Sociology 2205A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Frequency Distribution, Cumulative Frequency Analysis, Statistical Inference
19 Apr 2018
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Research: any process by which information is systematically and carefully gathered to answer questions, examine ideas, or testing theories. Statistics: a set of mathematical techniques used by social scientists to organize and manipulate data to answer questions and to test theories. Theory: an explanation of the relationships between phenomena. According to materialistic theory health if affected by social class. Variable: any trait that can change values from case to case (gender, age) Hypothesis: statement about the relationship between variables that are specific and exact. Stats are crucial, without them quantitative research is impossible. Stats are rather limited (cannot make errors or asked poor questions) Sole purpose of stats is to manipulate and analyze data so research questions can be answered. Data reduction: allowing a few numbers to summarize many numbers and is the basic goal of univariate stats. Measures of association: allow researcher to quantify the strength and direction of a relationship (bivariate/multivariate)
