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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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This 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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2008.10.07