SOCI 3820 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Electronic Body Music, Nonprobability Sampling
25 Nov 2013
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Chapter 3 researching health: methodological traditions and innovations. Quantitative approaches and positivist research methodologies, attempt to study the world through standardized procedures, uninfluenced by politics, subjectivity, or culture. These methodologies, including randomized control trails and epidemiological surveys, have proven to be very powerful methods for examining the efficacy of various treatments and identifying the risk factors associated with particular disease. Positivist research typically considered to be more important than other forms of research and, as a consequence, the cultural and interpretative dimensions of social life are often inadequately researched and understood. Furthermore, supporters of positivist methodologies pretend that politics does not influence the research process and, as a consequence, ore often blind to the power of the particular interest groups that these research methodologies serve. Randomized control trials are a powerful way of demonstrating the efficacy of drugs and other biomedical interventions for diseases. Evidence-based medicine equates evidence with positivist and clinical expertise.
