The Uses of Social Research

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The Uses of Social Research

• Chapter 1

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Introduction

• Research question
• A question about one or more topics or concepts
  that can be answered through research

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Is almost everyone in the country married with
children or are they living alone?
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Introduction

• Research question example
• Is almost everyone in the country married with
  children or are they living alone?
• Start by looking at Census data

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Introduction
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Introduction

• Revised research question
• Are more young people planning to marry without
  having children, to marry and have children, or
  to live alone?

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Introduction

• STOP AND THINK
• Can you think of a better way of finding how
  young people plan to live in the future than with
  the Census data about the year 2006?

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Introduction

• Unit of analysis
• The unit about which information is collected

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Introduction

• STOP AND THINK
• Identify the units of analysis for each of the
  following studies
• Southgate and Roscignos (2009) study that found
  that involvement in music is associated academic
  performance for both young children and
  adolescents
• Cooney and Burts (2008) finding that in American
  counties where a particular crime occurs
  frequently the average punishment for that crime
  will be less severe than in counties where it
  occurs rarely

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• Research is a way of knowing
• How do we know things?
• We collect data in a number of ways

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• Knowledge from authorities
• Socially defined sources of knowledge
• Mom, Census Bureau, social institutions
  (religion, schools, news media)
• When we rely on physicians, clergy members, and
  elected officials for information, we are putting
  our faith in their knowledge in those positions
  of authority.
• Problems
• Inappropriate
• Misleading
• Incorrect

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• Knowledge from personal inquiry
• Inquiry that employs the senses evidence for
  arriving at knowledge
• Example
• If the flu has been going around and your friends
  and family have been ill and you begin to feel
  sick, observing them to see what they are doing
  to get better and what is working is an example
  of personal inquiry
• Problems
• Overgeneralize
• Perceive Selectively
• Premature Closure

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• The Scientific Method
• A way of conducting empirical research following
  rules that specify objectivity, logic, and
  communication among a community of knowledge
  seekers, and the connection between research and
  theory

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• The Scientific Method
• Positivist view of science
• A view that human knowledge must be based on what
  can be perceived
• Objectivity
• The ability to see the world as it really is

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• The Scientific Method
• Post-positivist view of science
• A view that knowledge is not based on irrefutable
  observable grounds, that it is always somewhat
  speculative, but that science can provide
  relatively solid grounds for these speculations
• Intersubjectivity
• Agreements about reality that result from
  comparing the observations of more than one
  observer

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• The Scientific Method
• Strengths
• The promotion of skepticism and intersubjectivity
• The extensive use of communication
• Teaching ideas factually
• The use of logic
• Theoretical explanation

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• STOP AND THINK
• Suppose I submit a research report to a journal
  and the journals editor writes back that the
  journal wont publish my findings because expert
  reviewers dont find them persuasive.
• Which of the strengths of the scientific method
  is the editor relying on to make his or her
  judgment?

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Research versus Other Ways of Knowing

• The Scientific Method
• Theory
• An explanation about how and why something is as
  it is.

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Uses of social research
• Basic research
• Research designed to add to our fundamental
  understanding and knowledge about the social
  world

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Uses of social research
• Applied research
• Research intended to be useful in the immediate
  future and to suggest action or increase
  effectiveness in some area

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Uses of social research
• Social theory
• Explanations about how and why people act in
  certain ways

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Exploratory research
• Ground-breaking research on a relatively
  unstudied topic or in a new area
• Tends to be inductive
• The researcher starts with observations about the
  subject and tries to develop tentative
  generalizations about it

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Qualitative data analysis
• Analysis that tends to involve the interpretation
  of actions or the representations of meanings in
  words

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Descriptive research
• Descriptive study
• Research designed to describe groups, activities,
  situations, or events

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Quantitative data analysis
• Analysis based on the statistical summary of data

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Explanatory research
• Research designed to explain why subjects vary in
  one way or another
• Tends to be deductive
• Often uses preexisting theories to decide what
  kinds of data should be collected
• Example
• Lets say that there is a well-known theory that
  we can call The General Attraction Theory and
  that it suggests that people who are physically
  attractive get more of societys rewards than
  less attractive people. If we have a hypothesis
  that people who are physically attractive are
  more likely to be hired for certain jobs than
  their less attractive peers and wanted to test
  this theory in a specific industry we would be
  conducting explanatory research

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• Purposes of social research
• Evaluation research
• Research designed to assess the impacts of
  programs, policies, or legal changes

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The Uses and Purposes of Social Research

• STOP AND THINK
• Suppose youve been asked to learn something
  about the new kinds of communities that have
  arisen out of peoples use of tweets and twitter.
  
• Of the four kinds of research outlined above
  (exploratory, descriptive, explanatory,
  evaluation), what kind of study have you been
  asked to do?

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Summary

• Professional and practical benefits
• Creation of usable theories about our social
  world
• Social research methods can help us explore,
  describe, and explain aspects of the social
  world, as well as evaluate whether particular
  programs or policies actually work.

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Why are you in this class?

• Learn to be an informed consumer of research
• A statistic by itself is only one piece of
  information
• You have to be accountable for your work
• You have ethical responsibilities

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Quiz Question 1

• If we are presenting a detailed picture of a
  population, in terms of gender, age, income,
  residence, we have most likely conducted
• evaluation research.
• exploratory research.
• explanation research.
• descriptive research.

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Quiz Question 2

• In many ways, the scientific method
• compensates for the shortcomings of other
  approaches to knowledge.
• relies exclusively on the word of authorities
  and personal inquiry.
• emphasizes the value of communities of scientists
  and critical skepticism.
• both A and C
• all of the above

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Quiz Question 3

• Which of the following statements is factually
  testable?
• All extra-terrestrials have large skulls.
• Individuals with more education earn more than
  less educated individuals.
• The death penalty is less moral than first-degree
  murder.
• War should be outlawed.
• None of the above