45/9=5
- The median is 3
- The mode is 2
Nonscientific and Ethical Considerations
- Subjective Interpretation
- Value Judgments
- Reliance on Outside Funding
- Deception and Other Ethical Issues