SOC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Research Question, Nvivo, Fallacy
23 Jan 2018
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Why is sociological research important: common sense vs. scienti c knowledge, scienti c knowledge uses empirical methods, sociology as a science. Sociological reasoning: combines empirical methods with theory. Concept: abstract idea: e. g. social class, ambiguous. Variable: categorical concept for properties of people or things: e. g. marital status, not ambiguous at all, deductive and inductive reasoning. Theories - hypothesis - data gathering - findings. Deductive: you must already have a pre conceived notion of what the world is before you can see the world. You can"t deduce anything without having a preconceived notion of what to deduce. Explore - describe - explain - critically assess. Step 1: research question: e. g. is there a relationship between money and happiness, very general question. Find what is known, to nd where there are gaps and limitations: use sociological databases. Operationalize variables (translate a social phenomenon into a measurable variable) Develop a hypothesis: hypotheses express a relationship between variables.
