SOC 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Operationalization, Stanford Prison Experiment, Extrapolation
Document Summary
Two main approaches to social research: quantitative, qualitative. The language of research: hypothetical/propositional statements, variables, dependent variables what we are trying to explain. Independent variables: measurement criteria, validity of measures, reliability of measures. Interconnection of validity and reliability: correlation, when two or more variables vary together, indicating a possible relationship between/among the variables. Spurious correlation: causation, when one variable precedes and causes another variable. Spurious correlation occurs when one variable seems to correlate with another, but in reality the correlation is false: research population. The group" (i. e. , people, social phenomena, processes, etc. ) that researchers want to make knowledge claims about. The subset of the population that researchers actually study: random samples, convenience samples. Mixed methods: a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. Statistical analysis: descriptive statistics, mean, median, mode. Decision and generalization: accept or reject the hypothesis, verification. Research ethics: university based research and the research ethics board.
