Week 1 Chapter 1: The Uses of Social Research. Task 1 Draw a Circle on a piece of paper. Sit on...

Week 1

Chapter 1: The Uses of Social Research

Task 1

Draw a Circle on a piece of paper. Sit on it.

Science is all about asking questions:

Who What Where When Why How Research methods is about how we

answer those questions.

The course in one sentence:

Social research is the systematic observation of social life for the purpose of finding and understanding patterns among what is observed. (Babbie, p. 2)

Have you ever participated in social science research before (as a researcher or subject)?

Is it possible you have and didn’t know it?

Science of Shopping

Video: Why study Research Methods?

1. To know how to create research.2. To know how to read, interpret, and

evaluate research.3. Because it is being used around you,

and conducted on you (ethics?).

– This video introduces some of the fundamentals of this course

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/science-shopping-15127822

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjHObmgXKI

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/science-shopping-15127822

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeZUkeWHg-Y

Soc-Cjs 201/Psc 202

Research is to gain knowledge. In this class: 1. understand how to theoretically

“know” based on standards of social science and,

2. have developed some of the fundamental technical skills to do so.

Write down three things you know:

Who was the first president of the United States? Does God exist?

How is the weather outside? What is the shape of the earth?

Ways of Knowing Knowledge from Authorities Obtaining information from authorities, which

are socially defined sources of knowledge, such as religion, government, and families

Knowledge from Personal Inquiry Using inquiry that employs our senses for

arriving at knowledge Knowledge using the Scientific Method Conducting empirical research following rules

that specify objectivity, logic, and communication among a community of knowledge seekers, and the connection between research and theory.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of each of these ways of knowing?

In what situations would each of them be most useful?

http://www.nixonfoundation.org/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/universes/html/univ_ptole.html

Do eye witnesses ever disagree?

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/universes/html/univ_ptole.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/PictDisplay/Galileo.html

http://www.waderowland.com/galileo/Back

The Scientific Method is based in the Research Process

Source: Giddens, Duneier, and Appelbaum 2003:34

We will Do all

of these as we work up to the final

paper!

Promoting skepticism about its knowledge claims is a strength!


Must be factually testable (not opinion or fantasy or metaphysical) such as: does income increase as education increases?

Monk Story

An analogy for why it is important to review the original source of the research. A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the

other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies,

not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk, says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

So, he goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscript is held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall, and wailing, "We forgot the "R", We forgot the "R" His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word is celebrate. The word is celebrate."


The Textbook will guide us through this

The labs will help you practice this- and so will service learning.


Peer review is critical here

http://blog.historians.org/2010/06/assessing-the-future-of-peer-review/

The centerpiece of the process of scientific objectivity is pre-publication peer review.

[FN248] Generally, peer review operates as follows. A research report is submitted to a scientific journal for possible publication. [FN249] The norm is that a paper may be under review only at a single journal at a time, a norm that differs greatly from that typically followed by law reviews in the United States, which allow authors to make multiple, simultaneous submissions. After a preliminary review by the journal's editor, any indication of the author's identity and affiliation is removed from the paper and copies are sent to reviewers who have expertise in the areas covered by the paper.

In this process of blind peer review, there are typically three or more reviewers who are asked to assess the paper for its scientific merit. In evaluating the research paper and findings, reviewers are expected to employ the standards of the scientific method that we have previously described. Specifically, they are to determine whether the logic of scientific inquiry was followed in the research. [FN250] Reviewers then examine the merit of the work in terms of methodological design and analysis standards, specifically examining measurement validity and internal, external, and analytic validities. [FN251] Reviewers are also mindful of professional ethical standards [FN252] in their review, particularly as they relate to potential researcher bias and to the protection of human subjects.

After the journal receives the reviews, a judgment is made on the research report. Judgments generally fall into the following categories: accept for publication; accept pending minor revisions; reject with an invitation to undertake major revisions and then to resubmit for further reconsideration; and reject. In the social sciences, most papers are either rejected or given "revise and resubmit" decisions at this point

Is it Perfect?-No (a work in progress)

Disagreement about what can be known:

See knowledge as: Strive for:

Positivist Based on what can be perceived, observed, measured

Objectivity- seeing the world as it is

Post-Positivist Always speculative (not irrefutable) but still useful

Intersubjectivity- points of agreement (consistency) from multiple observers comparing their findings

Bias in what gets published

Another example of publication bias?

Does being bilingual improve cognitive function? Photo: Terry Vine / Getty Images.

