Institutions and participation 01

The self-fulfilling Prophecy

difference between social and natural science

• Social sciences need to account for subjective

factors: Meaning structures and interpretative

processes affect human behavior; social sciences

deal with interpretations about interpretations

• Limited use of experimental methods in social

science

Experimental research

• Ideal of ceteris paribus = all other things being equal or held constant

• Preferably, in an experiment the researcher exerts complete control over potential causal factors in order to

arrive at conclusive evidence

• Example:

Do soccer referees prefer white players?

• Research design:

Confront referees with controversial match situations differing only with regard to players’ skin color .

• Ideally, experimental research provides clear-

cut evidence on the impact a potential causal

factor, keeping everything else constant.

Why limited use of experimental methods in social science

• Methodological reasons:

• Some phenomena are extremely rare/unique.

• You cannot separate certain phenomena from their natural context.

• You cannot simulate/replicate certain phenomena in the lab.

• Research subjects might respond to your observation, you might distort the observed phenomenon

(self-fulfilling, self-defeating prophecies).

• Ethical reasons: You cannot interfere (too much) in people’s lives.

Social science types of data

• Qualitative data: Documents, observations, small N case studies

• Survey data: Large N standardized questionnaire data as most important data source

• Secondary analysis of real life data (official statistics, digital trace data)

Social science types of methods

• Interpretative (hermeneutic) methods

• Multivariate statistics

Epistemological implications

• To some extent observations have to be substituted by theoretical speculations.

• As such speculations are interest driven, social sciences are more prone to ideological interpretations and

conflicts.

• Generalizations are difficult due to small number of cases.

• Propositions are rather probabilistic than deterministic.

• In short: Be a critical consumer of generalized propositions of social science!

Institutions

• Central puzzle of social science: why is and what is social order and how is it maintained?

• Institutions are the more enduring features of social life giving solidity to social systems

Institutions (Scott’s

• Institutions are comprised of regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements, that together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life

Three pillars of institutions

Regulative pillar

• Formalized ‘rules of the game’, public and private regulations

• Mechanism to enforce compliance is coercion

Normative pillar

• Values and social norms define legitimate means to pursue valued ends

• Mechanism to enforce compliance is conformity

Cultural-cognitive pillar

• Meaning systems, cognitive frames, stereotypes

• Mechanism to enforce compliance is unconscious taken for grantedness

Relevance of organisations/institutions

• Organizations can embody certain institutions, that is,

• They reflect deeper values of what society regards as desirable.

• Organizations might work inefficient but these practices might be deep-seated in common beliefs.

• Organizations are embedded in a complex network of public and private regulations.

Basic concept sport

• Not identical with common language use:

Sport ≠ physical activity

• Originally, ‘sport’ refers to a very specific concept of physical activity defined by its regulated, competitive

character and record seeking

• Distinct from other forms of physical activity, e.g. German gymnastics (‘Turnen’) or Swedish gymnastics

• Implication: Scientific research has to be precise about the kind of physical activity examined

Basic concepts participation

• Participation can assume different forms and refer to

• Membership in sport clubs

• Membership in commercial fitness studios

• Self-organized physical activity

• Important: Different people participate in different forms of physical activity for different reasons

• Implication: Scientific research has to be precise about the kind of participation examined