SOCI 1210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Statistical Hypothesis Testing, Falsifiability, Dependent And Independent Variables
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Sociological Research
Approaches to Sociological Research
Scientific Method
-4 key characteristics
-Replicability: Other should be able to independently replicate study and get similar results
-Precision: Theoretical concepts must be defined with such precision
-Falsifiability
-Parsimony
-Process
-Ask questions: refine question to something testable/researchable
-Identify key concepts/constructs/variables
-Research existing literature
-Peer reviewed literature, recognised and reliable information sources
-Formulate hypothesis
-conjectural statement about relationship between variables
-Design and construct study
-Decide how to gather and analyze data
-Qual/quant; survey/experiment/existing stats/textual/case/focus/field
-Draw conclusions
-Report results
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Quantitative vs Qualitative approaches
-Quantitative (Positivist)
-Information from research collected in numerical form that can be counted/valued/measured -
“quantified”
-Observe, gather, and analyze data objectively
-Infer results to broader population
-Formal hypothesis testing
-Independent and Dependent variables
-Data gathering: Primary and secondary data
-Statistical analysis (descriptive/inferential)
-Qualitative (Interpretive)
-Information based on interpretations of meaning
-Observe, gather, and analyze data subjectively
-Informal hypothesis, “emergent”
-Goal is to describe, not infer
-Observations are contextually constrained
-Data gathering: primary and secondary data
-Case studies, focus groups, field research
-Qualitative analysis - “grounded research”
-Meaning/description/detail
-Discussion
-Some questions are well suited to qualitative, and some better suited to quantitative
-Really depends of what you are trying to understand
-Some things just cannot be quantified
-Sometimes you want to infer to the population
-If you need to measure and predict, them quantitative
-If you need to understand, find deeper meanings - qualitative
-Exception outside the quant/qual dichotomy
-Context analysis
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Document Summary
Replicability: other should be able to independently replicate study and get similar results. Precision: theoretical concepts must be defined with such precision. Peer reviewed literature, recognised and reliable information sources. Information from research collected in numerical form that can be counted/valued/measured - Some questions are well suited to qualitative, and some better suited to quantitative. Really depends of what you are trying to understand. Sometimes you want to infer to the population. If you need to measure and predict, them quantitative. If you need to understand, find deeper meanings - qualitative. Quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded to record/measure the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. Surveys, experiments, secondary data and textual analysis (quantitative) Survey: collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire.
