Social research Methods Exam 1

4 ways of knowing

Ordinary human inquiry

Tradition

Authority

Research

Ordinary human inquiry

• Observing probabilistic patterns recognizing that future circumstances are somehow caused or conditioned by present ones

• Example: when a kid plays baseball with his dad he’ll get hit in the balls

Downsides to ordinary human inquiry

overgeneralization 

premature closure

prediction w/out understanding 

inaccurate observations

selective observations

illogical reasoning

Premature closre

Joints are hurting when it rains

prediction w/out understanding

aliens see humans shaking hands, but don’t understand why

Inaccurate observations

By chance, watching someone greet someone in a weird way and now you assume that’s normal behavior

Selective observation

deciding something is true because we want it to be true, everyone shakes hands, butwe ignore all instances where they don’t. 

illogical reasoning

An exception to the rule enforces the rule

Tradition

cultural values that guide our social behavior

ex: shaking hands when meeting somebody new.

Tradition downsides

• stigma against questioning

• lack of evidence

Authority

Socially defined source of knowledge, based on legitimacy, power, and hierarchy

ex: political figures, doctors

Authority downsides

inappropriate authority, like celebrities telling us to save the climate

misleading or incorrect (authority figures misinterpreting results) 

Research (social)

The systematic analysis of social phenomena based on empirical observation

Where did ethical procedures and frameworks come from

Nazi research

Tuskegee syphilis study

Nuremberg trials

1945-46

10 principles for legitimate research 

global

resulted in the Nuremberg Code (1947)

Belmont report (1979)

came from the US National Commission (1974)

• made the federal policy for the protection of human subjects

Principles of the Belmont Report

• respect

• benefiance 

• justice

Ethical principles today

• minimize harm

• informed consent

• avoid deception

• protect privacy 

• confidentiality

Minimize harm

• don’t hurt people physically, mentally, emotionally, or legally

• favorable risk benefit ratio

• considerations of vulnerable populations 

• Famous cases

  • Milgram’s obedience study

  • Zimbardo prison experiment

Informed consent

the freedom to say yes or no to participating in research studies once all the possible risks and benefits have been properly laid out

famous cases

• lord humphrey’s tea room experiment

Avoid deception

• lying or failing to disclose the full purpose of the study to participants 

• If you can help it, you shouldn’t deceive your participants 

Protect Privacy

• anonymity

  • when no identifying information can be linked to respondents and even the researcher cannot identify them

• Confidentiality

  • when the researchers can identify a given person’s responses, but promise not to do so publicly.

The difference between politics and ethics in social research

Politics: substance and application

Ethics: methodology

Main criteria for objectivity in research 

• systematic data collection

• careful sampling

• replication and intersubjectivity 

• peer review

Challenges to objectivity

• human aspect of social research

• no formal code for political conduct like there is in research 

• sources of research funding 

Theory definition

a systematic explanation for empirical observations that relate to a particular aspect of life

Theory (purpose)

prevents against flukes

helps us design effective interventions

informs and shapes our research focus 

Attributes and levels of social theory

• macro

• meso

• micro

macro

states, governments, populations

meso

groups, organizations, local contexts

micro

individuals, interactions, dyads

variable

something which is free to vary, comprised of a local set of attributes

ex: gender, social class, school type

attributes

characteristics of people or things 

• male, female, intersex, low, middle, high, public, private

Inductive

• developing a general understanding of social phenomena through the evaluations of empirical observations

• Bottom up

  • observation (concrete)

  • general patterns

  • Theory (conceptual)

Deductive

idealized picture of the scientific process

Theory comes first 

top to bottom 

The translation of general theory into specific empirical analysis 

• theory ( conceptual, general) 

• hypothesis

• observation (concrete, specific)

Hypothesis

a testable statement between 2 concepts

What makes a good hypothesis?

• states the relationship

• states the direction/groups

• has to be falsifiable

  • one answer

• has to be specific

Purposes of research

• explore 

• describe 

• explain

Exploration

new interest, feasibility, piloting, often inductive

Description

who, what, when, where, how

ex: census

Explanation

why

explains the description trends

Aggregation

• large collections of people or things

Research design

• what do you want to find out

• What is the best way to do it? 

