SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Response Bias, Participant Observation, Ethnography
19 Dec 2020
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Our second reading for today is co-written by mcgill faculty member. Shelly clark: demographer who specializes in africa. Like all demographers, she uses statistical data to come with her findings. Since the main mechanism of transmission is sex, researchers need to get info. Difficult to get information on this for different reasons on this to better understand transmission. Common to give inaccurate results when there is a socially appropriate answer. Examples: common finding that americans give erroneous answers about how often the go to church and how much they give to charity. Norms saying both are good, and people want to present themselves as good both to the researcher and to convinve themselves that they are good. In many places in world, men tend to overestimate sexual activity, women tend to underestimate. Clark and co-authors depend on questionnaires to get the data for their statistical analyses. Use a technique to try to limit response bias.
