PLG 600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Impact Assessment, Syphilis, Informed Consent

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Planning
• Course: PLG 600
• Professor: Zhixi Cecilia Zhuang

Document Summary

Purpose: exploratory research, relatively unstudied topic, refi(cid:374)es (cid:862)(cid:449)hat(cid:863) (cid:396)esea(cid:396)(cid:272)h (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s, descriptive research, specific details re. a subject, situation or relationship, a(cid:374)s(cid:449)e(cid:396)s (cid:862)ho(cid:449)(cid:863) & (cid:862)(cid:449)ho(cid:863) (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s, explanatory research, builds on exploratory + descriptive research, a(cid:374)s(cid:449)e(cid:396)s (cid:862)(cid:449)hy(cid:863) (cid:395)uestio(cid:374)s. Data: qualitative, expressed as words, visual images, sounds, or objects, qualitative interviews, focus groups, field research, historical- comparative, quantitative, numbers, experiments, surveys, content analysis, existing statistics. What is theory: system of interconnected abstractions or ideas, condenses & organizes knowledge, explanation about how the world works (e. g. recurring patterns, aggregates, a probability/chance/tendency for events to occur) What does theory do: frames how we look and think about a topic, provides background assumptions, stays open to revision by new data, suggests ways to connect a single study to a broad class of explanations. Building a theory (on exam***: deductive reasoning (top down) , begin with abstract ideas, connect ideas using logical relationships, tests ideas using empirical observation, research tests theory.