Nomotheric

• identifies a few factors driving a general phenomenon 

• EX: regnerus study

• ignoring case specific

• best for generalization

• less complete understanding, but better sample size 

Idiographic

• exhausts all possible connections

• more complete understanding, but fewer people 

• EX: house’s case on tv

Criteria for Nomothetic causality

correlation

time ordering 

nonspuriousness  

Correlation

an empirical relationship between 2 variables such that changes in one are associated with changes in another

necessary but not sufficient

Correlation does not imply causation 

Time ordering

The causing variable must precede the caused variable in time

Non-spuriousness

Not this

• When an apparent relation exists between 2 variables, it is actually the result of some third confounding variable 

sometimes difficult to identify

EX: shark attacks and ice cream sales

Units of analysis

who or what is being studied 

Study types accounting for tie in study designs

• cross sectional

• longitudinal

Cross sectional

• a study based on observations representing a single point in time

  • examining a cross section 

  • snapshot in time 

  • can’t study trends over time

  • can’t have time-ordering, association over causality

  • taking multiple cross sections help with these issues

Longitudinal

• a study design involving the collection of data at different points in time

• data collected repeatedly over time

• trend study 

• cohort study

• panel study

Trend study

• a study in which a given characteristic of some population is monitored over time

• repeated cross-section

• same variable, different samples each time

• Gallup’s church membership study

• not the same people

• outcome is more important than what the variable is doing

Cohort Study

a study in which a specific cohort is studied over time, although data may be collected from different members in each set of observations

Repeated cross-section of the selected cohort 

EX: children born or raised during lockdown 

Panel study

• data collected from the same set of people at several points in time

Conceptualization

• an idea that can be named, defined, and eventually measured in some way

• subjective

Operationalization

• the process of linking conceptualized variables to a set of procedures for measuring them

Nominal

• variables whose categories cannot be ranked or ordered

• variation in quality, not quantity 

• name

• EX: race, gender, political party, religion 

Ordinal

• variables with categories that can be ordered in some way but have unknowable differences between them

• EX: social class, educational level, income, category, Likert scale of approval

Interval ratio

variables with a continuum with meaningful distances between them

exact quantity attached

We can do math with them

whole numbers

EX: income, age, height, ideal homework temperature 

Ecological fallacy

• Erroneously draw conclusions about individuals solely from the observation of groups.

• Example: countries w/ lower education rates have high rates of HIV. This doesn’t mean that an individual with only primary school education are more likely to be HIV positive, it could be that the more highly educated people are driving up the HIV level on the individual, not the poor.

Reductionism

• Erroneously drawing conclusions about groups based on the observation of individuals.

• Does this mean that all democrat run cities have passed pro-abortion legislation, no because public opinion doesn’t always equal policy, politics doesn’t always allow every official to make those changes

Overgeneralization

• Erroneously drawing conclusions about all individuals based on single individuals

• Taking one person’s demographic and assuming all people of that demographic are like that.

• Example: Gordon Ramsey bullies cooking show contestants, does this mean that all chefs are mean, no.

Spurious relationships—what makes them spurious and the role of a confounder

Spuriousness: when an apparent relation between 2 variables is actually the result of some third confounding variable influencing both

Precision

how detailed and specific a measure is

more precise = less error 

reliability

how dependable a measure is

measurement validity

precision

reliability

validity 

Study validity

the overall trustworthiness and generalizability of a research study’s conclusion

independent variable

stays the same

Dependent variable

changes

Goode article

Justifications

• It was easy to access these people

• These people were authentic, and he got authentic results

• He also had unconditional entry

Ethical Justifications

• Felt he was on equal grounds

• No power differential

• Never occurred to him it might not be ethical

• No IRB yet

Zimbardo Prison Experiment ethical concerns

Very little oversight on guards actions and supplies available to them

Zimbardo Prison Experiment political concerns

How people are interpreting and using the results and should we even be studying it.

Regnerus Gay Parenting Study results

• An intact biological upbringing is best

• lesbian mothers have worse children 

• particularly gay parents did worse

Regnerus Gay Parenting Study critiques 

• His definition of families were mom and dad that were still together

• Lesbian mothers and gay men are anyone who has had a same sex relationship ever

• The length of the peer review

• The funding of the study coming from a conservative entity

• 2/6 of the peer reviews were consultants on the study

• Misleading results due to data measurement and misleading presentation of data