Sociology Pt 1

What is Sociology?

The systematic study of society and studies human interconnectedness

What is human interconnectedness?

assumes humans only live together in collective and must then study them in collective

Why is the object of study of sociology historical?

the level of complexity of the object of study depends on the part of society being studied

What is division of labour?

describes the phenomenon that different members are assigned different tasks to complete dependant on the role they have

How is the division of labour different for humans?

Depends on the society which is chosen by humans

Is social organization necessary for humans?

no. It only matters that there is social organization but the type can change

What parts of society do sociologists study?

Every single thing that leads to what is being studied (i.e orchestra example)

How does sociology contrast with other humanities?

Studies the humanity and its relationship to society

What is co-constitution?

Mills

the relationship between the individual and the society they are in (can’t understand one without the other)

How do individual decisions affect society?

Marx

Society is nothing without individual decision making capacity

Individuals are responsible for decisions in their own life but the decisions are made from circumstances they cannot control and thus limits the available decisions

Individual decision vs Circumstance?

Individual decision: whether to study

Circumstance: money, family support, responsibilities

What is the sociological Imagination?

Emphasizes the co-constitution of individual people and the societies in which they are embedded (people create societies; societies create people)

Links biography and history

What is biography / personal troubles?

the life trajectory and experience of an individual person

What is history / Public issues?

the trajectory of a society over a period of time

What is the nature of relationship between personal troubles and public issues?

Social forces

What are Social Forces?

societal level mechanisms that influence the character of individuals and their life trajectories

Two types: ideology/culture or social structure

What is ideology/culture?

Systems of thought that influence choices about behaviour

behaviour is experienced as being unique to the individual, but exhibits observables patterns

Study the effect of ideology by observing those patterns

Example: marriage culture says need to be in love so may choose to divorce if not

What is social structure?

How the social world is organized to elicit particular patterns of practical activity

Example: anyone who petitions can divorce

Objective vs Subjective?

Subjective: related to a subjectivity (mind/thought)

Objective: related to physical reality

What is agency?

the capacity for indivdual decision making, always a part of societal reproduction

What influences society?

structure, culture and agency all influence each other which influence society

What is Societal Reproduction?

when individuals behave in a way that is consistent with the ideologies and structures they are embedded and thus reproduce the ideology and structure

Not behaving with them leads to social change

What is empirical?

based on, concerned with or verifiable by observation or experience

How is sociology an empirical discipline?

sociologists rely on data and observation when we say things about the social world

Moral truth vs Empirical truth?

Moral: what’s right

Empirical: what it is

What can be studied empirically?

Example: religion

Cannot: existence of god, truth of religion, moral claims

Can: network structure of a place of worship, degree of religious observance in a society, etc

How do sociologists separate their biases from their study?

Focus on what we actually observe

Anecdotes vs Systematic data?

Anecdotes: unreliable

Systematic data: reliable

What are research questions?

what a research project sets out to answer. Generally deals with concepts

What are the levels of analysis?

Micro, mezzo, macro

What is the micro research scope

social interactions between individual people

Example: family members

What is the mezzo research scope?

One organization and its structure

Example: students at u of m

What is the macro research scope?

multiple sites. governmental / national

Example: Canadian uni students

What two categories does social data fall into?

Quantitative and qualitative

What is quantitative data?

data that is numerical or can be represented using mathematics or statistics. involves translating social reality into measurable variables

Example: income, major, age, etc

What is a variable?

Some characteristics that differs from subject to subject or from time to time

Example: university major

What is qualitative data?

Data that is represented in prose. Often a part of the social world that cannot be translated into a numerical representation

What are the quantitative methods?

two steps. 1. Data collection 2. Data analysis

What is operationalization?

involves researchers specifying precisely how concepts are translated into variables. Each variable has faults and excludes information

process of turning abstract concepts into variables

What is an independent variable?

the variable that is hypothesized to have some effect. The cause

What is a dependent variable?

the variable hypothesized to be influenced by the independent variable. thing that is caused

What is sample?

a subset of the population that is actually empirically studied

What is the population?

