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Chapter 2
The Tools of Sociology
Lecture Outline
I.Applying the Sociological Imagination
A.Steps in the Research Process
1.Deciding on the problem.
2.Reviewing the literature.
3.Formulating research questions.
4.Selecting a method.
5.Analyzing the data.
B.Formulating Research Questions
1.Sociologists convert broad questions about social conditions into specific questions that can be addressed in an empirical study, which gathers evidence to describe behavior and prove or disprove explanations of why that behavior occurs.
2.A hypothesis is a statement that expresses an informed guess regarding the relationship between two or more variables. The dependent variable is the variable to be explained, and the independent variable is a factor that the researcher believes causes changes in the dependent variable.
C.Reviewing the Literature
1.New research is unnecessary if the answers sought are already available; therefore, most sociological research begins with a review of the literature. Knowing how the various sociological perspectives bear on a given issue helps organize this process.
II. The Basic Methods
A.Observation
1.Participant observation is a method in which the sociologist is both an objective observer of events and an actual participant in the social milieu under study. This method typically describes the quality of life of the people being observed and hence is often called qualitative research.
2.Observational techniques that measure the effects of behavior but intrude as little as possible into actual social settings are called unobtrusive measures.Visual sociology involves the use of photography and videotape to record observations.
B.Experiments
1.Controlled experiments allow the researcher to manipulate an independent variable in order to observe and measure changes in a dependent variable. These changes are experienced by an experimental group, which is compared with a control group that does not experience changes in the dependent variable.
2.Field experiments usually involve a “treatment group” of people who participate in the program and a control group of people who do not.
3.The Hawthorne effect refers to any unintended effect that results from the attention given to subjects in an experiment.
C.Survey Research
1.Surveys ask people to give precise information about their behavior and attitudes. Survey techniques make it possible to generalize from a small sample of respondents to an entire population.
a.A national census is a count of the entire population of a nation along with basic demographic and ecological facts about that population.
b. Sample surveys are smaller and less costly surveys that gather
information about specific social indicators such as divorce rates.
The term sample refers to a set of respondents selected from
a specific population.
2.The first step in conducting a sample survey is to define the population to be sampled. The next step is to establish rules for random selection of respondents. Only a random sample can be considered truly representative of the target population.
3.Items on a questionnaire must be worded precisely yet be easily understood.
a.Closed questions require the respondent to select from a set of answers.
b.Open questions allow the respondent to say whatever comes to mind.
D.Research Ethics and the Rights of Respondents
1.The right of privacy is the right to define for oneself when and on what terms one’s activities should be revealed to the general public.
2.Confidentiality refers to the assurance that no information can be traced back to a particular respondent.
3.Informed consent refers to statements made to respondents about what they are being asked and how their responses will be used.
III. Analyzing the Data
A.Survey research often generates numerical data, which are best displayed in the form of tables.
1.The title of a table should state exactly what information is presented, including the units of analysis.
2.Source notes indicate both the quality of the data and where it can be verified.
3.Frequency distributions indicate how many observations fall within each category of a variable.
B.Percent analysis permits comparisons between categories by transforming absolute numbers into a proportion as a part of 100.
C.The term correlation refers to a specific relationship between two variables. As one varies in some way, so does the other. Correlation must not be confused with causation.
D.Data about individuals or households can be mapped in precise ways, providing a powerful new tool for analyzing sociological data.
IV.Theories and Perspectives
A.A theory is a set of interrelated concepts that seeks to explain the causes of an observable phenomenon.
B.Theoretical perspectives are sets of interrelated theories that offer explanations for important aspects of social behavior.
1.Theoretical perspectives provide a framework of ideas and explanations. Information generated by research suggests different ideas when approached from differing perspectives.
FOCUS QUESTIONS
1) How are the questions sociologists ask about social the life the same, and yet different from, the questions people from all walks of life normally ask?
2) What basic scientific methods do sociologists employ in their research?
3) How do sociologists analyze the data they collect using the various research methods?
4) What is the difference between theories and perspectives?
Instructional Goals
- Explain that the use of the scientific method is what distinguishes sociology from social thought and journalism.
