CHAPTER 9

Question 1

What is Nonreactive Research? What are the 3 examples we talk about?

Answer 1

Methods of studying social behaviour without affecting it

ex.
- Analyzing existing statistics and secondary analysis
- content analysis
- Unobtrusive online research : Data mining and social network analysis
- Historical and comparative research

Question 2

Describe the methods, Analyzing Existing Statistics and Secondary Analysis

Answer 2

Analyzing Existing Statistics:
- the use of official or quasi-official statistics
ex. drawing on data analyses reported by others, such as government agencies

Secondary Analysis :
- obtain a copy of someone else’s data to undertake your own statistical analysis with quantitative software, often for a different purpose
ex. producing your own statistics with General Social Survey Data from SDA
ex. data sets are available from data archives and statistics Canada

Question 3

What are some data problems and limitations that apply to both the use of existing statistics and secondary analysis

Answer 3

The limitations and constraints of available measures
- knowledge of how measures were devised, collected, and coded

While ethical approval is almost never required, the data sill may be constrained because of confidentiality promises in initial collection

Question 4

What are some sources of existing statistics?

Answer 4

Statistics Canada
Library and Archives Canada
Canadian Institute for Health Information
The World Bank
United Nations Demographic Yearbook

Question 5

What are some advantages and disadvantages of secondary analysis?

Answer 5

Advantages:
- cheaper and faster than doing original surveys
- depending on who did the survey, you may benefit from the work of top professionals
- conducting a meta-analysis is easier and more likely (similar data from many studies is analyzed)

Disadvantages:
- key problem is the recurrent question of validity
- data collection for a specific purpose may result in data not totally appropriate for your research
- is it a valid measure of the variable you want to analyze

Question 6

What is Content Analysis?
What are Artifacts?

Answer 6

It is the systematic study and interpretation of cultural products (artifacts)

Artifacts: concrete objects or expressions of abstract culture - interpretation provides insights into culture

Question 7

What is a classic question of communication research?
What is the Mode of Observation?
What is the Analysis of Data Collected?

Answer 7

Who says what, to whom, why, how, and with what effect?

Mode of Observation: A thoughtful handling of the “what” that is being communicated

Analysis of Data Collected: Addresses the “why” and “with what effect”

Question 8

What is Coding?

Answer 8

The process whereby raw data are transformed into standardized forms
- involves the logic of conceptualization and operationalization
- qualitative = looking for themes and patterns
- quantitative = have exact categories - be statistical about things

Question 9

What is Manifest Content and Latent Content?

Answer 9

Manifest: objective, concrete terms
- ex. counting the number of times you see the word love in a book to determine its eroticism
- ex. standardized questionnaire

Latent: subjective, underlying meaning
- ex. to what degree is a paragraph erotic
- ex. pattern in advertising of women pictures below the man - power relationship?

**Latent = problems of reliability and specificity (different meanings of things to everyone)

Question 10

What are the strengths and weaknesses of content analysis?

Answer 10

Strengths:
- cheap, not very time-consuming
- allows for correction or errors - easy to repeat the study or parts of it
- permits cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Weaknesses:
- limited to the examination of recorded communications
- depending on the coding, issues with reliability and validity

Question 11

Describe Historical and Comparative Research
What’s the “Centuries of Childhood” example of this?

Answer 11

The examination of societies (or other social units) over time and in comparison to one another
- involves the use of historical methods by sociologists, political scientists, and other social scientists

Ex. centuries of childhood
- Looked at childhood throughout the ages
- Made a case that childhood is a relatively modern invention
- Looked at art from middle ages - kids dressed in adult clothing and they were pretty much invisible
- Problem is that artwork was of very wealthy people

Question 12

What are some examples of historical and comparative research (Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Sorokin)

Answer 12

Comte: Societies evolve from theological to metaphysical to positivist stages

Durkheim: From mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity societies

Marx: From primitive to feudal to capitalist to communist societies

Sorokin: From ideational to sensate to idealistic societies

Question 13

List some sources of Historical and Comparative data

Answer 13

Personal letters, diaries, newspapers, policy statements, government and organization documents, minutes of meetings, published historical materials

Question 14

What two categories are unobtrusive internet-mediated research grouped into? (with a blurred line)

Answer 14

1. Observational methods:
   - study online behaviour and interactions either in real time or as digital traces
   (ex. google searches)
2. Document analysis:
   - study published documents or static media placed on the internet, often as a finished / authored product

Question 15

What are the key characteristics of Big Data?

Answer 15

• high VOLUME of data produced
• high VELOCITY of data production
  (including real-time streaming data)
• great VARIETY of production sources
  ex. messages, updates, and images from social networks, readings from sensors, GPS signals from cell phones, etc.

