Sociology 2206A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Internal Validity, Cultural Relativism, Canada Revenue Agency
22 Dec 2020
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Must know what we are looking at detailed description is key. Clarity in definition of our concepts is very important. Measures/indicators need to meet criteria of validity & reliability. Establishing causality: researchers want to know what causes social phenomena (& what they cause) Experimental & longitudinal research can get to temporal order. Generalization of findings to those not studied. Preferably make generalizations that apply to the whole population from whom the sample was taken. Having a representative sample is essential for this. Replication: repeating a study using the same methods. Provides a check for biases & routine errors. If the findings are not the same as those of the original study, the findings of the original are brought into question. If the same, researchers have greater confidence in the original findings. Can do a keyword search on whole databases (ie: sociological abstracts or social sciences citation index: hypothesis.
