Sociology 1020 Lecture Notes - Spurious Relationship, Contingency Table, Operationalization
26 Sep 2012
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Document Summary
Scientific versus unscientific thinking: in everyday life, our biases easily influence our observations, biases often lead us to draw incorrect conclusions about what we see, ten common errors are regularly found in unscientific thinking. Types of unscientific thinking unscientific knowledge can be based on: tradition, authority, casual observation, overgeneralization, qualification, illogical reasoning, ego-defence, premature closure of inquiry, selective observation 10. mystification. Six steps in the sociological research cycle: 1. formulate research question 2. review existing research literature 3. select research method. 4. collect data 5. analyze data (most challenging step) 6. publish results. Ethical considerations: treatment of subjects is needed for respecting rights of research subjects, including: i. Iii: treatment of research results concern about plagiarism, especially with spread of world wide web. Measuring variables: sociologists need to translate abstract propositions into testable forms, operationalization: a variable: hypothesis: Main methods of sociology the four main methods in sociological research: experiments 2. Surveys: field research, analysis of existing documents and official statistics.
