HDFS202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Syphilis, Official Statistics

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Human Development and Family Studies
• Course: HDFS202
• Professor: Bahira Sherif Trask

Document Summary

Basic unit of analysis - family instead of individual or society. Access to subjects: what is a hot topic at the time. Research provides observations used to verify or disprove theory. Issue of objectivity/ethics: white middle class used as norm. Quantitative - numerical analyses of people"s responses or specific characteristics. Researchers use surveys to systematically collect information or data through questionnaires or interviews. It is important to have a representative sample of the population that you are interested in studying. Oftentimes, face to face interviews are used for social science research. Surveys are a cost effective way to gather lots of information. There are many companies who are now using the internet to do online surveys. One of the major limitations of surveys that use mailed- questionnaires is a low response rate - usually around 3% Another limitation of using a mailed questionnaire is that people may not be honest when answering the questions.