Ch. 1. Sociology and Social Problems

Question 1

Social Institutions

Answer 1

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS – any set of persons cooperating together for the purpose of organizing stable patterns of human activity.

Question 2

Cohort

Answer 2

COHORT – a group of individuals of similar age within a population who share a particular experience.

• EX: Those who grew up during the Depression.
• EX: Those who graduated high school during the Covid Pandemic.

Question 3

Demographic Factors

Answer 3

DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS – social characteristics of a population – in particular, race, age, and gender.

Question 4

Intersectionality

Answer 4

INTERSECTIONALITY – ways in which several demographic factors combine to affect people’s experiences.

• EX: We would consider how his age (young adult), race (black), gender (male), and social class (working class) combine to shape his life.

Question 5

Social Class

Answer 5

SOCIAL CLASS – a category of people whose experiences in life are determined by the amount of income and wealth they own and control.

Question 6

Sociology

Answer 6

SOCIOLOGY – the study of social behavior and human society.

• Sociology is the field most likely to examine systematically social problems such as poverty, social discrimination (on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, age), crime, drug abuse, immigration, climate change, terrorism, and more.

Question 7

Social Problem

Answer 7

SOCIAL PROBLEM - a social condition, event, or pattern of behavior that negatively affects the well-being of a significant number of people (or a number of significant people) who believe that the condition, event, or pattern needs to be changed or ameliorated.

Question 8

Patterns and Trends

Answer 8

PATTERNS and TRENDS – Because social problems affect large numbers of people, sociologists typically discuss them in terms of patterns and trends, and use measures of rates to describe how frequent and pervasive their occurrence is.

• EX: Crime Rates – In studying rates of crime, sociologists and criminologists rely on certain, or collections of information, like the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports

Question 9

Objective and Subjective Aspects of Social Problems

Answer 9

OBJECTIVE ASPECT OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS – measuring the rate of crime – or, for that matter any measurable rates of things like divorce, population growth, or sex trafficking – we are able to call attention to the objective aspect of social problems.

• Data allow us to show, concretely, how much crime is really out there.

SUBJECTIVE ASPECT OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS – Here we are talking about what people define as a social problem. Something is a social problem only if they define it as a social problem. If there is a condition, but no group of people consider it a problem, then it’s not a problem (or at least not a recognized social problem.)

There is often a close link between the objective and subjective aspects of a problem.

• EX: People are made OBJECTIVELY aware (usually through official data) that the murder rate in their community has doubled over the past 5 years, and, as a consequence, they SUBJECTIVELY become concerned about their safety and that of their community.
• EX: Objectively the problem of auto fatalities causes twice as much harm to people and society than AIDS, but Subjectively people are much more concerned about the problem of AIDS.
  
  • In other words, if one troubling condition is more pervasive or more detrimental than another (and even if there’s factual information indicating this), that doesn’t necessarily mean people will perceive the condition as more problematic.

Objective aspects of social problems: Those empirical (Data-driven) conditions or facts that point to the concreteness of social problems “out there.”

Subjective aspects of social problems: The process by which people define social problems.

Question 10

Relativity (subjective aspect of social problem)

Answer 10

RELATIVITY – Another subjective aspect of social problems is the relativity with which people identify them. First, what is viewed as a social problem in one time and place may not be viewed as a social problem in another time and place.

• Relativity ensures that some segments of the population experience the social problem and others do not, or they experience it to a different extent.
  
  • EX: The pervasiveness of assault rifles in U.S. society is a social problem to advocates of stricter gun laws, but not to supporters of gun ownership rights.

Question 11

Social Constructionism

Answer 11

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM – Is a theoretical approach that describes the social process by which people define a social problem into existence.

• “Social problems are what people think they are”
• CLAIMS-MAKERS – those who are able to get an issue defined as a social problem.
  
  • A critical mass must be concerned about the troubling or objectionable situation to call attention to it.
  • Some people and groups have greater influence than others.
  • The more the powerful segments of society—such as politicians, bankers, and corporate executives—are concerned about an issue, the greater the probability that laws will be created to address the issue.
    
    • Conversely, there will be fewer laws to prohibit behaviors like profiting from campaign financing, insider trading, and price-fixing. According to Quinney, definitions of crime align with the interests of those segments of society with the power to shape social policy.

Question 12

Types of Action– Social Structure, Social Constructionism, Social Movement

Answer 12

SOCIAL STRUCTURE – The pattern of interrelated social institutions.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM – The social process by which people define a social problem into existence.

