Review I : From Research Design to Measurement

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Review I From Research Design to Measurement

• Social Research Methods
• 2113 6501
• Spring, 2007
• 03/03/0703/05/07

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A former students words

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• ??.??.???????????????
• ???????????????????????????
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• ?...????????????????
• YYY ????????????????

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Research finding answers to questions

• social research seek answers to questions about
  the social world

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Science

• a system for producing knowledge and the
  knowledge produced from that system
  (??????????????????)
• gather empirical data (???? ????????????,???????
  ??????????????????????????)
• Logic (??) Observation (??)(???????)

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Quantitative and Qualitative Social Research

• ??????????????????,?????????????

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Responsibilities of the individual researcher
(?????????)

• Ethics begin and end with the researcher.
  (?????????????)
• Scientific misconduct (???????)
• Research fraud (????) fakes data or falsely
  reports how research was conducted
• Plagiarism (??) steals the ideas or writings of
  others or uses them without citing the source
• Power and trust (?????????,????????????????)

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Ethical Issues in Social Research

• No Harm to the Participants (??????)
• Voluntary Participation (????)
• Informed consent (????)
• Special populations and creating new inequalities
  (???????????????)
• Privacy (???), Anonymity (??), Confidentiality
  (??)
• Analysis and Reporting Data (?????)

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The Dimensions of Research
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Purposes of Research

• Exploration (??) to explore new issues, to
  formulate more precise questions for future
  research
• No definitive answers be creative, open-minded,
  flexible
• Description (??) to provide specific details of
  a subject
• Focuses on how and who questions
• Explanation (??) to know why things are the
  way they are (identify reasons)

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Time Dimensions in Research

• Quantitative research cross-sectional research
  (????) vs. longitudinal research (????)
• Qualitative research case study (????)

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Social Theory (????)

• social theory a system of interconnected ideas
  that condenses and organizes knowledge about the
  social world (??????????????????????)
• important to research
• How to use theory in research?
• Social theory ? ideology (see p. 51 for a
  comparison of the two), although they have some
  similarities (???????????,???????????)

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Four parts of social theory (?????)

• Assumptions (??)
• Concepts (??)
• Relationships (??)
• Units of analysis (????)

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Concepts (??)

• Concepts the building blocks of theory
• Two parts a symbol (word or term) and a
  definition (?????)
• Social science concepts form a specialized
  language, or jargon (????)
• Vary by level of abstraction (??????)
• Single vs. concept clusters
• Variables (????????????)
• Simple vs. complex concepts
• Narrow vs. broad scope

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Relationships (??)

• Kinds of relationships not related, strongly
  related, interaction effects, etc
• A proposition (??) a theoretical statement about
  the relationship between two or more concepts
  (??????????????????????)
• A hypothesis an empirically testable version of
  a proposition (?????????)

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The concepts of variables and attributes

• Variables (??) ??????? (logical groupings of
  attributes)
• Attributes (??) ???????
• Independent variables (???) and dependent
  variables (???)

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Stating Hypotheses(????)

• ??(???)???????
• How to state hypotheses?
• ?????????????????????,?????XX?XX???
• ??(????) ???????????????,??????????
• Causal order
• Null hypothesis

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Direction of Theorizing

• Deductive (??) from abstract to concrete, from
  the general to the specific
• Inductive (??) from concrete to abstract, from
  the particular to the general

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Forms of explanation

• Explanation logical connection between what
  happened with a more abstract or basic principle
  about how things work
• Three major forms of theoretical explanation
  causal, structural, interpretive (??,???,??????)
• Our focus is on causal explanation (causality)--
  cause and effect relationship

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Causality

• Three things to establish causality
• Temporal order (a cause must come before an
  effect) (????)
• Association (??,???)(two phenomena occur together
  in a patterned way or appear to act together)
• The elimination of plausible alternatives
  (???????????,?????) (an ideal because eliminating
  all possible alternatives is impossible)

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Diagram of Causal Explanation
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The dynamic duo theory and research

• Theory and research are interrelated
• Theory tells us how to look at and think about a
  topic gives us concepts and assumptions directs
  us to important questions suggests ways to
  explain data, and connects us to an immense base
  of knowledge.
• Deductive and inductive approaches vs. theory

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Research Design, Processes, Measurement
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The importance of research questions the story
starts from here (?????????)
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The purposes of literature review

• To demonstrate a familiarity with a body of
  knowledge and establish credibility
  (??????????????????)
• To show the path of prior research and how a
  current project is linked to it
  (???????????????????)
• To integrate and summarize what is known in an
  area (????????????)
• To learn from others and stimulate new ideas
  (????????????)

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Writing a literature review

• Writing a clear and crisp review is not easy
  (???????????????)
• Keep your purposes in mind (????)
• Start from organizing your notes (??????????)
• Do not just summarize, should organize and be
  critical (?????????)
• All rules of good writing apply here (ex
  organization, transition, flow, introduction and
  conclusion, etc)

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Overview of Research Design

• Research Purposes
• Exploration (??), Description (??), Explanation
  (??)
• Units of Analysis (????) possibly individuals
  (??)
• The Time Dimension cross-sectional design
• Design a Research Project the research process

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The Research Process

• Conceptualization think about research questions
  important concepts
• Choice of research method quantitative and/or
  qualitative?
• Operationalizaion measurement
• Population and sampling
• Observations (data collection)
• Data processing
• Analysis and interpretation
• Writing articles/reports
• Application

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Conceptualization, Operationalization, and
Measurement
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Conceptualization

• The process through which we specify what we
  mean when use particular terms in research is
  called conceptualization.
• The result is called a concept (??). Concepts
  have specific and agree-upon meanings.

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Indicators and Dimensions of Concepts

• An Indicator (??) the presence or absence of the
  concept ??????????
• Dimension (??). a specific aspect of a concept
  ??????????
• During conceptualization and operationalization,
  we often specify different indicators to
  represent different dimensions of a concept.
  ?????????????????????

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Operationalization developing specific research
procedures to be used in empirical observations
representing those concepts

• Consider
• Range of variation
• Degree of precision

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Measurement Process Conceptualization
Operationalization

• Conceptualization (???) ?????????????????????????
  ????????
• conceptual definition(????)?????????
• Operationalization (???) ?????????????????,??????
  ?
• Operational definition (????) ?????????????(???)

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? ???????????????????????

• ??????????????????????????????????????????????,???
  ????,????????????????????,????????????????
• ?????,????????????
• 1) ????????????,???????
• ???? ???? ?? ??? ?????
• 2) ????????,???????
• ???? ???? ?? ??? ?????

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Four Levels of Measurement

• Nominal Measures (?????) differences among
  categories
• Ex gender, religious affiliation, college major
• Ordinal Measures (????????) categories can be
  ordered or ranked
• Ex social class, prejudice
• Interval Measures (????????) can specify the
  distance between categories
• Ex IQ scores
• Ratio Measures (????????) attributes are based
  on a true zero point
• Ex age, of times married, length of residence
  in a given place

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The Quality of Measurement

• We look at the reliability (??) and validity (??)
  of measurement.
• ??????????????

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Definition of Reliability and Validity

• Reliability ???????,???????????,??????,??????????
  ?,????(reliability)?
• Measurement reliability ?????????????
• Validity ?????(empirical measure)????????????????
  ???,????(validity)?

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Relationship between reliability and validity