CHAPTER 4

Question 1

What is the sociologically accepted view of the Agency-Structure dynamic?

Answer 1

Social scientists are generally accepting of a more deterministic cause-and-effect model of human behaviour
- but they don’t assume that there won’t be any variables and differences –> they accept a probabilistic model of human behaviour

Question 2

What are the three main criteria for causation?

Answer 2

1. Empirical correlation
2. Temporality (time order sequence)
3. Non-spurious authenticity
   - is there another variable that might explain the causation instead?

**each of these criteria is a necessary but insufficient condition for causation

Question 3

What are some errors in causal reasoning?

Answer 3

• reverse causation (ex. depression and social isolation)
• spuriousness (ex. thinking that ice cream sales cause polio cases to go up but they’re leaving out another variable which is that polio spikes in the summertime (season variable)

Question 4

How can you tell if a proposed relationship between variable is spurious?

Answer 4

If the introduced control variable (third possible variable) comes up before both of the proposed IV and DV variables - then it’s spurious

Question 5

What are the two main types of conditions/causes?

Answer 5

NECESSARY: Y cannot occur unless X is present

SUFFICIENT: Y always occurs when X is present

*goal is to find a variable that is both necessary and sufficient

Question 6

How does the “housing first” policy relate to necessary and sufficient conditions

Answer 6

Application in policy research

“Housing readiness” - idea is that you have to be sober before you get housing

“Housing first” = argue that being sober shouldn’t be a necessary condition to get a house

Question 7

What is the Unit of Analysis?

Answer 7

The object of a study’s interest - what are you ultimately interested in, what are you studying?

Different types = individuals (most typical), groups (may be interested in characteristics that belong to one group, considered as a single entity), organizations, and artifacts

• may or may not differ from the unit of observation

Question 8

Study: Do grade 10 math classes with male teachers do better than those taught by female teachers
What is the unit of analysis and what is the unit of observation?

Answer 8

unit of analysis = the class
unit of observation - individuals

Question 9

What are social artifacts as a unit of analysis?

Answer 9

Any product of human activity:
- concrete objects like books, poems, paintings, etc.
- social interactions like weddings, friendships choices, court cases, airline hijackings, etc.

Question 10

What was the unit of observation and unit of analysis (and implications of this UOA) of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse & Neglect?

Answer 10

Unit of observation = the child maltreatment investigations

Unit of analysis = artifact - physical record of reports
implications :
what’s included in the study - child maltreatment that is reported to and investigated by child welfare agencies
what’s not included - reports that are not investigated, reports given to police but not to child welfare, unidentified child maltreatment

*means that there are some questions we can and cannot answer
CANNOT = % of children abused, % of abusive parents, % of families containing abuse, etc.
CAN = what % of these investigations are substantiated, what was the most common nature of abuse in these investigations

Question 11

In the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse & Neglect, what percent of substantiated perpetrators was the bio father, bio mother, stepfather, stepmother, other relative, or non-relative?

Answer 11

bio father - 41%
bio mother - 60%
stepfather - 9%
stepmother - 3%
other relative - 9%
non-relative - 7%

Question 12

What are 3 errors in reasoning re: units of analysis

Answer 12

Ecological fallacy, Exception fallacy, and Reductionism

Question 13

Describe the ecological fallacy

Answer 13

The drawing of inferences about individuals directly from evidence gathered about groups, societies, or nations
- when your unit of observation is a group or society and you draw inferences from individuals in those groups
- communities with higher proportions of young people may have higher crime rates - but whether is it actually the youth committing the crimes is a separate question

ex. Durkheim’s suicide theory –> higher rates of suicide in protestant countries - saying protestants will be more likely to commit?

Question 14

What is the exception fallacy (or individualistic fallacy)?

Answer 14

1. Drawing inferences about groups, societies, or nations directly from evidence gathered about individuals
2. Concluding that individual exceptions invalidate general patterns –> ex. homeless person becoming prime minister

Question 15

What is the Reductionism Fallacy?

Answer 15

Only certain units of analysis are seen as relevant (can be about causes, as well as units of analysis)

• Oversimplifies and reduces
• ex. looking at causes of child abuse and reducing it to just individuals personalities
• causality ex. the reason trump is so popular is because so many Americans are dumb

Question 16

Describe Cross-sectional Studies
What’s an example?

