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Introduction
to the Module (Hub)
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Documents
Included in the Social Research
Module
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The
techniques and reasoning for discovering sociological facts and relationships
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| Whenever
a social scientist makes a statement about society, what should be in our
minds is the important question, “How do you know?” This is the
topic of epistemology. |
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Although
much social research has been conducted, the reported observations, and
importantly, the reported relations between variables, must be scientific:
replicable, testable, and able to be confirmed. |
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| Whenever
you read some report of research that has been conducted, it would be valuable
for you to have had some of your own research experience so that you can
more critically read the report. |
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You
should know firsthand the pitfalls of research, its weaknesses, and how
to interpret what you see. |
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Relationships between two variables
is a good example.
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| Perhaps
there are two variables, and increase in one coincides with an increase
in the other, while a fall in the first coincides with a fall in the second. |
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If
that is the information you have, there is no way you can e sure that one
variable causes the other, or vice versa, or that they have a common causal
variable or that the apparent relationship is purely spurious. |
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The module looks at some of the methods
used in social science research. It is aimed at the beginning sociologist
and the module is unlike most of the standard modules in this site (with
different documents for different purposes and different viewers).
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2008.06.13