SOC 2109 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Statistical Significance

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2109
• Professor: Sam Alvaro

Document Summary

Although there are a number of methods and perspectives employed to study people, several important concepts are used in almost all research projects including things like: Social theories refer to organized sets of proposition about how various elements of social life are related to one another. General predictions, based on these reasons, about how people will react to certain events or experienced or conditions. Research projects generally do not test theories but hypotheses, specific statements about how variables will relate to one another in a research study. Positive findings regarding a hypothesis simply provides support for a theory; it does not prove a theory to be correct. Theoretical concepts must be converted into variables, theoretical concepts put into a measurable form, a process called, operationalizing. Two important types of variables include independent and dependent variables, variables hypothesized to cause changes and those that change as a result of those variables.