SOCY 210 Study Guide - Final Guide: Factor Analysis, Situational Ethics, Social Stratification

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 210
• Professor: Vincent F Sacco

Document Summary

Setting up the premise that scientific understanding is only one type of understanding, and it generally comes to use through other forms of knowledge like authority, traditions and common sense. When people tell us proverbs, they are meant to be a little bit of caution that rest on little empirical knowledge. There is no evidence of their truth, but people just assume they are true. What is wrong with traditional knowledge is that it is not consistent. In the simplest language, variables represent the operation of concepts. Variable represent the way in which we take concepts and transform them into empirically observable measures. Something that is capable of having different values for different people. A classification of related kinds of measures, that is used to described the member of a sample along some kind of particular dimension. Concepts that can be operationalized and measured. But what explains the variations, and variables represent what we are trying to explain.