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Unit 1 Lecture 2: Social Research
I. Development of sociology
- Sociology is a social science because it conducts research.
- Sociology develops in the late 1700s and early 1800s with a concern on moral decline in the context of a great social transformation--the industrial revolution and urbanization (factory cities)
- Sociology's development was part of the development of science and modernism
- Social science has intellectual precursors--e.g., Giambattista Vico (1600s-1700s) and his book, The New Science
- since God created nature, he alone can explain it
- since humankind created society, humankind can explain it
II. Scientific Method
theory ---> hypotheses ---> research design ---> data gathering ---> data coding/entering ----> analysis---> empirical generalizations ---> theory
III. Another approach: grounded theory
data gathering ---> theory
IV. Social research terms:
- quantitative vs. qualitative
- variables (empirical; dependent and independent)
- operationalization (from concepts to variables)
- cross-sectional study
- longitudinal study
- exploratory research
- historical study
- survey
- sample
- random sample
- experimental and control groups
- research instrument (questionnaire, interview schedule)
- database/dataset
- field research (ethnography)
- participant observation
- informants (not informers)
V. Research and Theoretical
- Perspectives
- Symbolic Interaction
- Functionalism
- Conflict Theory
- Conflict vs. Order Perspective
VI. Critics of Science
- Postmodern perspective
- Paul Feyeraband--Against Method and Farewell to Reason
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