Flashcards in Chapter 2 Deck (15)
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1
Hypothesis
spells out what is being investigated
-sets out the relationship between variables such as age, education, race, income, employment status, marital status
-Ideas or guesses about a given state of affairs, put forward as bases for empirical testing
2
Research Designs/Methods
-Ethnography: Participant Observation
-The diverse methods of investigation used to gather empirical (factual) material. Different research methods exist in sociology, but the most commonly used are fieldwork (or participant observation) and survey methods. For many purposes, it is useful to combine two or more methods within a single research project.
3
Ethnography
The firsthand study of people using participant observation or interviewing
-research design
4
Surveys
-research design
-surveys are based upon questionnaires or interviews
-answers are collected from a sample that represents the whole population
5
Participant Observation
a method of research widely used in sociology and anthropology, in which the researcher takes part in the activities of the group or community being studied.
6
Population
The people who are the focus of social research
7
Pilot Survey
a trial run in survey research
8
Sample
a small proportion of a larger population
9
Sampling
studying a proportion of individuals or cases from a larger population as representative of that population as a whole
10
Mean
-average
-a statistical measure of central tendency, or average, based on dividing a total by the number of individual cases.
11
Median
- middle value
-the number that falls halfway in a range of numbers—a way of calculating central tendency that is sometimes more useful than calculating a mean
12
Correlation Coefficients
-variables change together
-the measure of the degree of correlation between variables
13
Random Sample
sampling method in which a sample is chosen so that every member of the population has the same probability of being included.
14
Experiment
a research method in which variables can be analyzed in a controlled and systematic way, either in an artificial situation constructed by the researcher or in naturally occurring settings.
15