SOCIAL MOVEMENT – The collective efforts of people to realize social change in order to solve social problems.

Question 13

Ameliorate

Answer 13

AMELIORATE – make something that is bad or unsatisfactory better – improve a problematic condition, usually aimed at helping those in need.

• This may mean providing the material relief necessary for physical survival (money, food, clothes).
• In most cases, however, it means providing nonmaterial services, such as counseling (employment, parenting), dispute resolution (peace talks, mediation), education (instruction and encouragement), and professional consultation (on specific troublesome issues).

Question 14

Sociological Imagination

Answer 14

SOCIAL IMAGINATION – is a form of self-consciousness that allows us to go beyond our immediate environments (of family, neighborhood, work) and understand the major structural transformations that have occurred and are occurring.

• C. Wright Mills – was a leading critic of U.S. society in the 1950s and made contributions to the sociological perspective known as CONFLICT THEORY.
  
  • Mills says that in order to understand our personal hardships and our own individual feelings, we must be aware of the larger forces of history and of social structure.
    
    • To gain this awareness we should use a way of thinking that he calls the sociological imagination.
• Some of these transformations have to do with family patterns:
  
  • Increased inequality of income and wealth.
    
    • ​some of the structural changes that have occurred during the past 30 years that in many ways operate against the working-class’ attempts to create stable and predictable adult lives include:
    • Rise of the service economy (which is detrimental to the uneducated)
    • Declining social mobility
    • Depressed wages
• Sociological imagination allows us to see our personal troubles as social problems – meaning that many of our personal troubles are not necessarily attributable to our personal characteristics, such as work ethic, level of education attained, or living environment, but rather these personal troubles are experienced because they are actually the result of a set of much larger social problem in which we are enveloped.
  
  • This perspective helps us confront social problems, and make us aware of the social problems’ origins.
  • We come to understand that what we see and feel as personal misfortunes (for example, our inability to achieve the milestones of adulthood) are predicaments shared by many others and difficult for any one individual to solve.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE – Comparing our own society to other societies in all the world’s regions.

• Sociological imagination requires that we take a global perspective,

Question 15

Sociological Research

Answer 15

SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH (OBJECTIVE) – Sociologists look at patterns and trends in regard to police brutality, poverty, the opioid epidemic, auto fatalities, and so on. In order to identify these patterns and trends, they require numerical facts, like rates, percentages, and ratios.

• GENERAL SOCIAL SURVEY (GSS) – One of the largest sources for social scientific data in the United States. GSS includes data on social trends, demographics, behaviors, opinions, and attitudes.
• QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH – Research that studies social problems through statistical analysis of collected data.

SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH (SUBJECTIVE) – When it comes to the subjective aspects of social problems, sociologists tend to be less interested in facts and figures and more interested in the ways people define, experience, or understand problematic situations.

• QUALITATIVE RESEARCH – Research that studies how people define, experience, or understand problematic situations.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE – viewpoint from which we compare our own society to other societies around the world.

RESEARCH METHODS – Techniques for obtaining information.

SURVEY – A research method that asks respondents to answer questions on a written questionnaire.

• Steven J. Tepper (2011) – People fear social change – Tepper’s hypothesis is that citizens are most likely to feel offended by certain forms of art, and will protest them when they feel their lifestyles and values are being threatened.
  
  • ​He relied extensively on survey research in his study examining controversies over cultural expressions.
• In other words, people will want to ban certain films, books, paintings, sculptures, clothing styles, popular music, and television programs when they have a fear or anxiety about social change.

Question 16

Participant Observation

Answer 16

PARTICIPATION OBSERVATION – A method in which the researcher observes and studies people in their everyday settings.

• Because qualitative researchers seek to understand the social world from the subject’s point of view, they frequently employ participant observation.

Question 17

Interviewing

Answer 17

INTERVIEWING – The form of data collection in which the researcher asks respondents a series of questions.

• It is one research method that may include both quantitative and qualitative elements.
• The responses can be treated quantitatively when researchers assign numerical values to them and identify patterns across responses.
  
  • These patterns can be used to make comparisons between different sample groups.
• Interviews can also be treated qualitatively, as guided conversations that let respondents talk at length and in detail.

Sharmila Rudrappa (2015) – Studied how the phenomenon of surrogacy—when women are paid to carry and deliver babies for people who cannot conceive them biologically—was experienced and transacted

• Using interviews, she discovered that many of the surrogate mothers experienced a great deal of ambivalence in the process of sharing children.

