Download Sociology

Chapter 1: The Sociological
Perspective and Research
Process
Objectives (slide 1 of 2)
1.1 The Sociological Perspective
• Define sociology.
• Explain the features of the sociological imagination.
• Illustrate key societal issues.
1.2 The Historical Origins of Sociology
• Identify early sociologists, the factors that influenced
them, and their contributions to sociology.
1.3 Sociological Theory—Current Theoretical
Perspectives
• Compare and contrast the theoretical perspectives that
dominate sociology, identify the sociologists associated
with those perspectives, and describe their key
insights.
Objectives (slide 2 of 2)
1.4 The Science of Sociology
• Identify the standards of scientific knowledge.
• Explain the key steps in the research process.
1.5 Sociological Research
• Describe the research methods commonly used in
sociological studies.
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each research
method.
1.6 Ethics in Sociological Research Methods
• Describe the three fundamental issues that distinguish
sociology from the natural sciences.
• Examine ethical issues in the study of human subjects.
The Sociological Perspective
• Sociology: The scientific study of social
life
• Sociological imagination: The capacity for
individuals to understand the relationship
between their individual lives and the
broad social forces that influence them
Major and Enduring Social Issues
•
•
•
•
•
•
Social structure
Social control
Social inequality
The social construction of reality
Scientific knowledge
Social change
Social Culture
• Social structure: Enduring, relatively
stable patterns of social behavior
• Culture: A combination of ideas,
behaviors, and material objects that
members of a society have created and
adopted for carrying out necessary tasks
of daily life and that are passed on from
one generation to the next
Social Control
• Social control: Efforts by society to
regulate people’s behavior and thoughts
• Social stratification: Patterns of
inequality in a society
• Globalization: Increasing
interdependence throughout the world
The Historical Origins of Sociology
• Industrial Revolution: Marked by a dramatic
change in the nature of production in which
machines replaced tools, steam and other energy
sources replaced human or animal power, and
skilled workers were replaced with mostly
unskilled workers
• Positivism: An approach to sociology that
assumes that the methods of the natural
sciences, such as physics, can be applied
successfully to the study of social life and that the
scientific principles learned can be applied to
solving social problems
Karl Marx
• Bourgeoisie (capitalists): Those owning the
means of production, including land, raw
materials, forests, factories, and machines
• Means of production: The technologies and
resources required for producing goods or
services in an economy, such as factories, raw
materials, and machines
• Proletariat (workers): People who sell their labor
to capitalists for wages
• Surplus value: The difference between what
manufacturers are paid for goods or services and
what they pay workers to produce them
Emile Durkheim
• Social facts: Regular patterns of behavior
characterizing a society that exist
independent of individuals and are
beyond the control of individuals
Max Weber
• Verstehen: The subjective understanding of individual
participants anchored in a context of shared cultural ideas
• Protestant work ethic: A disciplined work ethic, rational
approach to life, and an emphasis on this world
• Rationalization of society: The transition from a society
dominated by tradition to one dominated by reason and
rationally calculable scientific criteria
• Bureaucracy: An organization based on rationality, having a
clear division of labor, written rules and regulations,
impersonality, hierarchical lines of authority, and selection
and promotion based on competence
George Herbert Mead
• “I”: The self as subject who makes decisions
and takes actions based on his or her desires
• “Me”: The self as object as the person is
regarded by others
• Take the role of the other: To understand
how others view the situation and what it
means from their perspective
• Generalized other: The collective attitudes
of the entire community regarding how they
are expected to behave
Diversity in Sociology
• Harriet Martineau
– Provided an insightful examination of the family
customs, religion, politics, and race and gender
relations in the United States during the late1800s
• Jane Addams
– Studied class differences and the assimilation of
immigrants into society
• William Edward Burghardt Dubois
– Analyzed race relations in Philadelphia
Structural-Functional Theory
• Function: The consequence or effect of a social
structure for the society as a whole
• Manifest functions: The obvious and usually
intended consequences of actions
• Latent functions: The less obvious and often
unintended consequences of actions
• Dysfunctions: The negative consequences of a
social structure.
• Emergent properties: Important characteristics that
cannot be reduced to some simple combination of
characteristics of individuals or other components
• Agency: The capacity for people to act to change
their own lives and to influence others
Conflict and Feminist Theory
Conflict Theory
• Power: The ability to
influence others even in
the face of resistance
• Power elite: Leaders of
dominant institutions,
including the military,
corporations, and
political institutions
Feminist Theory
• Argues traditional sociological
research ignores gender, takes
the male point of reference,
and takes traditional gender
roles for granted
• Standpoint theory argues that
women, because of their
subordinate position in
society, are more aware of the
inequalities of gender and the
consequences of gender for
various aspects of one’s life.
Symbolic Interactionism
• Symbols: The words, gestures, and objects that communicate
meaning between people
• Definition of the situation: A statement or action that explicitly
or implicitly suggests the meaning the actor would like others to
attribute to his or her actions
• Thomas theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real
in their consequences.”
• Negotiated order: A shared meaning for the situation agreed
upon by all participants
• Social construction of reality: We as individuals do not directly
experience reality but are influenced in our perception of it by
social interaction and meanings other people attribute to that
reality
• Looking-glass self: People mold themselves in response to how
other people perceive them, and the individual’s responses serve
to reinforce the perspectives of other people
• Self-fulfilling prophecy: A prediction that leads, directly or
indirectly, to becoming true
Multiple Theories
• Macro-level studies: Studies that focus on social
structures that influence individuals, such as
groups, organizations, cultures, or even societies
• Micro-level studies: Research focusing on
individuals, thoughts, actions, and individual
behaviors
• Meso-level studies: Studies that either focus on
intermediate-level structures, such as the family
or small organizations, or may try to bridge the
micro and macro levels to show how one
influences the other
The Standards of Scientific
Knowledge
• Scientific knowledge should be
transferable. It is transferable if the
results are likely to apply in other settings
and circumstances.
