SOC 201 Chapter 6: Chapter 6.10
Document Summary
Similar techniques can be used to build an understanding of contemporary social processes. On a particular college campus, the dean of students receives phone calls from parents who are concerned that students might be drinking too much alcohol. The dean decides to do some research to determine just how much drinking is taking place on campus. Her first thought might be, if i want to know something, why not simply ask? . So, she designs a questionnaire that asks about drinking behaviors and sends a copy to each student on campus. The dean tabulates the responses with a sigh of relief: 99. 99 percent of the students say that they rarely drink more than one beer a week. The assistant dean (who majored in sociology) warns his boss that the data from the questionnaire might be biased. It"s possible, he says, that the students did not wish to reveal the true amount of drinking because they were afraid of the consequences.