Question 16

What is Data Mining and what does it involve?

Answer 16

It is the automated discovery of patterns in large databases, rooted in computer science and statistics and involves…

• applying algorithms to discover patterns, such as partitioning the data into groups –> ex. grouping internet users based on their website habits
• describing relationships between variables (ex. 60% of ppl who purchased book A also purchased book B
• determining sequences in data (ex. news coverage about a mass recall of lettuce is followed by increased searches on google about E.coli
• classifying data items into predetermined classes (ex. political party affiliation based on website visits)
• predicting continuous outcomes (ex. predicting monthly spending based on income)

Question 17

Explain the false missile alert example of data mining

Answer 17

• missile alert in Hawaii that turned out to be a mistake
• Looked at what people did when they thought they were going to die
• Pornhub - analyze big data - do their own statistical reports
• When the alert went off, activity on pornhub dropped by 77%
• When they figured out the alert was false, traffic was 48% higher than normal
• Use data mining → using traffic cookies - ex. can see if you shopped for mens cologne (could figure out your gender)

Question 18

What are the strengths and weaknesses of big data?

Answer 18

Strengths:
- addresses social desirability bias in some cases
- lessons need for ethical approval
- tends to be easy to obtain, cheaply

Weaknesses:
- limited in information and scope
- only lends itself to thin description
- algorithmic confounding and dirty data
- sometimes we don’t know for sure who our subjects are

Question 19

What kind of research did the Durkheim study use?

Answer 19

Analysis of existing statistics

Protestants = higher suicide rates (because of anomie “normlessness”

Catholicism = less suicide rates (more structured and integrated)

Question 20

What is social network analysis?

Answer 20

It aims to understand the highly interconnected nature of our social world, relying increasingly on digital data and online traces to do so
(ex. six degrees of separation, or “small world problem”)

Question 21

How do social scientists differ from historians in terms of their historical research?

Answer 21

called “historical and COMPARATIVE analysis” because social scientists look for common patterns that recur in different times and places , instead of just describing a particular set of events

Question 22

What is Eugene Webb’s book that has become a classic in social research?

Answer 22

Called Unobtrusive Measures - plays with the task of learning about human behaviour by observing what people inadvertently leave behind them

Question 22

Describe the units of analysis in the analysis of existing statistics

Answer 22

The unit of analysis is often NOT the individual (often countries, regions, states, groups)
- this aggregate nature can present a slight problem - can’t always generalize from the group data to the individual

Question 23

Which characteristics of science are used to handle the problem of validity (and often reliability) in analysis of existing statistics?

Answer 23

Logical reasoning

Replication

Question 24

Content analysis is particularly well suited to the study of __________

Answer 24

communications

Question 25

In content analysis, communications are coded or classified according to
____________

Answer 25

a conceptual framework (ex. TV shows may be coded as violent or nonviolent)

Question 26

What is deviant case testing?

Answer 26

Examining outliers (negative cases) in comparison to typical cases to gain a sense of how generalized an insight is

*good technique for qualitative idea generation

Question 27

What is analytic induction?

Answer 27

It goes beyond description to find patterns and relationships among variables, and it primarily begins with observations

Question 28

What is discourse analysis?

Answer 28

Qualitative methods for examining texts to explore how meaning, knowledge, and power are created and recreated in everyday experience

Question 29

What is visual sociology?

Answer 29

The study of society, culture, and social relationships through the analysis of audio-visual artifacts

Question 30

Give examples of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured big data

Answer 30

structured : database or spreadsheet formats - data created and stored by companies and governments

unstructured : forms not emendable to traditional data analytic methods like photos, videos, tweets, etc.

semi-structured : have identifiers or tags that can be structured like emails and hashtags

Question 31

What are the three groups of data-mining studies

Answer 31

Those interested in mainstream media (ex. popular news sites)

Those focused on user-generated content (ex. social media, blogs, etc.)

Those focused on user activity (ex. queries to search engines)

Question 32

What does “dirty data” refer to?

Answer 32

It refers to the facts that many online big data sources are always on and collect data automatically - therefore the data collected may contain much irrelevant data that do not reflect real actions of interest to researchers

Question 33

What are whole network designs and egocentric network designs in social network analysis?

Answer 33

whole network = takes a birds eye view of social networks - researchers collect all the information about all the actors in a network

egocentric network = interested in examining networks from the perspective of individual actors - interested in the network of ties directly connected to na actor rather than the larger network as a whole

Question 34

In the case of historical research, protection in replication means ___________

Answer 34

corroboration

Question 35

What is an essential quality of social research called “Verstehen”

Answer 35

means “empathic understanding”

• the researcher must be able to take on, mentally, the circumstances, views, and feelings of those being studied, so that the researcher can interpret their actions appropriately