ATS2723 Lecture Notes - Research Question, Sampling Frame, Type I And Type Ii Errors
Social Research Methods
Week 1
• Social science research questions
1. How do people behave?
2. Why do people behave the way they do?
3. How do people think?
4. Why do people think the way they do?
• Why it is important
1. It helps improve social & economic situations
2. It assists in understanding the perspectives & situation
of others
3. It aids communication
4. It increases knowledge
5. & more!
• Methodology – how we know
1. Different methods of inquiry / approaches to science
2. Main approaches
▪ Positivist social science
▪ Interpretive social science
▪ Critical social science (e.g. Feminist & postmodern)
• Social Sciences & Social Research
1. The role of real world data: science accepts the authority
of empirical data, & its ideas have to be tested against
data
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2. The role of theory: the theory that explains rather than
just describe
3. Social science: the scientific study of human behavior
4. Social: people
5. Science: the way people & their behavior are studied
6. Aim: to build explanatory theory about people & their
behavior
7. Human behavior perspectives
▪ E.g. psychology, sociology, economics, political science,
anthropology
▪ Applied social sciences – e.g. education, family,
demography
• Empirical data
1. Quantitative: in the form of numbers
2. Qualitative:
not
in the form of numbers
• Steps in Social Research
1. Identify the research problem
2. Collect the data
3. Analyze the data
4. Make generalizations & inferences
• Dialectics of Social Research
1. Idiographic & Nomothetic Explanation
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2. Inductive & Deductive theory
3. Qualitative & Quantitative Data
4. Pure & Applied Research
• Goals of Research
o Exploratory research
o Descriptive research
o Explanatory research
o Evaluative research
• The Research Process
1. What you want to find out (i.e. research question)
2. How to go about finding the answer (i.e. research
methodology)
3. Conducting the study
• Question-Method Connections
o The match between research questions & research methods
should be close
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