Question 18

Mixed Methods

Answer 18

MIXED METHODS – Because each method offers its own advantages, sociologists often combine quantitative and qualitative methods of research to achieve a fuller picture of the social problems they are studying.

• EX: Carla Shedd’s (2015) research exploring how the views that inner-city youth have of themselves and the larger social world are shaped by their experiences as they go from home to school and back.
  
  • Shedd relied on a University of Chicago data source.
  • She relied on in-depth interviews that she conducted
  • Her participant observation research of schools and local communities.

Question 19

Joel Best (Defining Social Problems)

Answer 19

JOEL BEST – Explains the process of Defining Social Problems:

1. The original claim attracts attention…
2. This leads to media coverage…
3. That brings the topic to a wider audience…
4. Which affects public opinion…
5. And that leads to policymakers trying to establish some way of dealing with the troubling condition.

• It is not the nature of a social condition that makes something a social problem; rather, social problems emerge through this process of collective definition. If people don’t define something as a social problem, then it isn’t one.

Question 20

Three Sociological Theories

Answer 20

THREE SOCIOLOGY THEORIES

1. STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM – the sociological theory that considers how various social phenomena function, or work in a positive way, to maintain unity and order in society.
2. CONFLICT THEORY – the sociological theory that focuses on dissent, coercion, and antagonism in society (Mostly between those who control the resources and the working class).
3. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM – is the sociological perspective that sees society as the product of symbols (words, gestures, objects) that are given meaning by people in their interactions with each other.

• THEORY – A collection of related concepts (Also called PARADIGMS or THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES.
• FUNCTIONS – Positive consequences of social structures or social institutions.
  • Assuming the Negative Consequences would be MALFUNCTIONS

Question 21

Structural Functionalism

Answer 21

STRUCTURAL FUNTIONALISM (or FUNCTIONALISM): The sociological theory that considers how various social phenomena function, or work in a positive way, to maintain unity and order in society.

• HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903) – Father of Structural Functionalism.
  
  • Viewed society as an organism, which is to say as an integrated system made up of different social institutions, all working together to keep it going.
  • Society needs these institutions (of the economy, the government, the family, religion, and so on) to keep it orderly and cohesive.
  • Each institution works in different ways to benefit society.
    
    • EX: Some of the functions—that is, positive consequences—of the FAMILY provides:
      
      • Way for humans to reproduce
      • Provides emotional support
      • Teaches children the rules of society.
    • EX: The Functions of RELIGION are that it
      
      • Offers rationales for the larger questions of existence.
      • Presents us with ideas about what is right and wrong;
      • Creates a sense of community.

TALCOTT PARSONS (1902-1979) – Most famous theorist of structural functionalism. His theory is very complex, but we are focusing on:

• THE PROBLEM OF ORDER – Parsons believed that for society as a social system to keep functioning smoothly, it needs to maintain social order.
  
  • Because the social institutions already provide functions for society, social order is common. However, sometimes strains and tensions threaten to disrupt social integration and stability.
    
    • EX: Think of wars, revolutions, political polarization, racial tensions.
      
      • Parsons believed that one way societies can prevent such disruptions is by encouraging people to conform to society’s expectations. This is best achieved by having them abide by the same shared norms, or rules, and values, or beliefs. In other words, consensus produces social order.

ROBERT K. MERTON (1910-2003) – Agreed that social institutions and social structures can have functions but he saw that they can also have dysfunctions or negative consequences.

• EX: Consider how the family can be a refuge from the larger world, where family members can get nurturance, love, and acceptance in ways that are not available to them in other institutional settings. But also consider how the family can be the setting where domestic violence, contentious divorce, and the sexual and emotional abuse of children may occur.
• Merton would have us examine both the functions and the dysfunctions of social phenomena, and he would also have us ask about our social structures, “Functional for whom?”
  
  • In other words, we must be aware that while a social phenomenon like income inequality in the social structure of U.S. society is dysfunctional for one group (the poor), it may be quite functional for another (the wealthy).

APPLICATION OF STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM

EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917) – Early founder of Sociology. Classic study on the social problem of suicide.

• He understood that all societies, in order to continue as they are, need two things:
  
  1. SOCIAL INTEGRATION – Describes a certain degree of unity. In order words, people need to come together and stay together.
     
     • The opposite of social integration is SOCIAL DISINTEGRATION, which leads to the collapse of society
  2. SOCIAL REGULATION – This Means that to maintain social order, societies need to have a certain degree of control over the behavior of their members.
     