Answer 16

Involves observations of a sample, or cross-section, of a population of phenomenon concerning one point in time

Good for description (answers are who when where what) - data on large number of subjects, various types of people, large number of variables (ex. surveys are commonly cross-sectional)
Disadvantages:
- static –> only gives you a picture of that particular point in time - doesn’t measure changes over time
- also time occurrence (issue of causality)

ex. Canadian general social survey:
- new random sample each year (20,000 ppl interviewed by phone) - only measures that one point in time –> focuses on different topics each time (cycles) - victimization, time use, family, social networks

Question 17

What are Longitudinal Studies?
What are the three different types?

Answer 17

*Occurs with at least two different points in time
Permit observations of the same phenomena over an extended period

• better in terms of being able to determine causality because of the repeat observations (BUT it could be a different sample of ppl)
• some cross-sectional studies can be considered a longitudinal study if questions are repeated in each successive study

DIFF types: trend, cohort, panel

Question 18

What is a trend study?

Answer 18

A given characteristic of some population is monitored over time
- Successive independent samples (not the same individuals but they may be drawn from the same population - meant to be same kind of sample)

Advantage - not a static
Disadvantage - only measures net changes

Question 19

Explain the same sex marriage study (Roberts/Ferguson/Kampen, 2001) as an example of a trend study
what kind of effect did this measure?

Answer 19

Favour, oppose, or no opinion of same sex marriage

1992 → 24% in favour
2000 → 43% in favour

Do we know who’s changing their minds or if people are changing their minds? → could it be that younger people’s opinions are replacing the older people who are dying off? (no because you couldn’t have that many people dying off)

***what this measured was a period effect → a lot of people changing their minds about the issue at the time

Understanding change at a societal level

Question 20

What is a cohort study?
give an example

Answer 20

A specific subpopulation with some common characteristic (usually age) is studied over time

• we’re able to see generational replacement (cohort effect)
• disadvantage - still measuring net change

EX. Study of measuring religious activity over time → cohort effect → younger people less likely to be religious
1955 → 95% of Canadians had a religious affiliation
2020 → dropped to 68%

Question 21

What is a panel study?
What are the advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 21

Data are collected from the SAME individuals at different points in time

Advantage: best way of understanding causality - measuring individuals and knowing that the IV comes before the DV
- It’s also more rigorous
- Shows how relationships unfold

Disadvantages:
- Making a commitment - it’s hard to get your initial sample
- Getting willing participants is hard
- Attrition - people might get more or less devoted as time goes on, might drop out, might lose contact, reinterviewing bias
- Most expensive

EX. Framingham Heart Study

Question 22

What is the purpose of a research design?

Answer 22

To find a defensible way of linking abstract and concrete levels of experience

Question 23

What are the three most common and useful purposes of social research?

Answer 23

Exploration:
- typically occurs when a researcher examines a new interest or when the subject of study itself is relatively new
- appropriate for more persistent phenomena
- a source of grounded theory rooted in induction

Description:
- purpose is to describe situations and events (ex. Canadian census)
- who what where when
- many are qualitative
- studies are rarely limited to descriptive purpose - usually go on to examine why the observed patters exist and what they imply

Explanation:
- answer questions of how and why (“to make plain”)

**many studies have elements of all three

Question 24

What are the 3 most common purposes of exploratory studies?

What is a shortcoming of exploratory studies?

Answer 24

1. to satisfy the researcher’s curiosity and desire for better understanding
2. to test the feasibility of undertaking a more extensive study
3. to develop the methods to be employed in any subsequent study

Shortcoming - they seldom provide satisfactory answers to research questions and are seldom definitive in themselves because of representativeness (the ppl in the study may not be typical of the larger population of interest)

Question 25

Define “unit of observation”

Answer 25

The kinds of objects from which evidence is collected
ask, “where is your evidence being collected from”

Question 26

What is individual data?

Answer 26

When individuals are being observed and our interest is in talking about specific persons

Question 27

When is evidence called “Aggregate data”

Answer 27

When the cases studied are assemblies of individuals like families, teams, nations, etc.

