Methods (Unit 1)

Why Do We Need Methods?

• A method is a study design

  • Allows us to systematically study the social world

  • Makes our conclusions more reliable

Race, Employment, and Criminal Record

• Devah Pager discusses her audit study research on the effects of race and a criminal record on those looking for jobs

• Allowed her to help answer a longstanding question: Why were people who had been in prison less likely than others to be employed?

Research Methods

** There is no perfect method, they all have limitations!

• Take into account:

  • Topic

  • What you want to know

  • Resources

  • Research skills

• Triangulation:

  • The use of two or more methods in a study in order to check the results. The idea is that one can be more confident with a result if different methods lead to the same result

Quantitative:

• Experiments

  • Research in which the researcher manipulates conditions for some research participants but not others and then compares group responses to see whether doing so made a different

  • Three types:

    • Audit

    • Lab

    • Survey

  • Strengths:

    • High control

    • Establish causality: we can be pretty confident of the effect of the one element we’ve isolated

    • Can be replicated

  • Weaknesses:

    • Can’t ethically study some topics experimentally

    • Artificiality: may not be sure if subjects would act the same way in the “real world” outside the carefully controlled environment

    • In reality, we’re never influenced by just one social factor at a time

    • Expensive and time-consuming

• Surveys

  • Set of questions subjects respond to

  • Quantitative research in which the researcher systematically asks a large number of people the same questions and then records their answers

  • Asks questions about:

    • Behaviors

    • Opinions/attitudes

    • Characteristics

    • Expectations

    • Self-classification

    • Facts/knowledge

    • Beliefs

    • Interviewer characteristics and impressions

  • Strengths:

    • Relatively quick, easy to administer

    • Relatively cheap

    • Can get lots of data from many people

  • Weaknesses:

    • May be hard to get people to respond

    • Wording issues

    • Subjects can lie

    • Restricts possible answers, less nuanced

• Secondary data analysis

  • The use of data that was collected by someone else for some other purpose. In this case, the researcher poses questions that are addressed through the analysis of a data set that they were not involved in collecting

    • Ex.: Census Data, NYSY, GSS

  • Survey data can be primary or secondary

  • Strengths:

    • Available and free

    • Many are conducted on a nationally representative sample

  • Weaknesses:

    • Less familiar with the data

    • Limited questions can be asked

Qualitative:

• Interviews

  • Research method by which the researcher asks people questions and follows up or probes their answers

  • Strengths:

    • Less restrictive

    • High credibility and face validity

    • Flexible

  • Weaknesses:

    • Interpersonal dynamics

    • Expensive, time-consuming

    • Not generalizable

    • More subjective

• Participant observation/field research

  • Research method in which the researcher takes on a role in a social setting and directly interacts with real people in a natural setting in order to provide a very detailed description of a different culture from the viewpoint of an insider and to facilitate understanding

  • Strengths:

    • Close and intimate familiarity, detailed information

    • Personal understanding of what it feels like to take part in that social world

    • High face validity

  • Weaknesses:

    • Interpersonal dynamics, ethical issues

    • Time-consuming, possibly expensive

    • Not generalizable

Both Quantitative & Qualitative

• Content analysis

  • Use existing sources (historical records, newspaper stories, TV shows, etc.)

  • Manifest content: QUANTITATIVE

    • Concrete terms contained in a communication

  • Latent content: QUALITATIVE

    • The underlying meaning of communications as distinguished from their manifest content

  • Benefits:

    • Unobtrusive

    • Affordable

    • Replicable

  • Weaknesses:

    • Can’t control quality of data (incomplete data, information intended to be shared)

    • Restrictive in questions it can ask

    • Time-consuming

Ethics

**Three things to know about the Belmont Report

The three principles essential to the ethical conduct of research with human subjects:

1. Respect for persons

   1. Protecting the autonomy of all people and treating them with courtesy and respect and allowing for informed consent

   2. Informed consent must be:

      1. Informed (information and comprehension)

      2. Free (voluntariness)

2. Beneficence

   1. The philosophy of “do no harm” while maximizing benefits for the research projects and minimizing risks to the research subjects

3. Justice

   1. Fair and equitable selection of research participants

   2. Benefits and burdens of research is distributed fairly among populations