Intro to Soc4

8/14/2019 Intro to Soc4

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If we’re allsociologists, why do

social research?(Because, on average, we’re not very good observers)

The Science of Sociology



How do we come to

“know” things?Tradition

Authority

Personal Inquiry

Direct Exper ience and Observation



Errors in Observation

Inaccurate observations

Overgeneralization

Selecti ve observation

Illogical Reasoning



Looking for Reality

Two Criteria:Logical support - must make sense

Empirical support - must not contradict

actual observation.



The components of

scientific researchTheory - deals with logic.

Data collection - deals with observation.

Data Analysis - deals with the comparison

of what is logically expected with what isactually observed.



What do social

scientists observe?Patterns in social life (social regularities)

People with a lot of educat ion tend toearn more than people with less

Men tend to die of stress-relateddiseases more frequent ly than women



What do social

scientists observe?Deviations from patterns in social life (social irregularit ies)

Girls who participate in youth sportsdefy the pattern of gender-based income inequality

Some countries with low per capita GDP have the highest reported rates of personal happiness



Observation StepsAsk a quest ion (hypothesize)

Define concepts (conceptualize)

Conceptualization...

Is the process of specifying what we mean when we use particular terms;

produces an agreed upon meaning for a concept for the purposes of research.

Descr ibes the indicators we'l l use to measure the concept and the different aspects of the concept.



What factors influence pedestrian safety in large cities?



1 NY, NY 7,323 309 23,700

2 San Francisco, CA 724 47 15,500

3 Chicago, IL 2,784 227 12,300

4 Boston, MA 574 48 11,900

5 Philadelphia, PA 1,586 135 11,700

6 Washington, DC 607 61 9,900

7 Baltimore, MD 736 81 9,100

8 Los Angeles, CA 3,485 469 7,400

9 Detroit, MI 1,028 139 7,400

10 Milwaukee, WI 628 96 6,500

11 San Jose, CA 782 171 4,600

12 San Diego, CA 1,111 324 3,400

13 Columbus, OH 633 191 3,300

14 Houston, TX 1,631 540 3,00015 Dallas, TX 1,007 342 2,900

16 San Antonio, TX 936 333 2,800

17 Memphis, TN 610 256 2,400

18 Phoenix, AZ 983 420 2,300

19 Indianapolis, IN 731 362 2,00020 Jacksonville, FL 635 759 800

P o p .

D e n s i t

y o f 2 0

l a

r g e s t U . S .

C i t i e s



Observation StepsOperationalization(deciding how to observe/measure what

we’re interested in)

if “pedestrian safety” is the risk of death topeople moving on foot from one point to another, then

we can measure it by using vict im descriptions

in police fatality reports and calculatingpedestrian deaths/100,000 in populat ion

if a “large city” is any city with a population>1,000,000; we can measure this by using official

census data



More operationalizationif socioeconomic status is a person’s socialclass, we can measure it using income data

if age is the # yrs a person has been alive...if race/ethnicity is a person’s self-ident ified ancestry, we can measure it byasking people to choose from specificracial/ethnic categories

if population density is the # of people per sq. mi.; we can use pop. and area data



Variables and AttributesVariable Attribute

SES low, medium, high

Age <16, 17-32, 33-48,

49-64, >64

race/ethnicity

American Indian or Alaska Native;Asian; African American; Native

Hawaiian or Other PacificIslander; and White

(Hispanic/Latino or not)

pop. density

(in thousands/sq.mi.)<6, 6-10, 11-15, >15

Documents

Intro to Soc4