Sometimes called ecological data because they refer to social environments

Question 28

How do descriptive studies and explanatory studies differ when individuals are their units

Answer 28

Descriptive studies will typically aim to describe the population that comprises those individuals, whereas explanatory studies aim to discover the social dynamics operating within that population

Question 29

What is a helpful way of thinking to identify a study’s unit of analysis?

Answer 29

Determine who or what has the attribute being studied
Ex. consider the statement “the average household income was $60 000” - income is the variable of interest, but who or what has the income?
HOUSEHOLDS

Question 30

Legitimate conclusions can be drawn only about the _____ ________

Answer 30

units analyzed

Question 31

Define “causes”

Answer 31

The mechanisms (how) or reasons (why) some event occurred

*causal relationships can be true even if they do not apply in a majority of cases

Question 32

When does a relationship exist?

Answer 32

When a change in one thing is identified with a systematic change in another thing

*important to remember that observing variables that have some relationship does not establish that the relationship is one of cause and effect

Question 33

What are the three criteria to demonstrate that causality exists?

Answer 33

1. the variables are correlated
   - “change together” - when one occurs or changes, the other does so systematically
2. the cause occurs before the effect
   - the independent (causal) variable precedes the dependent (effect) variable in time
3. the connection between the variables is nonspurious
   - spurious means phony - nonspurious = not phony (genuine and authentic)
   - operates when you fail to identify that a control variable has everything to do with the appearance of a connection between variables

Question 34

In research, a control variable (or control variables) specify the ______ of a relationship

Answer 34

context

Question 35

What is the key idea of a spuriousness test?

Answer 35

Examine the independent-dependent variable relationship under two conditions

First - when the third variable is allowed to change

Second - when the third variable is held constant - does not change which mean it cannot have any effect on other variables

*if the independent-dependent variable relationship is authentic, then the original independent-dependent variable relationship remains the same under both conditions

*if the relationship is spurious, the independent-dependent variable connection is evident only when the control variable is changing (first condition) and disappears when the control variable is held constant

Question 36

Nomothetic explanations are both ______ and _______

Answer 36

probabilistic

incomplete

Question 37

In addition to the 3 causal criteria conventional researchers use, what are the two additional conditions that nonresearchers commonly use?

Answer 37

Necessity
- condition must be present for the effect to follow

Sufficiency
- if the condition is present, it guarantees the outcome in question

*when examining nomothetic relationships, both necessity and sufficiency never really happen
*the social world is not mechanistic, it’s probabilistic

Question 38

Describe nomothetic and idiographic researchers’ typical viewpoints

Answer 38

nomothetic - use an “outsider’s viewpoint”
- gain a bird’s-eye view of some phenomenon

idiographic - emphasize an “insider’s” view
- aim to provide a detailed understanding of what it is like to be part of a particular event or community
- usually construct a theoretical understanding (rather than theory testing) and with this process comes a research approach full of feedback (rather than the linear approach of quantitative researchers)

Question 39

What are some techniques commonly used in constructing idiographic explanations?

Answer 39

• learn as much as you can about the historical and contemporary context of the cases you are studying
• focus on types of activities, rather than types of people
• pay attention to the explanations offered by the people living the social processes you are studying (if there’s wide agreement as to the importance of a certain factor, that should increase your confidence that it was a cause of the event under study
• compare your case with similar situations - either in different places or at different times in the same place
• rely on analytic induction (process that relies on grounding concepts in empirical observation and progressively sharpening them through iteration

Question 40

Are nomothetic and idiographic quantitative or qualitative?

Answer 40

nomothetic = quantitative
idiographic = qualitative

Question 41

What is panel attrition?

Answer 41

The increase in participants’ nonresponsiveness over time that reduces the accuracy of longitudinal changes

Question 42

What is an example of how sometimes cross-sectional data can imply processes over time on the basis of simple logic?

Answer 42

Survey about drug use - some students used marijuana but not LSD, or marijuana and LSD, but none just did LSD –> therefore we can infer that marijuana use precedes LSD use

Another example - when time order of variables is clear - uni students who went to private high schools did better than those who went to public high schools - can conclude that type of high school affected uni grades, not the other way around

Question 43

What is retrospective data?

Answer 43

Asking questions about experiences or events that happened a long time
*danger - sometimes people have faulty memories or lie