Sociology 1027A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Syphilis, Stanford Prison Experiment, Major Trauma
7 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
In everyday life, our biases influence our observations. Biases often lead us to draw incorrect conclusions about what we see. Common errors in unscientific thinking include: selective observations, excessive trust in tradition and authority, overgeneralization, premature closure of observations. Scientific thinking seeks to avoid these types of errors. Researchers employing quantitative methods (statistical analysis) emphasize deductive reasoning. Researchers employing qualitative methods (interviews and observations) emphasis inductive reasoning. Takes the following steps: identify a theoretical idea of interest, translate the abstract idea into a testable hypothesis, collect and analyze data, accept or reject the hypothesis. Focus is on numbers, statistical analysis, large samples. Operationalization: the process by which a concept is translated into a variable. Variable: a measure of a concept that has more than one value or score. Hypothesis: the testable form of a proposition. Dependant variable: presumed effect ind pendant variable: presume cause.