     • This is typically achieved by having people follow social norms.
     • The opposite of social regulation is SOCIAL DISORDER, which may lead to what Durkheim called ANOMIE or a state of normlessness.
• Both social integration and social regulation are functional for society, but they can become dysfunctional and lead to social problems when there is too much or too little of them.
• EX: Turning to the differences in suicide rates among various groups, Durkheim (1979/1897) found that suicide rates are:
  
  • higher among men than among women
  • higher for those who are single than for those who are married
  • higher among Protestants than among Catholics or Jews.

1. He explained these and other group differences by looking at the degree of social integration and social regulation and identified four types of social suicide:
   ​
   
   1. ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE – When a group has too much social integration when it is overly cohesive, conditions lead to altruistic suicide where members sacrifice their lives for the group.
      
      • EX: ​​Suicide Bombers – Place less value on their own lives than on the group’s honor, religion, or some other collective interest.
   2. EGOTISTIC SUICIDE – ​when a society has too little social integration, when its social bonds are weak.
      
      • EX: Persons in certain populations kill themselves due to extreme isolation.
   3. FATALISTIC SUICIDE – Too much social regulation, or excessive social control over people’s behavior.
      
      • Members of certain groups end their lives because they see no escape from their oppressive situation.
      • EX: Women in Iranian society, fatalistic is the dominant type of suicide due to a traditional male-dominated social structure that, among other things, forces women into marriage at an early age.​
   4. ANOMIC SUICIDE – Too little social regulation, which leads to the absence of norms.
      
      • ​​People kill themselves because they lack rules to give them social direction for meeting their needs.
      • EX: Long-term causal relationship exists between the unemployment rate and men’s suicide rate. One study explains that when men lose their jobs, society’s regulating influence on their need to work is disrupted, causing an increase in their suicides.

Question 22

Conflict Theory

Answer 22

CONFLICT THEORY – is the sociological theory that focuses on dissent, coercion, and antagonism in society. Conflict theory looks at how one group or social class tries to dominate another in situations it perceives as threatening to its interests and well-being.

• In this sense, what one group considers to be a social problem another group may not.
• In this sense, we may see Conflict Theory as the opposite of Structural Functionalism.
  
  • ​While functionalism emphasizes stability, conflict theory emphasizes change.
  • The main difference between functionalism and conflict theory is that functionalism states that each aspect of society serves a function and are necessary for the survival of that society while conflict theory states that a society is in perpetual class conflict due to the limitation and the unequal distribution of resources and power.
• Has its roots in the 19th century, particularly in the ideas of Karl Marx.

KARL MARX (1818-1883) – was a 19th-century revolutionary and critic of the economic institution known as capitalism.

• He was first and foremost engaged in critiquing capitalism, the economic system that includes the ownership of private property, the making of financial profit, and the hiring of workers.
• He believed that capitalist societies like England and the United States would eventually become communist societies.
  
  • His best-known work, which he coauthored with Friedrich Engels, is The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848.
• Marx saw two main ANTAGONISTIC SOCIAL CLASSES in capitalist society:
  
  1. CAPITALISTS (BOURGEOISIE) – The First Social Class – the economically dominant class that privately owns and controls human labor, raw materials, land, tools, machinery, technologies, and factories.
  2. WORKERS (PROLETARIAT) – The Second Social Class – who own no property and must work for the capitalists in order to support themselves and their families financially.
• In their effort to maximize their profits, capitalists exploit workers by not paying them the full value of their work.
• Workers are treated as machines, not as human beings.
• Through Marx’s conflict theory sociologists examine the frictions that exist between the powerful social classes that give rise to a variety of social problems related to the unequal distribution of wealth.

RALF DAHRENDORF(1959) – Departed from Marx’s focus on the conflict between social classes and looked instead to the conflict between interest groups, organized associations of people mobilized into action because of their membership in those associations.

• For him, social inequalities have their basis not only in economic differences but also in political power.
  
  • Simply put, those with power give orders and those without power take orders.
• Social conflict in relationship to social problems occurs among interest groups, some of which are politically progressive while others are politically conservative.
• Those groups with sufficient political power use it, usually by influencing legislation, to protect their interests.
  
  • EX:​ Consider the politically powerful interest groups on opposite sides of the issue of gun control, such as those that support required background checks for all gun purchases (Everytown for Gun Safety) and those that oppose such checks (National Rifle Association).
    
