SOCI 1001H Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Dependent And Independent Variables, Longitudinal Study, Operationalization
14 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Social Research Methods
The Research Process
• Start with something we need to understand
• Our sense of the issue is related to theory (a deductive approach)
• Hypothesis (created from theory):
• A statement of a relationship between two or more concepts/variables
• A more specific statement, and easier to test in the real world than a theory
• A statement of what you expect to observe in the empirical world
• Conceptualization:putting into words what you mean by your concepts
• Variables:
• Measures of concepts that have more than one value
• Value: attribute or quality that makes up a variable
• Independent variable:
• factors that might cause the dependent variable to change
• Comes in time before dependent variable
• Dependent variable:
• Varies in relation to independent variable
• Antecedent variable:
• Comes in time before the independent variable
• Could impact dependent variable
• Intervening variable:
• Comes in time between independent and dependent
variable
• Operationalization:
• Process of transforming abstract ideas into a set of concrete indicators that can
be observed and measured
• How you are going to measure your variables
• Validity:
• Quality of measuring precisely what one intends to measure
Key Considerations of research design:
• Sampling:
• Using some individuals or individual groups to represent a larger population you
are interested in
• Time-dimension:
• Longitudinal study is done over time to monitor change
• Cross-sectional study is a study done at one point in time
Some considerations of research design
• Methodology: set of procedures and research activities used to look for social patterns
and regularities
• Choice of methods depends on:
• Resources: might not have resources or funds needed to do a project
• Access to subjects: people might not be willing to be a part of study, or
not easy to find
• Purpose of the research/types of questions being asked: depending on
what you want to know you may choose a different method of finding
information
• Researcher’s training
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