The Process of Scientific Inquiry

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The Process of Scientific Inquiry

• Dr. Guerette

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Looking For Reality

• Two realities
• Experiential reality Agreement reality
• Empirical research is based on experience or
  observation.
• Assertions must have logic and empirical support.
• Ordinary human inquiry
• We use causal and probabilistic reasoning
• Science makes causality and probability more
  explicit and deals with more rigorously.
• Tradition
• Things that everbody knows
• Authority
• Trust of experts those with legitimacy.

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Errors in human inquiry

• Inaccurate observation
• Overgeneralization
• Selective observation
• Illogical reasoning
• Ideology and Politics

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The Foundations of Social Science

• Theory, not philosophy or belief
• A Focus on Social regularities
• What about exceptions?
• Aggregates, not individuals
• A variable language
• Variables Attributes
• Variables and relationships
• Independent variable
• Dependent variable

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Some Dialectics of Social Research

• Idiographic and nomothetic explanation
• Idiographic the explanation of a single
  situation exhaustively. To explain one case
  fully.
• Nomothetic explanation of class of situations or
  events.
• Inductive and deductive theory
• Inductive moves from specific to general.
• Deductive moves from the general to specific.

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Some Dialectics of Social Research

• Quantitative and qualitative data
• Quantitiative data is empirical (e.g. numbers)
• Qualitative data is non-numerical (e.g. words,
  writings, observations, articulations, etc.)
• Pure and applied research

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Ethics Criminal Justice Research

• Voluntary participation
• Bring no harm to subjects