SOC 101 Lecture Notes - Spurious Relationship, Inductive Reasoning, Deductive Reasoning

• School: Bishop's University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 101
• Professor: Barry Mc Clinchey

Document Summary

Kinds of research questions being asked depends on the kind of theoretical perspective from which you"re working: ex. Quantitative and qualitative approaches to knowledge and reasoning. Involves converting aspects of social life into numbers and determining if relationships exist between sets of numbers: data can be obtained using surveys. If the relationship co relates we need to reduce the probability that chance is describing what we"re seeing. Real explanations can be generalised to the population: results are comparative to other studies. Qualitative approaches: focus is on detail, tend to have smaller samples and are generally more expensive, uses interviewing and observation to obtain data. Non numerical data: how things work, why things work, smaller sample sizes, all kinds of research instruments - techniques and tools. Researchers use inductive logic and deductive logic. Inductive logic: moves from data to theory: gathers information about a topic before developing theories about how to explain it, often used by those with a qualitative approach.