Social Science

  • Areas of interest: concepts that an anthropologist, psychologist, and sociologist would be most interested in researching and why

  • The psychologist is interested in individuals, what motivates them; how they think; what problems they have; how they see their world; and how they interact with the world. Psychologists try to explain, predict, and control behaviour and mental processes – thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are determined by both the genes you’re born with and the environment in which you’re raised. Through psychology, researchers are interested in helping people deal with personal challenges such as conquering fears, coping with illness. 

  • The sociologist, on the other hand, is curious about the relationships between people; how they interact in groups, how they organize into associations with other people, and how behaviour differs from person to person, group to group, culture to culture. Sociologists are interested in topics such as ethnic groups, social class, gender roles, criminology, deviance, and the institutions within our society such as schools and hospitals. 

  • Anthropologists study human beings as a species and as members of a culture. A culture consists of the ways in which a group of people live, and includes their traditions, values, beliefs, behaviours, and material objects. There are two main branches of anthropology: physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. 

  • Physical anthropologists are interested in how humans have developed biologically over time. It also looks at how humans are similar to and different from other species. The study of primates and evolution are examined as well as in present-day how different human groups resemble or differ from one another. For instance, they can study how physical traits are passed on or changed, and the ways in which the same disease will affect different populations of people. On the other hand, cultural anthropologists are interested in how culture has shaped the way in which people live today and how they have lived in the past. Cultural anthropologists question how a culture can be understood by an outsider. They examine cultures from both present-day and in history

  • Knowledge from the study of anthropology gives police departments background information about different cultures and the significance of human behaviour over time. The forensic investigation of crime scenes closely parallels the work of anthropologists. 

  • Police officers’ training often involves the work of sociologists when the police look at issues such as race relations and violence against women. 

  • An understanding of psychology is a part of all police work. The police department might even have a Psychologist on staff to help with tasks such as determining the personality profile of the possible criminal.

  • Types of research methods 

    • An independent variable is the variable that is changed or controlled in a scientific experiment to test the effects on the dependent variable. A dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured in a scientific experiment.

    • Independent = changed or controlled 

    • Dependent = being tested and measured

  • QUALITATIVE DATA: Information about qualities; information that can't actually be measured. ex. observations

  • QUANTITATIVE DATA: Information about quantities; that is, information that can be measured and written down with numbers ex. Experiments

  • CASE STUDIES

  • EXPERIMENTS

  • OBSERVATIONS

  • Unstructured observation – studying people without a predetermined idea of what to look for.  (ex. sit in a cafeteria and note what people say and do, be open to anything that may occur).

  • Structured observation – involves planning in advance what will be observed and noted, and keeping lists of things to look for.  Can also use content analysis, where you watch or view something (piece of writing/TV show/song lyric) and use a checklist to look for certain things or how often something happens. 

  • Participant observation – used mostly by anthropologists and is when a researcher lives among the culture being studied. The researcher is a participant in the group, and the subjects are aware that they are being observed. 

  • SAMPLE SURVEYS

  • INTERVIEWS

  • Surveys: Collect data from a sample of individuals to generalize findings to a larger population. These can be conducted through various methods, including online questionnaires or face-to-face interactions.

  • Process of inquiry steps   

  • Step one: identify a problem or question

  • Step two: develop a hypothesis

  • Step three: GATHER DATA – SOURCES

  • Step four: Analyze the data

  • Step five: draw conclusions

  • Research/experimenter bias 

  • Biased questions often include emotionally charged words, assumptions, or phrases that frame the issue in a particular way, potentially influencing the respondent's answer. Unbiased questions remain neutral and open-ended, allowing respondents to answer based solely on their opinions or beliefs.