SOC150H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Nomothetic, Data Analysis, Blackboard
SOC5 Lecture Notes:
Lecture 3
• Why do we need to know?
o Inquiry is a natural human activity (e.g., a child – are e there et
o Much of everyday inquiry seeks to explain events and predict future events
▪ E.g., questioning is largely gendered – women are more likely to ask for
directions than men vs. men are more likely to get lost
o What we need to know is in the realm of epistemology and in the realm of
methods
o We also need to know things because knowledge has utility – it is useful and
helps us navigate the social world
▪ We can not experience every single thing our self to know that they are
real
• How do you know?
o Inquiry helps us find out:
▪ Where were going
▪ How to get what we want
▪ How to know what we need to know
▪ We navigate the world with knowledge – who to talk to, who not to talk
to, how to get somewhere, what to wear, etc.
o We navigate and make sense of the work through inquiry
o In the social sciences the key is to make our process of inquiry more methodical
▪ E.g., making a cake – why do we need a recipe? We want to ensure that
e hae a cake at the ed of it ad othig else. It’s the sae ith a
research question – ethods are do pact so e are’t astig our
time and money and we are answering the question we sought out to
answer
o The motivation of a question is more important than just a question about if or if
you did not do something
o Methodical inquiry (as in the social sciences) helps avoid errors common in
everyday inquiry
▪ For example:
▪ Inaccurate observations
▪ Overgeneralizations – observations done on small numbers, and
overgeneralizing to the group those individuals belong to
▪ Selective observation – let the data drive the theory, not the other way
around
▪ Illogical reasoning – e.g., I say I have plans on Saturday, and the weather
has been nice all week and you say it will definitely rain on Saturday there
is no way it wont
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