Lectures Flashcards
What are the 3 issues raised when it comes to suitable methods of understanding
How accurate are the observations we use? How good is the date? (Example: GDP/capita- which does not count unpaid work for instance, does not represent corruption and illegal activity, not precise to determine the productivity of the workforce …other example is Crime rates - because of unreported crimes, since data is based on criminal justice system but survey data is not perfect either) - Standard methods needs to be interpreted carefully
Representativeness
Causation [How do we know two variables are causally connected ? (in general we want to establish causal relationships. Example : stocks and fertility - associations are abundant but establishing connection is really hard- how do we know they are causally connected ?) ]
What are the qualifications of an hypothesis
In order to formulate these questions, we create hypothesis (turning question into testable statement), hypothesis are testable.
Qualification of hypothesis:
Hypothesis moves us closer to measurement. Have to consider the different dimensions of dependent vs independent variables (example : simply taking death penalty yes or no is not relevant because countries use it different)
Hypothesis leaves profound measurement issues unresolved (the problem with the independent variable [social class], what do we mean by that? )
Implying causal relationship between dependant and independent variables might be damaging because need to take into account other/exogenous variables
What is a hypothesis ? Research question restated in a testable form
Depict the variables of an hypothesis
Need for variables :
- must be observable
- variability of the elements
- possibility for falsification
Depict deductive theorizing
Deductive
Distributive justice - sets of premises.
Axioms
Perception of justice involves comparison
Comparison are between what one person has and what others have
The salience of comparison varies with wealth (the gain or loss of 100$ matters more to a low income person than to a high income person)
Measurement matter ( comparison can be more or less precise, they can be formulate in terms of dollars (precise) or status (not precise)
If we think these axioms true- what do they imply ? If we change the axioms we can offer different things
Examples:
A person will prefer to steal from a fellow group member rather than from an outsider.
Why ? Because you can compare yourself to the other members of the group ( I am better off and made someone worse off)
The tendency to steal will be higher in a low income group than in a high income group.
Why? Because (axiom #3) the salience of comparison varies with wealth
Axiomatic theory (assert principles and deduce consequences from them) - deductive. The next step is to go out and test them- which might result in their falsification
Depict inductive theorizing
Inductive
Example:
In the 1970s Jewish out marriage increased from east to west
In the 1970s catholic out marriage increased from east to west
Rates of suicide, drug use, social pathologies increased from east to west
This same pattern might suggest ineffectiveness of norms
*anomie might cause ineffectiveness of norms drug, suicide, out-marriage (because norms are less effective)
-Sets of observation and patterns that could be explained by anomie and migration
What do we do? We test it and try to falsify it - how ? Look at records, compare with other countries, develop a measurement of anomie
So Inductive = Observe something in the world, what might explain it ? Drawing conclusion from observations not going from specific principles
Some useful research does not involve _______
hypothesis
What is theory
Theory = “systemic sets of interrelated statements intended to explain some aspect of social life”
Theory often implies causation
What is functional theory
Functional (institutions/behaviour exist in order to serve some function)
Example:
Inequality —> effort —> growth —> income stability = functional hypothesis
How would you test that ? Compare US and France and look at measures of social stability (conventional employment, crime rates , employee satisfaction, youth employment) - once we start talking about measurement, we have to start re-thinking our concept. What it is we want to measure ?
What is conflict theory
Group resources —> inequality = conflict theory hypothesis
*inequality rose in the 1970s- which we need that into account and it poses a problem to conflict theory
-Income of top decile goes up 200%
-Income of the medium goes up by 50%
What does that mean for the theory ? The rise of income of the bottom, means that they are getting better off too- therefore it would be consistent with functional theory
*Research is _____ , the_______ are ______ , those _______ have ______ *
guided by theory theories broad in terms of frameworks broad framework implication for what you look at and how you measure it
What are the 3 purpose of research
-Exploration:
What?when a researcher wants to become familiar with a topic.
Why?to find something about it in a quick way, to test the feasibility of a more extensive research, to better inform more systematic research
-exploration makes possible the specification of methods
-major limitations= the extend to which it can answer questions is limited because : one goes into it not knowing much about it and the findings are difficult to generalize
-Example: Lavoie, Robitaille, Hébert in a journal called “violence against women” interviewed 24 Quebec teenagers about their experience with dating violence. Findings: 1. Teens reported a range of form of violence including : sexual abuse, social control , threats, harassment…. 2.Teens brought forwards : drugs, alcohol, pornography … - they tend to explain the violence in terms of the exterior factors. 3.Teens attributed some responsibility to the behaviour of the victim. These findings showed that teens used a very broad definition of violence so should the researchers keep that broadness or impose a fixed definition. So subsequent research should be better because learning from that first study.
-Description:
Example : Venkatesh “Gang leader for a day” studying gang members in a Chicago house facility over the course of 8 years. Findings: the gang to some degree provided social control to discourage certain behaviours. They supplied drugs but we also drawn into politic processes. “Why does drug dealers live with their mothers” - because they provide different needs for probably free. It reflected their income SO the question is why would a drug dealer accept such a risky occupation with such low pay ? Because they is a possibility to move up the drug dealing hierarchy and because they have limited career opportunity.
