SOCI 2001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Level Of Measurement, Thick Description, Participant Observation

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 2001
• Professor: Christine Pich

Document Summary

Emphasis on producing a rich and detailed understanding of social phenomenon; sometimes referred to as "thick description: paragraphs on social phenomenon v. a few sentences. Not all social phenomenon can be counted but that doesn"t mean that we should not study it. Just because it cannot be measured or turned into numbers, doesn"t mean that it is not important. Detailed life experiences and not abstracting them to numerical data: understand social life and aspects of social interactions. Methodological differences: research design, methods used, differences in what is there to study (ontology) and how we can know about it (epistemology) Ontology - what is the subject/object of this study. Epistemology - how can we know about this subject/object. Qual: non-numerical data (words, images, etc. , adaptive, flexible, emergent questions and concepts. It is understood that as your study evolves, you may have to adjust portions of your experiment. Altering your research question, how you get participants, etc.