SOC 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Participant Observation, Research, Critical Theory
31 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION
▪ Basics
o Apply sociological perspective
o Ask questions
▪ To answer questions there are different truths
▪ Science is one form of truth
• Not the same as common sense
▪ 3 ways to learn about the social world
o scientific
▪ study of society based on systematic observation of social behaviour
• society=orderly system
• researcher=neutral observer
▪ key terms
• concept
o mental construct representing the world in a simplifies
form
o ie family, gender, ethnicity
• variables
o concept whose value changes from case to case
o ie price- changes from item to item
• measurements
o procedure for determining value of a variable in a specific
case
o ie how do you measure social class?- income occupation
education
• operationally defined
o specifying what exactly is being measured
o ie we are measuring social class-are we going to measure
income level, years of schooling or occupation level
• reliability
o consistency in measurement
• validity
o actually measuring exactly what one intends to measure
• cause and effect
o change in one variable causes change in another
o ie high stress increases weed use
• correlation
o 2 or more variables change together
▪ can be spurious
• an apparent but false correlation between 2
or more variables caused by some other
variable
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