A lot of findings from the study provided a lot of data and information about drug dealing
-Explanation:
Causation [Independent variables and dependent variables (exogenous and endogenous)]
The approach to causation in research is related to the purpose of the research (ideographic vs nomothetic)
Depict the two approach to causation
Ideographic: limited amount of cases and a complete explanation for it. Usually History
Example: Attempting to explain the French Revolution [war and taxes, the enlightenment, intellectual ideas and values rising, a bourgeoisie was emerging and receptive to enlightenment ideas, aggressive taxing, the French economy was not very productive so taxing capacity was limited so France had lost a couple of wars against Britain, France government had large financial need they could not fulfill] the revolution sprouted from this collection of factors
Nomothetic: explain a class of situation rather than a single one , so the purpose is to explain as much as possible with the smallest number of variables. Partials, non-exaustive results. Usually sociology Example: In 1995, there was a referendum on independence. Research could try to explain people’s vote. [Political party, age, language, urban area] Nomothetic looks at which of this list of factors provide a major explanation.
What are the two different type of causes
Necessary : has to be there for it to happen
Sufficient : can be there for it to happen
Nomothetic usually don’t identity neither necessary or sufficient explanations (example: language in referendum)
What are the three elements for inferring causation
- Association : do the patterns of occurrence of a variable associate with the pattern of occurrence of another variable - correlation (+1,0,-1), in social sciences correlation tend to be less then perfect (0.3 rather than 0.9 or 1)
2.Time order : cause has to precede the effect
Example: the effect of parental education and child occupation- meets the time order, it is consistent with causation (parental precedes child) but it doesn’t not necessarily infer causality
Issues in time order :
-Cross sectional data (example census)
-Expectation (example: marriage improving health, complex time order if the expectation of marriage is the source of causation)
3.Non-spuriousness : you have two variables that are associated because of another present variable. x is associated with y because they are both associated with z.
Example: stork and fertility and rural/urban
Depict the 2 types of fallacy
Ecological fallacy :involves inferring observations about individuals with aggregate level data
Example:
Durkheim compared suicide rates across societies. He found that primarily Protestant societies had higher suicide rates than primarily Catholic societies.
From this observation he constructed his idea about egoistic suicide: i) egoistic suicide is a product of excessive individualism, of a weakened sense of mutual obligation; ii) Protestantism is more strongly associated with individual conscience than Catholicism , which weakens the sense of mutualobligations; iii) consequently, Protestants are more likely to commit suicide than Catholics.
But: i) most European countries contain both Protestants and Catholics; ii) suicide rates are relatively low (Durkheim reported these rates per million inhabitants: 190 in Protestant countries and 58 in Catholic countries); iii) consequently, it is possible that the people committing suicide in Protestant societies were Catholics
Individualistic Fallacy : Inferring the properties of systems with the properties of individual
Example: Suppose one has evidence that country A has a larger percentage of people who favour democracy than country B: it would not be reasonable to infer from this that country A is more democratic than country B. Democracy is a property of a system rather than of individual
What are the two types of research design and time
- Cross sectional studies = observation of population, event of phenomenon at one point in time [the census for example, which has new results every-time]
- This causes the problem of establishing causal sequence
-Longitudinal =where we study the same phenomenon at 2 different point in time
what are the types of longitudinal studios (3)
Trend studies : consecutive independent samples and we compare results across these samples.
Cohort studies: groups who experience some shared event. [ ex: being born in 2000, marrying during the great depression, university graduates during the 70s ]
example: university professor earnings, looking at gender cohorts. Narrower difference overtime
Usually sample doesn’t tell us what the trend is overtime in the experiences of people in that sample - BUT cohort studies allows us to say something about the trend overtime
Panel studies: sample a set of units and gather information about those units overtime - we can look at what happens consequentially to the unit in their lifetime.
explain the link between results and sample composition
-the results you get are influenced by sample composition , what you find is related to the sample selection decision
What is operationalization
Operationalization = the process of translating abstract concepts into variables that indicate the concept
to turn general idea/concepts into something something we can observe. The development of specific research procedure or operations that will result in empirical observations representing those concepts in the world
depict the example of gender and earnings in terms of operationalization issues
Gender —> Earnings
Operational Issues:
Should illegal earnings be included ?
Hourly or annual earnings ? (it does make difference with the association between gender and earnings- it would be stronger using annual earnings, the difference is larger because women on average report fewer hours than men)
How do we define an appropriate schema - pragmatically
Which class scheme provides us with the best way of differentiating life chances? For example, which class scheme best predicts lifetime income?Which class scheme minimizes the within-category variance in relevant class attributes? For example, income, voting preferences.Which class ranking deals best with the fact that people live in households so that the analysis needs to come to grips with both male and female occupations? For example, what do you with a professional married to an unskilled manual worker.With which class scheme is political participation most associated - the decision to vote, who to vote for, which party to join, participation in protests, revolutionary activity ….Which class scheme works best for the purposes of comparative research that is, comparisons across countries? There may be comparable data available for some operationalizations of class and not for others.We decide by going backwards and forwards between research and theori
what are the 2 types of definition
Nominal definitions : for example, defining class as occupational category VS Operational definitions : the scheme (original idea turned into something observable)
what are the 4 levels of measurements
4 levels of measurements -
Nominal : categories which imply no ordering (ex: political parties, religion)
Ordinal : introduces ranking but uncalibrated ranking (we cant say by how much one category is superior to another - example : “strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree” ordinal scale)
Interval : ranking and precise statement of differences, distinguished by the fact they have meaningful units - example : temperature measured by Celsius or Fahrenheit
Ratio : interval scales with zeros (example : income, kelvin temperature)