    • Or consider interest groups that favor abortion rights (Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women) and those that do not (Americans United for Life and the National Right to Life Committee).

Norms: Social rules.

Values: Social beliefs.

Dysfunctions: Negative consequences of social structures or social institutions.

Conflict theory: The sociological theory that focuses on dissent, coercion, and antagonism in society.

Capitalism: An economic system that includes the ownership of private property, the making of financial profit, and the hiring of workers.

Capitalists: The economically dominant class that privately owns and controls human labor, raw materials, land, tools, machinery, technologies, and factories.

APPLICATION OF CONFLICT THEORY and ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION –

JOSEPH R. GUSFIELD (1986) – Examination of how a particular group—rural, middle-class evangelical Protestants—tried to preserve its own culture, or style of life, in U.S. society during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

• This cultural group, which Gusfield calls “the Dry forces,” were reformers who wanted to correct what they saw as a major social problem: the drinking habits of ethnic immigrants.
• They tried to coerce reform through legislation. This coercive strategy culminated in a national policy of prohibition in 1919, when Congress ratified the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors.
• This application of conflict theory clearly shows that the interest group with the most political power can prohibit behaviors it considers problematic.

Question 23

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 23

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM – The sociological perspective that sees society as the product of symbols (words, gestures, objects) given meaning by people in their interactions with each other.

• It’s the way society assigns meaning to the events, things, and communication that exists in a society.
• The Social constructionist approach says that certain social conditions are social problems because people define them as such.
  
  • So social problems are defined within a society according to the MEANING that they assign to the conditions and events that are going on around them.
• Symbolic interactionism has its origins in the ideas of George Herbert Mead.

GEORGE HERBERT MEAD(1863-1931) – He was one of the first scholars to take seriously the study of the social self. He was interested in understanding the relationship between mind, self, and society (Mead, 1934).

• Mind, Self, and Society - Mead’s book, published by his students after he died, is regarded by many as the “bible” of symbolic interactionism.
• Mind – refers to the internal conversations we have within ourselves. In other words, we continuously think about ourselves and about what is going on around us, and all this requires the use of language.
  
  • Language is nothing more than a system of symbols (objects that represent something else) that we interpret.
  • In the same way you learned to read words, you learned to read or “define” a clock (symbolic of time), a map (symbolic of a particular physical place), a smile (symbolic of an emotion), and so on.
• The SOCIAL SELF – a process by which we are able to see ourselves in relationship to others.
  
  • Just as we define symbols, we also define our self.
    
    • We are not born with a social self, which is why newborns do not have a sense of who they are. They have no self-consciousness.
    • We can acquire the social self only after we have learned to consider who we are in relationship to the attitudes and expectations of others, of society.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY (1864-1929) – Proposed the concept of the LOOKING-GLASS SELF – The idea that we see ourselves as we think others see us.

• EX: If our friends, family, and teachers continually tell us we are clever, then we are likely to see ourselves as clever.
  
  • If, on the other hand, teachers, police, and judges define, or “label,” us as delinquent, we are likely to take on the identity of a delinquent.
• In addition to defining symbols (words, gestures, objects) and our social self (who we are), we define social situations.

W.I. THOMAS – Noted that if people define a social situation as real, it will be real in its consequences.

• EX: if you and other students define what is going on in the classroom as a lecture, you will then listen closely to the speaker and take lecture notes. But if you define it as a party, then the consequences are that you stop taking notes and stop raising your hand to ask questions and instead mingle, talk to your friends, and have a good time.

Merton: the SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY is the social process whereby a false definition of a situation brings about behavior that makes the false definition “come true.”

• Combining and applying the SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY and the LOOKING GLASS SELF:
  
  • ​EX: Imagine a 5-year-old child, Marisol, who is a recent immigrant from Mexico and speaks only Spanish. Her parents enroll her in an English-only school, and her teacher notices that Marisol does not say much in class, does not raise her hand to ask questions like the other students, and does not interact with playmates on the playground. After a while, the teacher—and other teachers and students—may label Marisol as shy, introverted, a slow learner, asocial, and so on. Now, Marisol is actually none of these things, but she eventually starts to see herself that way and then becomes timid and unsure of herself.

SOCIAL INTEGRATION – The unity or cohesiveness of society.

CULTURE – A style of life.

APPLICATION of SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

WAVERLY DUCK (2015) – Takes a symbolic interactionist perspective to explain how the residents of a poor African American neighborhood where drug dealing was prevalent were able to survive their precarious existence.

