SY101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: The Big Questions, Sampling Bias

• School: WLU
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SY101
• Professor: Dana Sawchuk

Document Summary

Things to avoid (and be aware of) in research: choosing a biased sample, asking biased/leading questions, listing biased choices (closed ended choice questions that push people to answer in a specific way, discarding undesirable results. Surveys: best way to conduct a survey that is representative of an entire population (ex. Students in a university) is to conduct a random sample to determine who you will ask to complete the survey to avoid bias . In any sociological research, ensure to ask standardized (non-leading) questions which respondents acn respond to. Questionnaires and structured interviews: both use close-ended questions (with a list of possible answers, most often, sociologists construct self-administered questionnaires allows a large group of people to be sampled at a low cost. Sociologists also use structured interviews fast to administer + easy to categorize answers but answers listed on the questionnaire may not include all of the respondents" opinions.