The universe of cases that the research question is relevant to

What is generalizability?

the extent to which observations about a sample can be reasonably assumed to represent a population

What are the four types of sampling procedure?

random, representative, convenient, snowball sampling

What are the sampling procedures in relation to generalizability?

What is random sampling procedure?

Each individual of the population has an equal opportunity of being chosen

What is representative sampling procedure?

The sample is a reproduction of the population along particular demographic characteristics

What is convenient sampling procedure?

People are sampled based on their availability

What is snowball sampling procedure?

People that have been sampled introduce the researcher to other possible research participants

What are three other quantitative methods in sociology?

Secondary analysis, data scraping, quantitative content analysis

What is secondary analysis?

when researchers analyze existing data in a novel way

What are the pros of secondary anlysis?

Sample size, sampling technique, cost

What are the cons of secondary analysis?

limited existing questions, cannot go back and ask for more

What is data scraping?

using computer algorithms to generate data about peoples online behaviour

What is quantitative content analysis?

the analysis of the content of some media. a study of what people produce.

Ex

What are the variables for quantitative analysis?

nominal/categorical, ordinal, ratio

What are nominal / categorical variables?

Numbers are used to represent different conditions but the phenomenon is not quantitative

Example: race. marital status

What are ordinal variables?

different values of the variable can be ranked but there is no way to measure the precise difference between ranker values

Example: class, pain, likert scale

What are ratio variables?

Differences between values are measurable, and there exists a real zero (limit)

Example: income, number of siblings

What is central tendency?

the average? measures of central tendency attempt to give a quick pic of the content of one variable

What is mode?

the variable value that is the most common or has the highest count.

For nominal variables: the measure of central tendency.

calculated for numerical, ordinal, ratio

What is median?

the value that separates the sample number into two equal halves.

Calculated for ordinal and ratio variables.

What is mean?

the average value. Sum of variables / number of cases. Calculated for ratio variable

What is proportion?

tells us the percentage of a variable that falls into one particular variable value. Between 0 and 1

What is the normal curve?

What is kurtosis?

When variable is more skinny or more spread out

What is deviation from normality: skew?

Positive: mode < median < mean (ex: income)

Negative: mode > median > mean

What is an outlier?

extreme cases that over influence the median and the mean.

Sometimes appropriate to exclude

What is bi-modal distribution

Two humps with a flat point in the middle

What is inferential statisictics?

Measures the relationship between two or more variables. Knowing the value of one lets us make an inference about another variable

What is bivariate statistics: cross tab

Measure the relationship between two variables. Cross tab is useful for calculating the relationship between two variables when at least one is nominal/categorical

What is bivariate statistics: correlation coefficient?

measures the relationship between two ratio-level variables. -1 to 1. 0 is no relationship. The closer to 1 the more the values correspond to one another

What is negative correlation?

closer to -1

What is positive correlation

closer to 1

What is multivariate statistics?

describe the effect of several independent variables at once on some dependent variable. Needed because we dont use experiments. Has multiple independent variables

Ex. measure the time spent watching tv and the effect and parental income and

What are the weaknesses of qualitative research?

not generalizable

What are the pros of qualitative research?

limit of what you can observe is not imposed by the limits of the data collection (asks more than just the question)

What are the steps of qualitative interviews?

design interview schedule, sample and conduct interviews, transcribe interviews, analyze transcripts

What is saturation

when a researcher determines that further data collection is unlikely to yield new information

Happens for qualitative research

How do you analyze a qualitative interview?

coding.

Transcribe into a document, search for salient themes of codes.

What is inductive coding?

Codes are generated from the data. When research question is exploratory. Example: what are the most important parts of the pandemic?

What is deductive coding?

Codes are developed in advance. When a research question is specific

What is ethnography?

the researcher embeds themself in the social milieu they wish to study.

Can range from complete participant to complete observer

What are the steps of Ethnography?

select research site and gain access, observe for min of 1 year, data is field notes

What is the role of the researcher in Ethnography?

the researchers social position has a huge impact on the quality of the data they are able to generate. ie outsider is an advantage or you must be demographically linked to the research site

What is qualitative content analysis?

the researcher analyzes the data using thematic codes