Chapter 2

Concrete experience

  • touch, smell, taste, see, hear

Abstract Experience

  • The imaginative part of the mind that gives concrete experience meaning

Concepts

  • Terms for organizing concrete experience

Propositions

  • Statements that relate two or more concepts

  • Ideas about the social life

Unscientific Thinking: not good for sociology!

  • Bias

  • Casual Observation: we can be careless

  • Relying on Tradition: can be wrong

  • Relying on Authority: can also be wrong

    • Pseudoscience: claims that sound scientific, but really are not backed up by the standards of the scientific method

      • Takes advantage of selective observation and illogical reasoning, generating panic/hindering effective response by public agencies

Common errors in Inquiry

  • Overgeneralization

    • Treating an exception like a very plausible thing

  • Selective Observation

    • Only looking at the data you want to

  • Illogical Reasoning

Objectivity

  • “inter-subjective reliability

  • The degree of consistent observations from different people: a concensus

Insiders vs. Outsiders

  • Insiders: you have all the experience and know of the things that do and do not work

  • Outsider: you have different insights that may be new, but also cannot see the society more in-depth

Ethical Considerations

  • Voluntary Participation

  • Harm Reduction

    • Informed consent

  • Right to Privacy

    • Anonymity

    • Confidentiality

  • Authenticity

    • Debriefing

  • Ex: Indigenous people

    • Sick from residential schools, yet experimented on with supplement testing (vitamins)

    • Shows experiments should be led by the group being experimented on; include more research WITH and DONE BY Indigenous people

Positivism

  • Analyzing society with the idea that social realities exist independent of the observer and are “out there”, hence social realities are objective

    • Can measure all of society with quantitative data

    • deductive reasoning: starting with a general idea, then testing it

      • Speculation at first —> requires operationalization

    • Steps to Collecting Quantitative Data

      • Identify the theoretical idea of interest

      • Translate the abstract idea into a hypothesis through operationalization

      • Collect and analyze data

      • Accept or the reject the hypothesis

    • Hypothesis: testable form of a proposition

      • Concept —> variable

      • Proposition —> hypothesis

  • Quantitative Measures

    • Experiments: randomization and control/experimental groups

    • Want Validity and Reliability

    • Probability Sampling

    • Need Control variables —> no spuriousness!

Interpretivism

  • Social structures are subjective and we can only understand a society by understanding these subjective meanings which people put onto things (meanings and motives)

    • Inductive Reasoning: observe and draw out meanings, trends and themes

    • Qualitative Data Analysis, the steps of which are

      • Find research interest based on concrete experience

      • Collect evidence from one or more cases of the same type

      • Identify common patterns/themes

      • Use sociological concepts to interpret patterns and themes: stress that context matters

  • Qualitative Approaches

    • Purposive sampling + snowball sampling

    • Participant Observation, aka. Ethnomethodology (NOT ETHICAL!) → also usually denied access

    • Reactivity / Social Desirability Bias → both of which decrease over time without breaking ethical regulations

    • Key Informants: people who can guide the researcher with reliable information of culture, issues, activities, etc.

    • Unstructured / Semi structured interviews → a conversation

    • Stress Authenticity

  • Exploratory Research

    • Research that seeks to formulate theories rather than testing them

    • Focus Groups

Digital Sociology

  • Use of digital technology as a tool and a subject of research

  • Is nonreactive → does not affect those studied

    • Use of digital traces, which basically everyone has except the homeless

    • The sum of all digital traces = big data, requiring strong-ass computers

  • Data revealed:

    • On dating apps, more people go for people who are more desirable than themselves

      • Lower for old, educated women

      • Men mostly make first contact

  • Google Trends

    • More concern over daughter’s weight, more concern about son’s intelligence

    • More concern of son’s sexuality: “Is my son gay?” (but has not levelled off)

  • Advantages:

    • lowers social desirability bias

    • free, less sampling bias

  • Disadvantages:

    • Some people do not have wifi, hence not all are represented

    • “Dirty”: wrong information, trolls, duplicate data

    • AI is not real people

    • Breaches ethics: voluntary participation ;-;

Ultimately: subjectivity leads, objectivity follows (somebody makes a subjective idea, then people can agree and make it objective) (example: Gender revolution, somebody steps up and says its not equal, and objectivity follows)