Lecture 3 Notes

Question 1

What are the three forms of objectivity?

Answer 1

1. Freedom bias
2. Intersubjectivity
3. Reliability

Question 2

What is freedom of bias?

Answer 2

Is there always bias in social science? Not necessarily, able to correct biases, or choosing other methods = good methods.

Question 3

What is intersubjectivity?

Answer 3

 Open to inspection by others
 As long as people are open to scrutiny by other people.

Question 4

What is Karl Popper Falsifiability theory?

Answer 4

The ability to be corrected.
Saying something that could be false
Open to be wrong

• Human knowledge is always fallible.
• Human always make mistakes.
• Human knowledge is tentative, it could always be replaced by better new theories.
• dogmatic: deciding if you’re theory is the truth and defending it

Question 5

What are Lab studies?

Answer 5

Creating a simulated environment,by tasks, open-ended story, questionnaire, etc.

Problem; Too much controlled environment

Question 6

What is the difference from the scientfic method versus positivism?

Answer 6

Scientific method:

Theory > to deduction (general claims to more generalizable) >find out it is confirmed > if not keep on testing = falsifiable

Versus positivism:
Positivism uses induction.
whilst propper is all about keep on testing.

Positivism is about gate keeping, keep all the wrong things out.

Question 7

How do you measure the unobservable?

Answer 7

Theoretical construct

Operationalize concepts.
* If there is a pattern, its portrayed as something stable.
o Just like natural science?

Question 8

How do realists see internal things?

Answer 8

When there is a link with the outside world things are real.

Question 9

How do instrumentalists see internal things?

Answer 9

Internal things are not possible to measure directly, so not possible to link to something real. Just a pattern in a dataset.