The Practice of Social Research

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The Practice ofSocial Research

• Earl BabbieChapman University

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Part 1

• An Introductionto Inquiry

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Chapter 1

• Human Inquiry and Science

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Chapter Outline

• Looking for Reality
• The Foundations of Social Science
• Some Dialectics of Social Research
• The Ethics of Social Research

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How We Know What We Know

• Direct Experience and Observation
• Personal Inquiry
• Tradition
• Authority

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Looking for Reality

• Our attempts to learn about the world are only
  partly linked to direct, personal inquiry or
  experience.
• A larger part comes from agreed-on knowledge that
  others give us, things everyone knows.
• This agreement reality both assists and hinders
  our attempts to find out for ourselves.

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Sources of Secondhand Knowledge

• Both provide a starting point for inquiry, but
  can lead us to start at the wrong point and push
  us in the wrong direction.
• Tradition
• Authority

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Science and Inquiry

• Epistemology is the science of knowing.
• Methodology (a subfield of epistemology) might be
  called the science of finding out.

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Question

• How do individuals learn all they need to know?
• personal experience
• Discovery
• from what others tell us
• all of these choices

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Answer D

• Individuals learn all they need to know from
  personal experience, discovery and from what
  others tell us.

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Ordinary Human Inquiry

• Humans recognize that future circumstances are
  caused by present ones.
• Humans learn that patterns of cause and effect
  are probabilistic in nature.
• Humans aim to answer what and why questions,
  and pursue these goals by observing and figuring
  out.

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Inquiry Errors and Solutions

• Inaccurate observations
• Measurement devices add precision.
• Overgeneralization
• Repeat a study to make sure the same results are
  produced each time.

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Inquiry Errors and Solutions

• Selective observation
• Make an effort to find cases that do not fit the
  general pattern.
• Illogical Reasoning
• Use systems of logic explicitly.

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Views of Reality

• Premodern - Things are as they seem to be.
• Modern - Acknowledgment of human subjectivity.
• Postmodern -There is no objective reality to be
  observed.

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A Book

• All of these are the same book, but it looks
  different when viewed from different locations,
  perspectives, or points of view.

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Point of View

• Wifes Point of View. There is no question in the
  wifes mind as to who is right and rational and
  who is out of control.

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Point of View

• Husbands Point of View. The husband has a very
  different perception of the same set of events,
  of course.

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Question

• In your discussion of measurement with a friend,
  she argues that what you are trying to measure
  does not exist and your own point of view will
  determine what you perceive in measuring. She has
  which view of reality?
• correct
• premodern
• modern
• postmodern
• Scientific

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Answer D

• In your discussion of measurement with a friend,
  she argues that what you are trying to measure
  does not exist and your own point of view will
  determine what you perceive in measuring. She has
  the postmodern view of reality.

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Question

• You've gotten A's on the last three tests. You
  have a research project due the last day of class
  and youre sure youre going to flunk because
  something has to break this streak of good luck.
  Youve fallen prey to
• illogical reasoning.
• inaccurate observation.
• selective observation.
• over-emphasis on tradition.
• overgeneralization.

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Answer A

• You've gotten A's on the last three tests. You
  have a research project due the last day of class
  and youre sure youre going to flunk because
  something has to break this streak of good luck.
  Youve fallen prey to illogical reasoning.

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Foundations of Social Science

• The foundations of social science are logic and
  observation.
• A scientific understanding of the world must make
  sense and correspond to what we observe.
• Both are essential to science and relate to the
  three major aspects of social scientific
  enterprise theory, data collection, and data
  analysis.

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Foundations of Social Science

• Theory - Systematic explanation for the
  observations that relate to a particular aspect
  of life.
• Data collection - observation
• Data Analysis - the comparison of what is
  logically expected with what is actually observed.

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Social Regularities

• Examples of Patterns in social life
• Only people 18 and older can vote.
• Only people with a license can drive.

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Aggregates

• The collective actions and situations of many
  individuals.
• Focus of social science is to explain why
  aggregated patterns of behavior are regular even
  when individuals change over time.

