COMM 2301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Operationalization, Central Tendency, Likert Scale

• School: Northeastern University
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 2301
• Professor: bobbivangilder

Document Summary

1: tradition: culture (ideas about gender, race, religion), things learned in the socialization process. Important to challenge tradition and look or new information: authority: because x person says so. We want to look for multiple studies that find the same pattern. Ex: jenny mccarthy is an actress not a doctor: science: logic and observation. Social science: draws on the scientific method to study social phenomena, concerned with human interaction. Science is : public, observations and findings are not to be kept private, objective*, as much as possible. 2: some phenomena cannot be measured, objectivity is not entirely possible, science doesn"t provide answers to moral or philosophical questions. Specific procedures researchers use to study phenomena: quantitative research methods use statistics to analyze data. Conceptualization: process of coming to agreement about what term means, the agreed-upon definition is a concept, direct observation (hair color, size) Indirect observations (age, place of birth, education level: concept: the thing itself, construct: how it"s measured.