SOCI 1F90 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Operational Definition, Social Desirability Bias, Participant Observation
10 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
Theory- a statement that tries to explain how certain facts or variables are related to predict future events: theory does not happen in isolation from research, it can inform the research process and it can develop from it. Method- actual techniques and strategies for gathering data. Methodology- theory and analysis of how research does or should proceed: two broad methodological approached: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research: tends to be programmatic (deductive, scientific objectivity is the goal, involves concerting aspects of social life into numbers, analysis is accomplished by means of statistics, usually involves large samples. Research can be proved only by empirical means, not argumentations: the relationship between theory and practice must be objective. Anti positivism: a theoretical approach that considers knowledge and understanding to be the result of human subjectivity, is more consistent with qualitative sociology. Operational definition- description of something that allows it to be measured (providing a description of how the variable is to be measured)
