Download Welcome to Sociological Methods

Welcome to
Approaches to Social Research
BIS 312
Kari Lerum, Ph.D.
Today’s Agenda
 Introductions
 Role
 Syllabus
 Course Goals
 What the course *isn’t*
 How do you see “reality”?
 Common sense vs. social science
 Religion vs. social science
 Thinking scientifically
 Research strategies
Course Goals
 At the conclusion of this course you should be
able to:
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–
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Understand/critique the epistemology of social science
Understand/critique the logic of scientific study design
Name all major social scientific methodologies
List pros and cons of each methodology
Generate a basic methodological outline for studying
any question related to the social world
– Comprehend and evaluate research results
 With these skills, you should:
– Become a more informed consumer of research
– Have a deeper understanding of the material in other
social science courses
What this course *isn’t”
 This class with not train you to be a professional
researcher
 If that’s what you want to do:
– You’re probably already planning to go to graduate school
(where you will get trained)
– Take as many methodology classes as you can
– Apply for research assistant positions (e.g. see undergraduate
research program at UW)
http://www.washington.edu/research/urp/
 Not enough time in a 10 week course to train in
specialized techniques
 However, this course should give you a taste for the kind
of methods you might want to pursue
How do you see“Reality”?
This is a course about how to measure and
report reality. Sounds simple, but in fact a
quite complicated task.
– Age-old philosophical question of what IS
reality? What is real? How do we know reality
when we see it?
– How does one go about measuring reality?
How do you see “reality?
We all have our personal ways of
answering these questions.
– However, each of us also have biases which
make it difficult to “see” things that contradict
our sense of reality
• This is how stereotypes work
• Selective perception – explain contradictions as an
“exception” rather than evidence to invalidate
stereotype.
How do you see “reality”?
 In this way, we all work within our own personal
paradigm
– Basic definition of paradigm: a model, or blueprint, or
a filing system of reality
– The way in which we screen the world for familiar
information, information that makes sense. We already
have files for it in our head
– Some pieces of info might not have a file, or might
completely overload/invalidate our belief system.
Thus better left dismissed or forgotten
 Close relationship between personal paradigms
and cultural paradigms
Common sense vs. social science
 “In contrast to the casual way we carry out our
personal research, sociological (social scientific)
research helps define reality through:
– a systematic, careful, and controlled process of
collecting information and answering questions.”
 “Sociological (social scientific) researchers:
– methodically record observations across a variety of
situations
– design and choose questions in advance
– ask them in a consistent way of a large number of
people.” (quotes from David Neuman)
Common sense vs. social
science, cont.
 Some criticize sociology (as well as psychology
and other social sciences) as a fancy version of
common sense.
 Answer “true” or “false” to following statements:
– Due to the high divorce rate in the US, people are
reluctant to get married
– The high divorce rate means that American children
today are more likely to live in a single-parent
household than they were 100 yrs. Ago
Common sense facts?
 Close to 90% of Americans marry at least once
by the time they’re 40. About 2/3 of divorced
women and ¾ of divorced men eventually
remarry (Cherlin 1992). Although more divorce,
still a high value on the institution of marriage.
 The percentage of children who live with one
parent is roughly the same as it was a century
ago. at that time life expectancy was much lower
than it is today, so it was highly likely that a child
would loose one parent to death before he or she
reached adulthood (Kain 1990).
Common sense vs. social
science, cont.
 Point: Commonsense “facts” often do not hold up
against the evidence provided by social scientific
research
 Social scientific research: a more sophisticated
and structured form of the sort of logic we use
everyday.
 Social scientific research is empirical
– Empirical: that which can be observed by one of our
five senses (hear, touch, taste, see, smell).
– Strength of an argument depends on how much
empirical support it has.
– Contrast with philosophy
Religious truth vs. social
scientific truth
 In addition to “common sense” another basic
paradigm through which people see the world is
religion.
 Some say science has replaced both common
sense and religion, because science is the only
one that can be falsified.
 But this is a simplistic way to look at it
– Science never completely cut off from society
– Science does not rule out intuition, imagination. Real
innovation comes from those who can imagine
alternative explanations, not currently imagined by
scientists
What does it mean to think
sociologically?
 C.W. Mills’ answer: the ability to connect
people’s behavior with social structure
– A “Sociological Imagination” enables one to find
connections between personal troubles and public
issues
– Connection between social structure and individual
behavior, or groups of peoples’ behavior
 Sociologists use different methods to understand
this connection, but the ultimate goal of
sociologists is to find social structural causes of
behavior, as opposed to (simply) biological or
personal/psychological reasons
Methods used by social scientists
 Experiments (social psychology & psychology)
 Surveys (primarily sociology, but popular across many
fields)
 Field research (primarily anthropology & sociology, but
now becoming common in other fields as well)
 Using available data (sociologists, historians,
geographers, and others)
 Post-modern methods (favored by those in the arts &
humanities – e.g. English, philosophy, art, performance)
 Check out the UWS listing of all the arts and sciences
http://www.artsci.washington.edu/
Readings for Next Time:
E. Scott Peck
Read O’Brien