SOC 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Uptodate
23 Mar 2018
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Document Summary
Social scientists rely on small groups of people, a sample, to reflect the thought, feelings, and behaviour of a larger group of humans, the population. Samples can be more or less representative of a larger population: probability samples (e. g. random samples) are designed to represent the larger population, non-probability samples include convenience and snowball samples. Limitations of scientific research: human behaviour is too complex to allow sociology to predict any individual"s actions precisely, because humans respond to their surroundings, the mere presence of a researcher may affect the behaviour being studied. Social patterns change constantly; what is true in one time or place may not hold in another: because sociologists are part of the social world they study, objectivity in social research is especially difficult. Subjective interpretation is always an important element in sociological analysis. Is cross-sectional: compare different groups at one point in time, measures attitudes, opinions, beliefs, values and behaviours.