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Birthrates,United States 1980 2002

• 1982 15.9
• 1983 15.6
• 1984 15.6
• 1985 15.8
• 1986 15.6
• 1987 15.7
• 1988 16.0
• 1989 16.4
• 1990 16.7
• 1991 16.2
• 1992 15.8

• 1993 15.4
• 1994 15.0
• 1995 14.6
• 1996 14.4
• 1997 14.2
• 1998 14.3
• 1999 14.2
• 2000 14.4
• 2001 14.1
• 2002 13.9

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Question

• Social research aims to find __________ in social
  life.
• answers
• knowledge
• practicality
• regularity
• truth

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Answer D

• Social research aims to find regularity in social
  life.

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A Variable Language

• VariableLogical groupings of attributes.
• AttributeCharacteristics or qualities that
  describe an object.

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A Variable Language

• Independent variableA variable that is presumed
  to cause or determine a dependent variable.
• Dependent variableA variable that is assumed to
  depend on or is caused by another variable.

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Variable Language
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Relationship Between Two Variables
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Education and Racial Prejudice
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Question

• Professor Fremler examined the following
  categories of marital status married, never
  married, widowed, separated, and divorced. These
  categories are known as
• variables.
• attributes.
• variable categories.
• units of analysis.
• theoretical elements.

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Answer B

• Professor Fremler examined the following
  categories of marital status married, never
  married, widowed, separated, and divorced. These
  categories are known as attributes.

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Approaches to Social Research

• Idiographic -Seeks to fully understand the
  causes of what happened in a single instance.
• NomotheticSeeks to explain a class of situations
  or events rather than a single one.

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Idiographic and Nomothetic Reasoning in Everyday
Life

• Idiographic Hes like that because his father
  and mother kept giving him mixed signals.The
  fact that his family moved seven times by the
  time he was 12 years old didnt help. Moreover,
  his older brother is exactly the same and
  probably served as a role model.
• NomotheticTeenage boys are like that.

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Approaches to Social Research

• Induction From specific observations to the
  discovery of a pattern among all the given
  events.
• Deduction - From a pattern that might be
  logically expected to observations that test
  whether the pattern occurs.

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The Wheel of Science
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Approaches to Social Research

• Qualitative Data Nonnumerical data.
• Quantitative Data -Numerical data. Makes
  observations more explicit and makes it easier to
  aggregate, compare, and summarize data.

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Approaches to Social Research

• Pure Research - Sometimes justified in terms of
  gaining knowledge for knowledges sake.
• Applied Research Putting research into practice.

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Ethical Guidelines of Social Research

• Two Basic Guidelines
• Participation should be voluntary.
• Social research must bring no harm to research
  subjects.

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Quick Quiz
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• 1. The two foundations of science are
• tradition and observation.
• observation and logic.
• logic and theory.
• theory and observation.
• logic and generalization.

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Answer B

• The two foundations of science are observation
  and logic.

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• 2. Science
• deals with what should be and not with what is.
• can settle debates on value.
• is exclusively descriptive.
• has to do with disproving philosophical beliefs.
• has to do with how things are and why.

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Answer E

• Science has to do with how things are and why.

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• 3. When social scientists study variables, they
  focus on
• attributes.
• groups.
• people.
• characteristics.
• relationships.

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Answer E

• When social scientists study variables, they
  focus on relationships.

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• 4. ___________ is the science of knowing.
• intelligence
• exam taking
• epistemology
• methodology

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Answer C

• Epistemology is the science of knowing.

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• 5. Which of the following are true of tradition
  and authority?
• they both assist human inquiry
• they both hinder human inquiry
• both a and b
• none of these choices

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Answer C

• Which of the following are true of tradition and
  authority they both assist human inquiry and
  they both hinder human inquiry.

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• 6. __________ explanations seek to exhaust the
  idiosyncratic causes of a particular condition or
  event.
• idiographic
• latent
• manifest
• nomothetic

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Answer A

• Idiographic explanations seek to exhaust the
  idiosyncratic causes of a particular condition or
  event.