Week 4:putting ideas into practice: methods, methodologies, and ethics

Question 1

what is the sociologist’s toolkit?

Answer 1

includes various skills and approaches needed for collecting and analyzing information about the social world

Question 2

what methods make sociology diverse?

Answer 2

collecting, organizing, making sense of information

Question 3

what are methods?

Answer 3

systemic technique for collecting, and making sense of information about the social world

Question 4

what are methodologies?

Answer 4

broader lenses and research strategies that provide a rationale for how data collection and analysis should be

Question 5

what do methodologies involve?

Answer 5

theoretical justifications for which methods might be appropriate for a given research project

Question 6

what do dialectics or tensions represent?

Answer 6

diverging ways of doing research

Question 7

what are dialectics?

Answer 7

the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions.

Question 8

what is qualitative research?

Answer 8

non numeric data about the social world

Question 9

what is quantitative research?

Answer 9

data expressed in numbers

Question 10

what is pure research?

Answer 10

the sole aim is to generate new knowledge; which often plays role in creating and testing theory

Question 11

What is applied research intended for?

Answer 11

intended to address social issues or problems

Question 12

inductive research?

Answer 12

moving from observation to theory

Question 13

what is deductive research?

Answer 13

moving from theory to observation

Question 14

what is the process of inductive reasoning?

Answer 14

gather data
analyze data looking or patterns
develop a theory that applies broadly

Question 15

what is an example of inductive reasoning?

Answer 15

durkheim’s study on suicide

Question 16

What is the deductive reasoning process?

Answer 16

theory of hypothesis
analyze the data
specific focus where hypothesis is supported or not

Question 17

how do we get knowledge in sociology?

Answer 17

through observation of social phenomena and logic

Question 18

what are central to a sociologist’s way of knowing?

Answer 18

abstract and concrete

Question 19

how is sociological research different from natural science?

Answer 19

does not require falsifiability
difficult to determine causality
although research can be deductive, moving from hypothesis to observation, it can also be inductive

Question 20

when is research often exploratory

Answer 20

if little is known about a topic
often inductive, pure research

Question 21

what kind of research is exploratory?

Answer 21

research that looks at causes

Question 22

what type of research is explanatory?

Answer 22

attempts to explain why certain phenomena work in the way they do

Question 23

what does explanatory research link?

Answer 23

different ideas to understand the nature of cause-and-effect relationships in order to explain why certain phenomena occur

Question 24

how is explanatory research conducted?

Answer 24

after exploratory research and descriptive research

Question 25

what type of research is exploratory?

Answer 25

research is a type of research that attempts to explore and investigate a problem that is not clearly defined

Question 26

What does exploratory research explore?

Answer 26

the research problem but does not offer final or conclusive solutions to existing problems

Question 27

what stage is exploratory research conducted?

Answer 27

preliminary stage (coming before a more important action or event, especially introducing or preparing)

Question 28

What is descriptive research?

Answer 28

if research aims to offer detail about an aspect of social life, but not a cause.

Question 29

how do we make research precise?

Answer 29

by specifying variables and then operationalizing them

Question 30

what type of research is descriptive?

Answer 30

characteristics of the study group or a certain occurrence are described

Question 31

what does descriptive research aim for?

Answer 31

to describe the characteristics of the study group. thus answering the question "what is"

Question 32

what is descriptive research useful for?

Answer 32

gathering data on a certain population or a specific occurrence

Question 33

what does descriptive research include?

Answer 33

sociological and psychological studies

Question 34

which methodologies doe descriptive research use?

Answer 34

both qualitative (interpretative, and naturalistic approaches to its subject matter) and quantitative (the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data)

Question 35

What type of research is experimental

Answer 35

manipulates variables to come to a conclusion

Question 36

when is experimental research useful?

Answer 36

in finding out the cause-effect or causal relationship, correlation, etc

Question 37

what is the experimental aim?

Answer 37

to manipulate the given variables so as to support or reject the assumed hypothesis. Hence it answers the questions "what if"

Question 38

what does experimental research include?

Answer 38

forensic studies, biological and other laboratory studies, etc...

Question 38

what does experimental research include?

Answer 38

forensic studies, biological and other laboratory studies, etc...

Question 39

what primary methodology (describes how your research was conducted) does experimental research use?

Answer 39

quantitative

Question 40

what are indigenous knowledge paradigms?

Answer 40

a set of theories, methods, concepts, and ways of thinking that are founded on indigenous ways of knowing

Question 41

what do indig knowledge and critical sociology call for?

Answer 41

commitment to social justice

Question 42

what does indig knowledge stress?

Answer 42

that researchers do not own knowledge; knowledge has spirit

Question 43

how can research be thought of in terms of indigenous knowledge?

Answer 43

a ceremony; doing sociology in a good way can be an act o reconciliation

Question 44

what can qualitative (numerical data) research be?

Answer 44

exploratory, descriptive , or explanatory

Question 45

qhat dies qualitative research seek to understand?

Answer 45

social phenomena in depth: think description

Question 46

what are some common qualitative (data collection) methods?

Answer 46

- interviews - focus groups (a form of group interview that capitalizes on communication between research participants in order to generate data.) - ethnography ( immersing yourself in a particular community or organization to observe their behavior and interactions) and participant observation - Content analysis

Question 47

what is a story catcher?

Answer 47

the idea that the researcher's job is to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of data in story heard and acknowledge as worthy data

Question 48

what does story-catcher value?

Answer 48

emotional and spiritual aspects of stories

Question 49

what does a story catcher allow?

Answer 49

participants to tell their own stories

Question 50

why is there mistrust between indigenous people an researchers?

Answer 50

because of a top-down approach

Question 51

what is a top-down approach?

Answer 51

a strategy in which the decision-making process occurs at the highest level and is then communicated to the rest of the team.