• Duck’s most important finding was that the community possessed an Interaction Order.
• INTERACTION ORDER – A culture that shapes everyday social interactions. The lifestyle in this poor neighborhood was one that shaped residents’ everyday interactions with each other in order to help them cope with their poverty and racial isolation.
  
  • Because this interaction order involved personal interactions that differed sharply with those of the American mainstream, outsiders saw the neighborhood as disordered, and community routine activities appeared to them as senseless and chaotic.
  • For the residents, however, it was the opposite. The interaction order allowed them to accurately interpret and appropriately respond to the social situations in which they daily found themselves.
    
    • Indeed, it gave everyone—law-abiding citizens and drug dealers—a sense of order, predictability, and solidarity.

Question 24

Social Policy

Answer 24

SOCIAL POLICY – More or less clearly articulated and usually written set of strategies for addressing a social problem.

SOCIAL REVOLUTION – A total and complete transformation in the social structure of society.

Question 25

Settlement Houses

Answer 25

SETTLEMENT HOUSES – Neighborhood centers providing services to poor immigrants.

JANE ADDAMS (1860-1935) – Who in 1889 cofounded the most famous of the settlement houses, Hull House, in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

• Addams, and others like her, sought to compile empirical data on various social problems by gathering detailed descriptions of the conditions of groups living in poverty.
• Addams received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her work in 1931.

Question 26

Service Sociology

Answer 26

SERVICE SOCIOLOGY –Is a socially responsible and mission-oriented sociology of action and alleviation.

• A new type of sociology, devoted to the practical amelioration of social problems
• Its practitioners believe the personal needs of one individual are not so different from the collective needs of others in similar life circumstances.

Question 27

Culture of Service

Answer 27

CULTURE OF SERVICE – A style of life that includes various forms of civic engagement, community service, and volunteerism intended to help alleviate social problems.

• Including various forms of civic engagement, community service, and volunteerism—that allows citizens to work together to ease or mitigate the predicaments and uncertainties created by poverty, hunger, racism, sexism, epidemics, calamities, and so on.

Question 28

Peer-reviewed Sociological Research Article

Answer 28

PEER-REVIEWED SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH ARTICLE – Addresses the social problem via literature review (Theoretical Approach)

RESEARCH APPROACH - Hypothesis or research question

RESEARCH DESIGN and METHODOLOGY – Data collection and analysis

LITERATURE REVIEW – A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic.

RESEARCH RESULTS, FINDING and CONCLUSION –

Question 29

Dependent, Independent, Hypothesis, Quantitative, Qualitative

Answer 29

Hypotheses are testable explanations of a problem, phenomenon, or observation.

Both quantitative and qualitative research involve formulating a hypothesis to address the research problem.

Hypotheses that suggest a causal relationship involve at least one independent variable and at least one dependent variable; in other words, one variable which is presumed to affect the other.

An independent variable is one whose value is manipulated by the researcher or experimenter.

A dependent variable is a variable whose values are presumed to change as a result of changes in the independent variable.

Key Terms

dependent variable: In an equation, the variable whose value depends on one or more variables in the equation.

independent variable: In an equation, any variable whose value is not dependent on any other in the equation.

hypothesis: Used loosely, a tentative conjecture explaining an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further observation, investigation, or experimentation.

Research design defines the study type, research question, hypotheses, variables, and data collection methods. Some examples of research designs include descriptive, correlational, and experimental. Another distinction can be made between quantitative and qualitative methods.

Sociological research can be conducted via quantitative or qualitative methods. Quantitative methods are useful when a researcher seeks to study large-scale patterns of behavior, while qualitative methods are more effective when dealing with interactions and relationships in detail.

Quantitative methods include experiments, surveys, and statistical analysis, among others. Qualitative methods include participant observation, interviews, and content analysis.

An interpretive framework is one that seeks to understand the social world from the perspective of participants.

Although sociologists often specialize in one approach, many sociologists use a complementary combination of design types and research methods in their research. Even in the same study a researcher may employ multiple methods.

Key Terms

quantitative methods: Quantitative research refers to the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical, or computational techniques.

qualitative methods: Qualitative research is a method of inquiry employed in many different academic disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences, but also in market research and further contexts. Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, and when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often needed than large samples.

scientific method: A method of discovering knowledge about the natural world based in making falsifiable predictions (hypotheses), testing them empirically, and developing peer-reviewed theories that best explain the known data