SOCI 217 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Cohort Study, General Social Survey, Longitudinal Study
Week 3- Research design
Idiographic vs nomothetic
• Idiographic is going through all of the factors
• Nomothetic is focusing on a certain number of factors
Important Conclusions
• Correlation alone doesn’t eual causality
• Causal relationships do not imply complete causation
• All three criteria must be present for causality to exist
o Correlation
o Non-spurious
o Time order
• must be logical
causal logic in idiographic explanations
• techniques commonly used in constructing idiographic explanations
o situate you case
o focus on types of actives rather than types of people
o pay attention to the explanations offered by people living what you are studying
o compare you case with similar situations
o rely on analytic induction
Units of analysis and observation
• units of analysis
o what or whom being studied
o whatever it is that a researcher describes or explains and then draws inferences
about
• units of observation
o what is directly observed – where the data is collected from
o can be the same as the unit of analysis, but not necessarily
Common units of analysis
• individuals
o often characterized in terms of membership in social groupings
• groups
o often derive the characteristics of social groups from those of their individual
members
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
