Module 1 - Sections 1-6

Question 1

What are 4 sources of knowledge in everyday life?

Answer 1

1) Personal experience and common sense
2) Authorities and experts
3) Media and peers
4) Ideological beliefs and values

Question 2

What is premature closure?

Answer 2

Premature closure is when we stop observing when we think we have the answer

Question 3

What is the halo effect?

Answer 3

Eg: when we make an attempt to judge someone’s entire personality based off one trait

Question 4

What are we doing when we reach a false consensus?

Answer 4

A false consensus occurs when we overestimate how much our views/results match with others’/the majority

Question 5

What is junk and sound science?

Answer 5

“Junk science” is a term created by public relations firms in the 1980s as a way to denigrate actual scientific evidence that opposed their position and confuse juries, the media and the general public.
They also used the term “sound” science to refer to anything that supported their position

Question 6

Define universalism

Answer 6

Universalism is the idea that all research should be judged equally on its merit, regardless of who did it

Question 7

What is organised skepticism?

Answer 7

Organised skepticism is a process of intense scrutiny of studies and their methods and approaches, but not a scrutiny of the person who did it

Question 8

What is disinterestedness?

Answer 8

Disinterestedness is the idea that scientists and their work remain free from biases, are impartial, are neutral and fully open to new ideas

Question 9

What is communalism?

Answer 9

Communalism is the idea that scientific knowledge and the outcomes of studies be available to the public and shared with everyone without censorship

Question 10

How important is honesty in the scientific community?

Answer 10

Honesty is undoubtedly the most important scientific norm. All research and reporting must be done honestly and without cheating

Question 11

Why are the social sciences said to be ‘soft’?

Answer 11

The social sciences are soft because they are highly fluid. This means that the subject matter (eg: humans) is constantly shaping the techniques and measurements (eg: surveys) it uses

Question 12

What does ‘empirical’ evidence mean?

Answer 12

Empirical evidence is grounded in human sensory experience (touch, sight, smell, sound, taste)

Question 13

What is quantitative literacy or numeracy?

Answer 13

This is the ability to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts

Question 14

How might the scientific community be described as concentric circles?

Answer 14

There are few researchers in the middle of the concentric circles who do the groundbreaking work.
Practitioners, clinicians and technicians are more numbered and lie in the outer circles, moving back and forth between the centre and outer edges gathering new information to use in practice

Question 15

What are the 2 different approaches to research?

Answer 15

Quantitative and qualitative

Question 16

Which research approach is known as a ‘data condenser’?

Answer 16

Quantitative

Question 17

Which research approach is known as a ‘data enhancer’?

Answer 17

Qualitative

Question 18

What is the key factor of quantitative research? What is the key factor of qualitative research?

Answer 18

The key factor of quantitative research is reliability, while the key factor of qualitative research is authenticity.

Question 19

What are the different types of analysis in quantitative and qualitative research?

Answer 19

Quantitative = statistical
Qualitative = thematic

Question 20

Is the researcher detached or involved in qualitative research?

Answer 20

Involved

Question 21

What is the role of non-experimental/correlational studies? What do they measure?

Answer 21

Non-experimental/correlational studies look for relationships among or between variables. They measure the direction, strength and statistical significance of these relationships.

Question 22

What is the role of experimental studies?

Answer 22

Experimental studies look for causal relationships between factors, such as the IV and DV. A study requires some sort of manipulation (of participants, IVs etc.) to be considered experimental.

Question 23

What are the 2 different types of experimental studies? Describe each.

Answer 23

Quasi-experimental and fully experimental.
Quasi-experimental studies use pre-existing or other non-randomly assigned groups (Eg: age, sex, race etc.)
Fully experimental studies involve randomly assigned groups.

Question 24

What is exploratory research? What does it aim to do? What key word does it answer? How do its researchers need to be? What type of data does it primarily use? Provide an example.

Answer 24

Exploratory research explores areas that haven’t been studied before. It aims to generate new questions for future research in that field. It answers the “what”. Researchers need to be very open-minded and creative. It primarily uses qualitative data to reveal new issues.
Eg: Troshynski and Blank (2008) conducted a study on men who engage in illegal sex trafficking to learn about how they saw their business and their backgrounds.

Question 25

What is descriptive research? What does it aim to do? What key word does it answer? Provide an example.

Answer 25

Descriptive research aims to paint of picture of any already well defined area of study. It answers the “how”.
Eg: a descriptive study on the relationship between heavy alcohol drinkers and child abuse might find that 25% of these people had physically or sexually abused their children in their lifetime. It describes the relationship, it describes how they inflict abuse on their children.

Question 26

What is explanatory research? What does it aim to do? What key word does it answer? Provide an example.

Answer 26

Explanatory research aims to explain causal relationships between variables. It aims to answer the “why”.
eg: it would aim to find out why heavy alcohol drinkers abuse their children at the rate and fashion that they do

Question 27

Neuman (2011) reported 7 steps in the quantitative approach to research. What are they?

Answer 27

1. Identify topic
2. Develop focus question
3. Design study
4. Collect data
5. Analyse data
6. Interpret data
7. Pass on new information

Question 28

How does the qualitative approach differ from the quantitative approach? What are the steps in the qualitative approach?

