Final Exam

secondary analysis, content analysis, historical and comparative, and physical traces.

a method of using preexisting data in a different way or to answer a different research question than intended by those who collected the data (what we did for class research papers)

Census, Labor Stats, Eurobarometer, General Social Survey

inaccessible settings, saves time and money, avoid data collection issues, comparison with other samples, more variables and diverse sample, multiple studies combined

can’t design a study to reflect own problem/question, variables may notbe available, conceptualization/measurement/sample outside of researcher’scontrol, data quality issues such as not meeting scientific standards, bias,difference in measures and samples

-so know the goals of the research when it was originally done-know what was collected and what it was measuring-know the when and how it was collected, organized, and what is known about success of effort

reductions of experience

Qualitative and Quantitative

the search for patterns in data and for ideas that help explain the patterns (we did this by looking at crosstabs then connecting to theory in the final papers)

: goals are  the same: exploration, description, explanation; both try to understand by generalizing beyond the data to abstract/general concepts and theories—ultimate goal is to generalize to people, groups or organizations beyond those observed, both create meaning by using data to learn something more abstract and general

qualitative realizes abstraction and generalization are matters of degree (may not always be most important thing), qualitative focuses more on contextualizing things, qualitative emphasizes inductive reasoning (theory comes from data) instead of deductive (from theory to data), qualitative has close link between collecting data and analyzing it, qualitative has advantage of theoretical sensitivity: data collection and analysis are  guided by emerging theory (since the theory isn’t something you necessarily start with)

utilize numerical and graphical methods to look for patterns in data set, summarize the information, and present information (so frequency distribution is descriptive along with bar charts, pie charts, line graphs, etc.)

(mean, median, mode)

(range, standard deviation)

(z-score, quartiles, percentiles)

utilize sample data to make estimates, make decisions, make other generalizations about larger set of data (here we are moving into EXPLAINING THINGS)—hypothesis testing is a part of this (cross-tabs fall under this)

state assumptions of technique-level of measurement-nominal-model-independent random samples  -state the hypotheses (null)-state level of significance (alpha .05)            -compute the test statistic (so get Chi-Square) -determine significance (look at p)  -determine strength (look at CV)-confirm direction (look at gamma, at graph, etc.) -accept or reject the null hypotheses (of no relationship)

–(participants, sponsors and users)*ethics: responsibilities researchers bear toward those who participate in research, those who sponsor it, and those who benefit from it

professional competence, integrity, professional and scientific responsibility , social responsibility, respect for peoples rights, dignity and diversity---(pick one give a summary of one of them)

are aware of their professional and scientific responsibility to the communities and societies in which they live and work. They apply and make public their knowledge in order to contribute to the public good. When undertaking research, they strive to advance the science of sociology and to serve the public good.

the difference- expect values play to be apart of research –research is done to serve with subjects interest- involvement of subjects

value neutrality, science for science sake, distance between researchers and subjects

activism—social movements (Vietnam, racism, sexism, etc.)—post-modernists ultimately reject capitalism and model of inquiry (methods of inquiry—i.e. scientific method)—argue for new methods that are better suited to post modern (way more complicated) world—

• -feminist theories          
• -critical theory and critical race theory           
• -queer theory           
• -disability theory

-focus on marginalized peoples (women, people of color, lower class people, queer people, etc.)—researchers themselves more likely to be from these groups

15th century Europe, enlightenment/reformation were key partsof this (scientific rationality, etc.)—modernity was progressive, made promisesof liberation from ignorance and irrationality—goal was to seek generaltheories to explain life, accumulated knowledge of Western Civ,industrialization, urbanization, advanced technology, nation state, etc.—seesitself (modernity) as superior

last half of 20th century, shares skepticism for pre-modernwold, questions extent to which solutions have actually produced a superiorsociety, especially for ALL of humankind (i.e. not everyonebenefitted)—modernity is not a force of liberation, but of oppression ofsubordinate groups (inequality)—questions institutional structure andinequalities and justifying role of science, rejects goals and social organizationof science