Does being bilingual give people a cognitive advantage? According to published research, it does. In fact, I've summarized one such study on this blog. However, the website for the Association for Psychological Science (APS) has summarized a recent review of this research. The review starts with the research that has been published on this question:Many published studies have shown that bilingual speakers perform better on cognitive tasks related to executive function abilities — such as those involved with attention and the ability to ignore distractions and switch between tasks — when compared to people who are fluent in only one language.But what about the research that hasn't been published? Does the unpublished research on bilingualism show pretty much the same pattern? Or is there a file drawer problem (see Ch 14, p. 422), in which research that shows no effect of bilingualisim on cognitive abilities is less likely to be published? Here's the APS summary:.... in informal discussions with colleagues, [researcher] de Bruin and her co-authors confirmed that study results that fail to support the bilingual advantage often don’t make it to publication. Thus, they never become part of the established scientific literature — a phenomenon known as the “file drawer effect.”For a researcher interested in this question, the challenge in estimating the "file drawer effect" is in locating studies that have not been published. How would you find such studies? You can't locate them in journals, and they won't be searchable in the PsycINFO database. To address this problem, a new summary of the research on bilingualism and cognition took this approach:

http://www.everydayresearchmethods.com/chapter-13/

But does anyone care about my findings?

From: Bauer Chapter 3 How Science Really Works p.45

# of Research Journals in Existence

From: Bauer Chapter 3 How Science Really Works p.45

Why?

Because People Want to Know for sure.

Common Knowledge isn’t good enough anymore.

Scientific Research Vs. Common Knowledge Opposites attract. Birds of a feather flock together.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder. Out of Sight Out of Mind.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race. She/He who hesitates is lost. Strike while the iron is

hot. Early bird catches the worm

Haste makes waste. A stitch in time saves 9.

To use the scientific method we translate our questions about social life into….

A Research Question: a question about one or more topics or concepts that can be answered through research.

In the following case, what is the research question and how do they answer it?

Do Birds of a Feather Flock Together?- Is There Really Such A Thing As A 'Trophy Wife'?

VEDANTAM: I spoke with Elizabeth McClintock. She's a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. And she thinks that the trophy wife phenomenon is actually much, much rarer than most of us think. And her skepticism of the phenomenon grows out of the fact that one of the foundational observations in sociology is that when it comes to love and marriage and all kinds of other social relationships, birds of a feather tend to flock together.ELIZABETH MCCLINTOCK: So if usually rich people marry rich people and pretty people marry pretty people, then having a pretty woman with no money marry an ugly, rich guy, that's a violation of the usual pattern that people select somebody who's a whole lot like themselves.

VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. And McClintock points out there's another confounding variable here, which is that beauty and wealth often tend to go hand in hand. And that's because the wealthy often have access to better nutrition, better cosmetics. But it's also the case the wealthy are defining what beautiful is. So it used to be in America being plump was beautiful at a time when only the rich could be plump. But if wealth and beauty are actually going hand in hand really often it could be that lots of pretty women might themselves be rich, which again means they might not be trophy wives.

http://kwit.org/post/there-really-such-thing-trophy-wife

VEDANTAM: That's right. So McClintock analyzed a survey that tracked a representative sample of American couples - 1500 couples in dating relationships, cohabiting relationships, marriage relationships. And what she found is that once you control for the fact that pretty woman might herself be well-off or that a rich guy might himself be good-looking, the trophy wife phenomenon effectively disappears. What you see is the rich hooking up with the rich, the pretty hooking up with the pretty. Now, that doesn't mean to say there aren't examples of the trophy wife, but our belief in the theory might say more about our minds than actual reality. Here's McClintock again.http://www.npr.org/2014/10/23/358238948/is-there-really-suc

h-a-thing-as-a-trophy-wife

Left off 1-22-15

Which of the following types of research is the “trophy wife” research we just learned about….?

Uses of SOCIAL RESEARCH

Exploratory Research Ground-breaking research on a relatively unstudied topic or in a new area

Descriptive Research Research designed to describe groups, activities, situations or events with a focus on structure, attitudes or behavior “how the land lies”

Explanatory Research Research that seeks to explain the cause of a phenomenon, and typically asks a “What causes what?” or “Why is it this way?” research question

Critical Research Research with the goal of critically assessing some aspect of the social world

Applied Research Research intended to be useful in the immediate future and to suggest action or increase effectiveness in some area (eg evaluation or participatory action research)

A research project can have more than one purpose.

100200

300

400500

Applied Research Explanatory ResearchCritical Research Exploratory ResearchDescriptive Research

Scientific Research (More Reliable) Vs. Common Knowledge

People Take Soc Research methods today are more comfortable using computers than students of previous years

Or Are they less comfortable? Does it depend on what program

we are using?Research Question: a question about one or more topics or concepts that can be answered through research.