Answer 28

The qualitative approach is much more fluid, less linear and the researcher can often blend steps and jump back and forth between them.
1. Acknowledge self and context
2. Adopt a perspective - not define a specific topic, but choose a direction that is likely to contain many potential questions
3-6. Design study, collect, analyse and interpret data, develop new theories, all simultaneously
7. Inform others

Question 29

When should parametric statistics be used? When should non-parametric stats be used?

Answer 29

Parametric stats should be used when we have a stringent set of assumptions, the sample size is large enough, there is homogeneity and equal cell size
Non-parametric stats should be used when we have less stringent assumptions, small/unequal sample size or when we’re dealing with ordinal data.

Question 30

What does Katrina Simpson video suggest considering after you’ve developed a research question?

Answer 30

Is it testable/doable?
Do you have access to participants?
Can you operationalise your variables? how will you do that?
Ethics

Question 31

What are the 5 characteristics of a good causal hypothesis?

Answer 31

1) Has at least 2 variables
2) Describes a cause-effect relationship between the 2 variables
3) Can be expressed as a prediction of expected future outcome
4) Logically linked to a research question/theory
5) Falsifiable - capable of being tested against empirical evidence and shown to be true or false

Question 32

Why do we never use the word “proof” in science? What are some better terms to use when explaining the meaning of empirical findings?

Answer 32

“Proof” is too final. It assumes we are certain about something, yet throughout history many scientific facts that were believed to be proven and later shown to be wrong. Maths is the only area where proofs exist, because they apply to all possible cases and are final. Better terms to use in other parts of science would include “suggests”, “indicates”, “supports”, “shows” and even “confirms”.

Question 33

What are crucial experiments?

Answer 33

Experiments where two hypotheses (that had up until that point both explained the same phenomena) are tested against one another to see which one best explains the phenomena.

Question 34

Explain the logic of disconfirming hypotheses? Explain the example of the man with the umbrella and elephants

Answer 34

We often aim to disconfirm hypotheses, because evidence against a hypothesis is stronger than evidence that supports a hypothesis. Evidence for a hypothesis doesn’t show that it is definitely true, because there may be other alternative hypothesis that explain it as well. On the other hand, evidence against a hypothesis shows that it is definitely false and we can discount it.
Example: A man hypothesised the umbrella he was using was protecting him from being crushed by elephants falling from the sky. He wasn’t getting crushed, but this evidence isn’t very strong because there’s other reasons (alternative hypotheses) why he’s not getting crushed (eg: elephants don’t fall from the sky). If he did get crushed while still using the umbrella (evidence against his hypothesis), this disconfirming evidence would be much stronger as we can completely rule out his hypothesis.

Question 35

What does a null hypothesis predict? What does an alternative hypothesis predict? Which one do we test?

Answer 35

Null - no relationship between the variables
Alternative - there is a relationship between the variables
We test the null hypothesis

Question 36

When do we reject the null hypothesis?

Answer 36

When the chances of the null hypothesis being wrong are greater 95/100, or in other words when the null is correct in less than 5% of cases

Question 37

What is a double-barrelled hypothesis? What are some of the problems it can create? How can it be made better?

Answer 37

When we put 2 separate relationships into one hypothesis, but it is unclear whether we’re predicting one, both or a combination of the two to be having an effect. Problem: if one of the variables is shown to relate to the DV, do we accept the hypothesis? But we can have to separate relationships and their interaction, which is useful.

Question 38

What is tautology? Give example.

Answer 38

A tautology is essentially a circular argument. Eg: using punishment as a preventative measure, “Sally is conservative because she believes there should be less regulation”

Question 39

What is teleology? Give example.

Answer 39

Teleology is saying certain things happen either because of a greater, mystic or vague force, or after the fact.

eg: “the nuclear family is the dominant family structure in Western society because is is functional for the survival of soceity” = after the fact, we don’t know whether a society has survived until after the fact
eg: “God’s will” - can’t measure it
eg: “Crime happens because of human nature” - can’t measure it, too vague etc.

Question 40

What is an ecological fallacy? Give example

Answer 40

An ecological fallacy is when we draw conclusions about micro units based on data we have about macro units, such as making inferences about people based on stats about organisations.
Eg: Tomsville has a higher average family income and more motorbikes in it’s town, while Joansville has a lower average family income and less motorbikes. It would be an ecological fallacy to assume higher income is associated with motorbike ownership, because in Tomsville every low income family might own a bike while none of the high income families do, and vice versa in Joansville. We need information about families, not about the towns as a whole.

Question 41

What is reductionism? Give example

Answer 41

Reductionism involves making inferences about macro units based on data about micro units. We must remember that “sociology as a field rests on the belief that a distinct level of social reality exists beyond the individual”.
eg: saying that WWI was caused by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand would be reductionism. It might be more appropriate to say is sparked WWI, but it definitely wasn’t the sole cause.

Question 42

What is spuriousness? Give example.

Answer 42

Spurisnousness is when we believe two variables are causally related, but there’s really an unknown third factor actually causing the relationship.

eg: Air conditioner use and ice-cream sales are associated, but not causally. Hot days is the third causal factor
eg: Night-light use and child near-sightedness. There was previously thought to be a causal relationship between the two, however we now know that the parent with near-sightedness is the third causal factor. They are more likely to use night-lights, and pass near-sightedness to their children through genetics.

Question 43

Draw diagrams that represent ecological fallacy/reductionism and spuriousness.

Answer 43

:)