SOC 300 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Unstructured Data, Pseudoscience, Antipositivism
Document Summary
Soc 300 research methods ch1 science, society & social research. How we learn about the social world: observation, generalizing, reasoning, reevaluating. Illogical reasoning: resistance to change due to, ego, excessive devotion to traditions, uncritical agreement with authority. Science & social science: science is always changing with new discoveries & research, pseudoscience looks real but isn"t supported by evidence. Motivations for research: public policy/laws, academics, personal interest. 4 types of research: descriptive: social phenomena are defined & described, exploratory: (cid:498)what"s going on here? (cid:499) unstructured data collection, explanatory: cause & effect; predict changes, evaluation: impact of social policy & programs (type of explanatory research) Different people understand things differently: interpretivism: reality is not socially constructed. Nevertheless it is key to understand subjective meanings people give to reality: science, basic: academically motivated experiments or research following the scientific method, applied: policy/program evaluation is the motivation; uses scientific method.