Qualitative, Quantitative, and
Mixed-Methods Research
• Qualitative research: Research emphasizing
verbal descriptions and avoiding counting
items or the use of mathematics
• Quantitative research: Emphasizes
numerical descriptions of data, counting,
and the use of mathematics and statistics to
describe and analyze data
• Mixed-methods research: Research that
combines both qualitative and quantitative
research in the same study
The Research Process
• Data: Empirically obtained information
• Peer-reviewed scientific journal: A
journal in which other researchers who
know the area examine an article before
it is published to make sure that it meets
the standards of science
Measurement (slide 1 of 2)
• Concept: An abstract idea or theoretical construct usually
represented by a word or brief phrase summarizing some
meaningful aspect of the real world
• Operational definition: A description of procedures used to
measure a concept in sufficient detail so that someone else
could perform the same procedure and get a similar result
• Variable: A measurable trait or characteristic that can vary
and that is used to measure a concept
• Reliability: The extent to which a measure or scale
produces consistent results for different times, different
people, and different research methods
• Validity: The extent to which a measure or scale measures
what we think it measures
Measurement (slide 2 of 2)
Questions asked of respondents tend to be
answered with greater reliability and
validity when they:
• Ask things respondents could reasonably
be expected to know
• Ask things respondents want to tell you
correctly
• Ask things that are neither too difficult to
answer nor consume too much time
Sampling (slide 1 of 2)
• Population: Everyone of interest for a
study
• Sample: A subset of members of the
population rather than the entire
population
• Biased: Results that are systematically
different from those of the population in
a specific direction
Sampling (slide 2 of 2)
• Probability sampling: Procedures for
which each case in the population has
some known probability of being included
in the sample and all segments of the
population are represented in the sample
• Theoretical sampling: A procedure that
selects new cases different from already
sampled ones to provide a basis for
comparison
Statistical Analysis (slide 1 of 2)
• Empirical generalizations: Summary
statements about the data that highlight
important findings
• Statistics: Mathematical measures
summarizing important characteristics
found in data
Statistical Analysis (slide 2 of 2)
•
•
•
•
Descriptive statistics
Reading tables
Measures of association
Separating cause and association
Tests of Significance
Tests of significance:
• Statistical procedures used to determine
whether observed results could have
occurred by chance
• Compute a summary statistic for a group
of cases and compare that statistic to the
range of possible values that might have
occurred due to chance
Social Surveys
• Respondent: Someone who answers questions in a social
survey
• Response rates: The proportion of people asked to
participate in the study who actually did so
• Interviews: Surveys in which the researcher interacts in
person with the respondent, asking him or her questions
• Questionnaires: Surveys in which the respondent
completes a form mailed to her or perhaps accessed on
the Internet
• Closed-ended questions: Questions that require
respondents to select from a list of available responses
• Open-ended questions: Questions that permit people to
use their own words to answer
Experiments
• Independent variable: A variable expected to cause
changes in a second variable
• Dependent variable: A variable thought to be influenced
by an independent variable
• Subjects: People participating in the study
• Random assignment: Assigning people at random to
different conditions to avoid bias and to make sure the
conditions are comparable
• Experimental group: A group exposed to a treatment
• Control group: A group not exposed to the treatment
• Laboratory experiment: An experiment conducted in a
controlled setting
Field Work (Participant
Observation)
• Field experiment: A study conducted in a
natural setting, such as a classroom,
where the researcher cannot control
everything that happens
• Participant observation or field work:
Research in which the researcher
participates in and is directly involved in
the lives of those he or she is studying
Categories of Observers
• Complete participant: Someone who participates in
the setting fully and engages in unobtrusive research
• Unobtrusive research: Research in which those
studied are not aware they are being studied
• Participant as observer: Research in which the
researcher has a nonresearch reason for participating
in the setting and decides to conduct research
• Observer as participant: Research in which the
observer has only minimal participation in the setting
and is not a natural or normal participant
• Complete observer: Does not take part in the
interaction at all and hence is less likely to cause the
people studied to modify their actions
Ethnography
• Ethnography: A typically detailed
descriptive account summarizing and
interpreting a culture or a collection of
people studied
Access to Research
• Participant observation can create
suspicion or mistrust among subjects.
– Researchers will sometimes use key
informants.
• Case study: A study done in a single
setting over a number of months or years
Secondary Analysis
• Secondary analysis: The analysis of data for
purposes other than the primary reason the
information was originally collected
• Content analysis: A commonly used
procedure for studying text by identifying
specific characteristics of the text, such as
the frequency of occurrence of specific key
words or phrases
• Historical-comparative research: A study
examining the ways in which social life
changes across cultures and over time
Ethics in Sociological Research
• Reactivity: The extent to which humans
beings studied “react” or respond to the
research process or the researcher by
changing their behavior, either
unintentionally or intentionally
• Hawthorne effect: The unintended
effects on behavior produced when
people are aware they are being studied
Ethical Issues in the Study of
Human Subjects
Title 45, Code of Federal
Regulations, Part 46
The American Sociological
Association Code
Requires that human subjects be
protected in research, including:
• Risks should be minimized
and outweighed by potential
benefits.
• Subject privacy should be
guaranteed by confidentiality
or anonymity.
• Subjects should be selected to
share risks fairly.
• Subjects should be informed
fully about risks before
agreeing to participate.
Based on five principles:
1. Professional.
competence
2. Integrity
3. Professional and
scientific responsibility
4. Respect for people’s
rights
5. Social responsibility