SOC 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Research

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1010
• Professor: Lovaglia Michael

Document Summary

Human beings change their behavior when being studied. Sociologists are part of the world they study making objectivity more difficult. Start studying the processes not the way society is at a given moment . The more serious the crime, the more likely an investigator will break the rules to close the case. The more serious the research question, the easier it is for bias to creep into the results. Experiment: allows the investigation of cause and effect under highly controlled conditions. Experimental group: research subjects for whom independent variable changes. Control group: research subjects for whom the independent variable does not change. Random assignment to groups: all subjects have an equal chance of being assigned to any group. Social experiments are most interesting when they show that individual behavior is caused by social factors. Milgrim"s electric shock experiment showed that an appropriate social setting, normal.