Chapter 1: Methods and Ethics Flashcards
(35 cards)
What does sociology as a science produce?
- Empirical knowledge about human social behavior.
- A system of facts gathered by intentional methods, assessed in a conventional and replicable manner under established criteria, that is reported from the perspective of a theoretical framework or paradigm.
Why is it critical to know the basics of sociological methods?
- Sharpen your critical thinking skills.
- To enhance your ability to be an effective consumer of information.
- To offer you career skill sets and options.
- To facilitate business needs (ex: how to best reach the nearby area demographics).
- To facilitate your shifting between traditional pursuits and applied projects.
What is the purpose of research?
To produce valid knowledge about social behavior by avoiding biases and haphazard observations.
Why is it difficult to conduct a study on human behavior?
- People can be moody, can lie, can misunderstand questions, etc.
- Observer bias.
What are the five steps of the research process?
- Select a topic/define a problem.
- Review literature/ identify a useful paradigm.
- Formulate a hypothesis.
- Select a research design and collect/ analyze data.
- Describe conclusions and identify implications.
*Will rarely occur in this order.
Do sociologists work with generalized problems or particularized problems?
Generalized.
What are the sources of many research topics?
- Other people’s research.
- Personal experience or interests.
- Volunteer opportunities.
- Odd news events, like the story of Kitty Genovese.
What are applied research questions?
Questions where a real-world issue is the problem and culture, processes, and social structures are objects of inquiry.
What are traditional research questions?
Questions that determine whether the observations of the study support existing theories.
What is differential association?
The theory that who you spend time with directly influences your likelihood of acting like those people.
What defines theories?
- An explanatory statement that fits the evidence.
- A comprehensive explanation of social events, attitudes, and behaviors.
- Being testable and based on empirical evidence.
- A set of statements that seek to explain problems, behaviors, and actions.
What is desistance theory?
The theory that states that the factors related to the start of a criminal behavior are different than the ones that lead to the end of the same criminal behavior.
What is a hypothesis?
An educated prediction or speculative statement about findings (often derived from literature or theories).
Will specify what variables to observe and the results you expect to find.
What are the types of methods used in research?
- Focus groups.
- Surveys.
- Experiments.
- Existing data.
- Observation, field or individual.
What are the details of the experiment method?
An “artificially created situation” is set up that allows the researchers to manipulate the independent variable to evaluate its impact on the dependent variable.
Is ordered, correlative (A and B move simultaneously in the data), and spurious (no relationship is an accident).
*Rarely used.
What are the requirements of the experiment method?
- The ability to manipulate the independent variable.
- Randomization of the subjects to study groups.
- Pre-test: Comparison of the study group PRIOR to administering the independent variable.
- Post-test: Comparison of the study group AFTER administering the independent variable.
- Experimental groups: exposed to the independent variable.
- Control group: not exposed to the independent variable.
*Hawthorne Effect: Unintended influence on the researcher.
What is the most famous sociological experiment?
The Stanford Prison experiment. It is famous because it went terribly wrong. Students were assigned roles as prisoners or correctional officers. All participants had been screened and approved prior to the experiments. The prisoners, within a few days were acting completely different, and correctional officers were as well.
What are the details of the survey method?
- Written or oral responses.
- Good for gathering large amounts of data in a consistent manner.
- Uses questionnaires (Face-to-face, by telephone, by mail, by email, and using the internet).
- Often starts with a pilot study.
- Structured questions: Multiple choice.
- Semi-structured questions: Open-ended.
- Commonly used.
What two facts do people most often lie about?
- Alcohol consumption.
- Income.
What are the details of ethnography/observation?
- When the researcher immerses themselves in the culture they are observing.
- Natural setting.
- Good for studying topics that have never been studied or are difficult to recall.
- The observer can be covert, a known and involved participant, or a distant observer.
- Commonly used in natural disaster sites.
What are the details of focus groups?
- A formal group meeting guided by a trained facilitator or leader w/ a specified group of individuals designed to solicit opinions, anecdotes, experiences, perceptions and impressions on designated issues.
- Measure community issues, needs, and the impact events have had.
- 8-10 people represent the whole community.
What are the strengths of the focus group method?
- Allows data from several individuals in a short time period.
- Allows topics to be discussed in-depth.
- Provides an opportunity for group interactions that bring out topics that are often difficult to bring out to be explored.
What are the weaknesses of the focus group method?
- Dependent on the skills of the moderator.
- Generates a great deal of narrative that may not yield information or will be time intensive to review.
- Participants may be difficult to work with and or may be bellicose with one another.
What is a mixed methods study?
A study that uses two or more methods of data collection.