How might you research this question?

Interviews, focus groups, questionnaires?

Qualitative-few cases, interpreting action or meaningQuantitative-statistical summary

“Social research is the systematic observation of social life for the purpose of finding and understanding patterns among what is observed. (Babbie, p. 2)”

Which is true? Write down what you think. Let’s examine this question, with a sample of individuals who take research methods…this class

…lets observe your personal assessment of skills and comfort

…lets do it systematically a survey, on the web. …then we’ll look for patterns

Research Question: a question about one or more topics or concepts that can be answered through research.

2015 Survey Link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vsverY68u4t_LIa9nsDeut_lVwYomcreji8NDmKPquw/viewform?usp=send_form



Please complete the survey now.

http://webserver.lemoyne.edu/~ridzifm/ http://lemoyne.edu/

sociology_anthropology/ridzi/survey.asp

Compare this process to Dr. Kelly’s Famous Punch Card

Tuesday (in lab) we will use the statistical tools we reviewed in our homework for today to answer this research question.

We will use the data we are creating now.

For now, lets review foundational statistics. Open excel and type in the numbers from your homwork.

We can then compare across time..Soc 201 Psc 202 Spring 2004

2.66

1.72 1.53 1.50 1.75 1.69

0.000.501.001.502.002.503.003.504.00

ON_L

INE

UNDERSTAND

APPLY

ASSESS

PROCESS

ANALYZE

Skill

Sel

f R

atin

g

To Analyze the rest of this data, review some basic descriptors…

Univariate statistics

“univariate” means examining one variable at a time

the most basic way of describing a variable is to produce a count of the number of cases or observations which take on each value of the variable

Central tendency

One useful way of “reducing data” or simplifying complex data is to give some idea of what is the average or typical case in the distribution

Central tendency: ordinal, interval or ratio variables

The median represents the exact center of a distribution of scores, and thus assumes that the scores can be ordered.

If the median family income for a community is $30,000, half the families earned more than $30,000, and half earned less than this amount.

Central tendency: interval & ratio variables

The mean, or arithmetic average, is the most commonly used measure of central tendency.

To calculate the mean, sum the scores over all the observations, and divide by the number of observations.

Formula for the Mean

NX

x1

Measures of dispersion

The mean, median, and mode locate the typical or central values of a variable’s distribution . . .

Measures of dispersion indicate the amount of heterogeneity or variety in a distribution of values.

Measures of dispersion: ordinal variables

Range = distance between highest and lowest values in the distribution

Measures of dispersion: interval variables

Deviations are the distances between the scores and the mean

Standard deviation is the conventional measure of dispersion for interval variables

Formula for the standard deviation

N

xxs

i2)(

Standard deviation

Standard deviation is especially useful in comparing the distributions of variables, e.g. among different groups.

The standard deviation is very sensitive to extreme values.

Use the Function Wizard in Excel to produce standard deviations.

Lets use MS Excel to double check the answers to the Review of Descriptive Statistics Due today

This will prepare us for Lab 1 which is completed with MS Excel

See Sample Article University of Miami Law Review October, 2004 Article *1 SOCIAL SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE IN FAMILY LAW CASES: JUDICIAL GATE-KEEPING IN THE DAUBERT ERA [FNa1] Sarah H. Ramsey [FNaa1] Robert F. Kelly [FNaaa1] Copyright © 2004 University of Miami Law Review; Sarah H. Ramsey; Robert F. Kelly Abstract

This article addresses the pressing issue of the appropriate use of social science research by courts in family law decision-making. The jurisprudence of family law is increasingly influenced by social science research. Frequently, social science-based instrumental and empirical claims, rather than moral ones, are used to justify family law decisions. In addition, debate about the proper use of social science by courts has been spurred on by the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals that makes courts gate-keepers responsible for assessing the validity of expert scientific testimony. The article recommends an expansion of the gate-keeping model and argues that judges should scrutinize not only expert testimony but other sources of social science as well. Implementing this new model requires understanding the complex interrelationship among courts' *2 modes of access, evaluation, and use of social science. Hence, one goal of this article is to examine how courts use and access social science in family law decisions. Another goal is to provide research evaluation standards to assist users of that research. To accomplish these goals, the article develops definitions and a typology of uses of social science by courts and explores how courts access social science research. It also proposes standards for judges and others in assessing and using social science research and provides a set of key questions to be used in such assessments. The article concludes that decision-making in family law cases can and should benefit from social science research, but that judges must take into account the need to critically evaluate the contribution that such research can make.

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