SOCL 2001 Chapter : Chapter 2 Outline
Document Summary
Steps in the research process: deciding on the problem, reviewing the literature, formulating research questions, selecting a method, analyzing the data. Emile durkheim"s study of suicide provides a good example of the process by which a sociologist converts a broad question about social change into the specific questions to be addressed in an empirical study. The ecological perspective leads to two types of studies: community studies and demographic studies. Community studies portray the typical day-to-day life of a particular population: demographic studies provide counts of people in various relevant population categories. It asks how society if organized to deal with a social issue or problem. The most frequently used methods are observation, experiments, and surveys. Field experiment: an experimental situation in which the researcher observes and studies subjects in their natural setting. Experiments: a large body of literature in the social science is based on experiments.
