Chpt. 2 Sect. 1 Flashcards
(21 cards)
Who is Mark S. Edwards?
A sociologist of Oregon State University that investigated the reasons for the high hunger rate and found problems in the way the state was distributing food stamps and making food available at food banks.
What did Edwards’ research help?
It assisted advocacy groups & legislators in improving the state’s efforts to enroll low-income families in food stamp programs and the changes based on his findings were credited with lowering the state’s hunger rate before the deep economic recession began in 2008.
What does it mean to say that sociology is a social science?
That is uses the scientific method to try to understand the many aspects of society that sociologists study
What are generalizations?
General statements regarding trends among various dimensions of social life
(A statement of a tendency, rather than a hard-and-fast law)
What does sociology rely heavily on? (Including the scientific method)
Systematic research that follows the standard rules of the scientific method
What does our usual knowledge and understanding of social reality come from?
- Personal experience
- Common sense
- The media
- “Expert authorities” (teachers, parents, govt. officials)
- Tradition
What is common sense?
Our taken for granted assumptions that we learn through our experiences or our cultural socialization
Describe common sense
- common sense is often incorrect
- what seems obvious from common sense can actually turn out to be not so “obvious”
Describe personal experience
- just because an observation fits our personal experience doesn’t mean it’s an accurate representation of what most people experience
- although personal experience is better than nothing, it often offers a very limited understanding of social reality than our own
Describe the media
-Media coverage may oversimplify complex topics or even distort what the best evidence from systematic research seems to be telling us
Describe expert authorities
-govt. officials may simplify or falsify the facts
What is tradition?
Long-standing ways of thinking about the workings of society
Describe tradition
- traditional ways of thinking about social reality often turn out to be inaccurate and incomplete
- traditional assumptions have “all people are equal and equal rights”
- most sociologists certainly don’t believe that women and people of color are biologically & culturally inferior
What is the scientific method?
A systematic research process intended to minimize researcher bias and produce the most accurate conclusions possible
What are the basic scientific method steps?
- Select a research topic
- Conduct a literature review
- Formulate a hypothesis
- Select a research design
- Define a sample
- Collect and analyze data
- Draw an appropriate conclusion and report the results
The scientific method is followed in the social sciences to…
Help yield accurate and reliable conclusions that are free of bias or methodological errors
What does the scientific method help reduce?
-the potential that researchers conduct their research in a manner that “helps” achieve the results they expect to find
What does the scientific method help prevent?
-the influence of social & political beliefs on how they conduct their research on these topics and how they interpret the results of this research
What are two important requirements for scientific research?
- Reliability
2. Validity
What is reliability?
The ability to repeat a research study and get the same results
What is validity?
The study actually measures what the researcher intends to measure