- Explain how sociologists go about their research—namely, by specifying independent and dependent variables in the form of hypotheses and then seeking answers through empirical study.
- Show how the basic sociological perspectives can serve as guides in exploring existing knowledge about a research question.
- Describe various forms of sociological observation.
- Describe the use of experiments and their potential pitfalls.
- Describe the modern sociological survey and explain the techniques used to ask questions and analyze data.
- Outline some of the ethical problems of social research, stressing the rights of privacy, confidentiality, and informed consent.
- Explain how tables are constructed and interpreted, and introduce the concept of correlation.
Teaching Suggestions
You will probably find it best to cover goals 1 and 2 in the first of three sessions on sociological methods. Students will very likely have been introduced to this material in high school courses, and they may be impatient with a lengthy introduction to the scientific method. I suggest that you proceed quickly to such matters as definition of variables and specification of hypotheses. This is the essence of empirical research and its efforts to rise above value-laden debates.
Goals 3 through 6 introduce basic concepts. You can cover them briefly in one session. Remind the students that each of these types of inquiry will be referred to throughout the book.
Problems of inference, causality, and the ethics of research—goals 7 and 8—deserve their own session. Don’t give short shrift to ethical issues. You need to convey a clear message to students that sociologists care about people’s dignity and privacy.
Distinctive Features
The inclusion of a chapter on research methods early in the book is a standard feature of introductory sociology texts. This chapter is different from comparable chapters in other texts because it presents examples that will recur at many other points in the book. Examples of field studies, experimental research, and evaluation research occur at frequent intervals and usually are readily identified as such.
A distinctive feature of the chapter is still the emphasis on reviewing the literature. Very often students launch into a research project without taking care to search for relevant research and theory. They need encouragement and help in using library materials. Students will need your help to determine what titles (or key words in titles) would suggest the type of study that applies to a particular perspective. This is also true for ecological–demographic research. Encourage students to look for measures of the incidence of social phenomena and studies that describe behavior before they attempt explanations.
Finally, the chapter emphasizes percent analysis of census and survey data so that students are made aware of how much one can learn from these relatively simple techniques. Other types of tabular analysis, such as the use of measures of central tendency, appear in later chapters, as do numerous graphs based on frequency distributions and percent analysis (with time comparisons where possible).
Encourage students to pay attention to the tabular and graphic presentation of information. Try to help them have some fun looking for main effects—that is, the findings that stand out as most robust and most important from a sociological standpoint. The reading of tables is emphasized throughout the text, but you can set an important precedent by getting students into the habit of studying tables as soon as possible. This will help them a great deal in social science, natural science, and business courses.
Key Concepts
In the course of your discussion of methods, impress upon students the importance of observing, listening, recording, reserving judgment, and testing judgments. In this chapter we use issues related to suicide, such as differences among nations, teen suicide, and “assisted death,” to highlight sociological versus more psychological interpretations of this extreme act. We seek to make strong connections between contemporary examples of suicide and the original studies by Durkheim, which played such an important role in the development of sociological methods. Suicide is an act that students will have thought about a great deal. They will know people who tried to commit suicide, rock stars who took their own lives, and people whose suicidal behavior has many implications for their loved ones and others who are strangers to them. You can bring home the power of sociological thinking by showing the students that individual decisions to commit suicide are not the only issue involved when we look at differences among societies.
When introducing the different research methods, stress the kinds of data that each requires and the strengths and limitations of each. Try also to show how various methods can complement one another. You could do this in conjunction with an analysis of the tables that deal with trends in household composition in the United States. Take the increase in the number of families with children headed by males, for example. This is not a dominant trend, but it illustrates the growing diversity of family forms. Does it make a difference to be raised by a father only? How would one research that question? Get students to imagine the kinds of data that could be obtained by talking and working with a small group of children who are being raised by their fathers. Or imagine trying to determine the effects of having only a male parent from data on educational attainment.
Try to get the students to understand that the survey is a very ambitious research method. It is difficult to ask good questions, as the box on “Asking Questions” illustrates. Good surveys rely on prior observation and in-depth interviews. A survey that merely generates a few numbers is not very useful. To be valuable, it must be representative. Discourage student surveys unless they are supervised by professional social scientists.
