SOCL 2001 : Sociology Textbook Notes Final Exam
Document Summary
Chapter 2 sociological investigation: science represents a fourth way of knowing. A positivist approach to the world assumes that the objective reality exists out there. : concept- a mental construct that represents some part of the world in a simplified form. Sociologists use concepts to label aspects of social life including the family , the economy and to categorize people in terms of their gender or social class: **variable- a concept for whose value changes from case to case. The familiar variable price for example has value that changes from item to item in the supermarket: **the use of variables depends on measurement- a procedure for determining the value of a variable in a specific case. Some variables are easy to determine if you step on a scale and see how much you weigh: operationalize a variable- specifying exactly what is to be measured before assigning a value to a variable.