Additional Concepts
No affliction invites the use of sociological research methods more than AIDS. How can we disseminate information about risk and appropriate behaviors? How can we prevent people from being exposed to the disease? How can we find and help those who have been exposed to it? What effects will the AIDS epidemic have on sexual behavior in coming years? How can government be more effective in fighting the epidemic? These are social problems, social-policy issues, and issues of public health and education, and they rely on information obtained through sociological research.
Topics for Discussion
1) The chapter includes a box on questionnaire design that you might use in discussing the difficulty of asking good questions. Students will benefit from an analysis of the faults in the questions, and you might consult Sudman for additional examples. I think, however, that it would help to cast this discussion in wider terms than the possible bias that appears in survey questions. Students should not get the impression that sample surveys are the only form of sociological research in which the art of asking questions is important. Indeed, the problem of asking intelligent questions occurs throughout sociological research, even in historical research in which no living subjects are available. We still need to ask questions that are not obvious, as well as questions about behavior whose origin seems so obvious that we might take it for granted.
2) In the case of unstructured interviews, which are far less formal and may not even be defined as interviews, students need to be made aware that respondents are always looking for hints in the questioner’s language and manner. Every question offers as much information about the interviewer as it elicits from the respondent. Students need to recognize the subtleties of communication that are part of seemingly neutral interview and fieldwork situations.
3) Participant observation takes a long time to conduct. Students are often unaware of how research occurs and the time it takes to develop a study. Students need to understand how a research study emerges and the social networking it takes to do qualitative and observation types of research. Discuss the process of developing participant observation and the toll it takes on the researcher.
Discussion Question
What are some of the methods used in the science of sociology? Why are there often ethical problems in applying the experimental method to the study of human groups and societies?
Using the Charts and Tables
To help students respect quantitative data and overcome the common fear of numbers and quantitative tables, “walk through” Tables 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4, as well as some of the tables in other chapters. You do not need to call their attention to every table in the book, but if you do not set the example of looking at the tables for findings—especially main effects—students for the most part will not do so on their own.
In Tables 2.3 and 2.4 the essential methodological point is that by using percent analysis we can control for the effects of changing population size. Controlling for variables thus is introduced in the context of arithmetical tables, which most students should be able to grasp. Although it might have been easier on the reader to combine Tables 2.3 and 2.4 into a single table, I kept the two apart to heighten the comparative effect. This will make the methodological points about controlling for population growth and will make relevant comparisons in percent analysis emerge more strongly. The tables also make some important points about social change and family/household composition that need to be highlighted in class. These trends reappear in different forms throughout the text, and their implications will come up again and again in class discussions.
Using the Visual Features
Durkheim considered many forms of suicide, including suicides by people who wished to make a political statement. What sociological lessons can we draw from these extreme acts? Students may not know about the Vietnamese monks who burned themselves to death in protest against the war. But they need to consider such acts as driven by despair not only over personal situations but also over social conditions. This is not to condone or condemn suicide as a political act but to bring it to students’ attention and ask them to look at its consequences for the societies in which it occurs and for those who watch it in the media.
The Then and Now feature points out that suicide is often a subject in the public spotlight. Students will be far more familiar with the case of the rock star than with the suicides that occurred during the Depression, but the comparison can stimulate some valuable class discussion. No doubt the subject of assisted suicide will come up as well, providing an example of changing norms regarding suicide.
The Research Methods box discusses bias in social science surveys. Surveys that have nonneutral words are unethical. The box gives examples of how questions can lead to bias and why they biases.
The Visual Sociology feature shows suicide as a form of social protest. Unlike other forms suicide as a form of social protest reveals the social side of suicide. Monks burning themselves during the Vietnam War is far reaching criticism of the war that generations have read about in texts.
Sociology Versus Ideology
Durkheim's study of suicide helped establish sociology as a scientific discipline. Suicide has also been the subject of numerous philosophical, theological, and literary debates. Hamlet's soliloquy--To be or not to be, that is the question," among the most famous passages in all of literature--comes to mind. And as we have seen, social change throughout the world is confronting a growing number of people with this life-or-death choice. No wonder there is so much controversy over the concept of physician-assisted suicide.