The Enemy → Mindsets

• Mind-sets are patterns of thinking that affect how we respond to new ideas

Critical thinking

• Actively seeking to understand, analyze, and evaluate information to solve problems

Steps in Critical Thinking

• Get an understanding of the problem

• Gather information and interpret it

• Develop a solution plan and carry it out

• Evaluate a plan’s effectiveness

Value ridden research

• Terminology can reflect value based assumptions

• Questions can be selected or phrased in certain ways to elicit certain responses

• Samples can be selected in order to skew the results

  • Values can skew results

    • Data collected without using flashy words/misleading ads

Never accept facts without questioning where they came from

• What makes a “fact” seem more real to you? Lobbyists understand these motivations and feed them to the general population

  • Can be specific numbers and/or language choices

Objectivity

• The efforts researchers make to minimize distortions in observations or interpretations due to personal or social values.

Scientific Method

• A procedure involving the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses based on systematic observation, measurement and/or experiments

Methodology and Research Methods

• The rules, principles and practices that guide the collection of evidence and the conclusions drawn from it

• Research Design

  • Descriptive Studies

    • Goal is merely to explain a concept

    • Eg: behavior of a gang member, values of older adults

  • Explanatory Studies

    • Goal is to find out why things happen in a certain way

    • Eg: Why white men are more likely than black men to get prostate exams

• Methods

  • Quantitative methods

    • Seek to obtain information about the social world that is in, or can be converted to, numeric form.

  • Qualitative methods

    • Attempt to collect information about the social world that cannot be readily converted to numeric form

• Approaches to research

  • Deductive approach

    • Starts with a theory

    • Develop a hypothesis

    • Make empirical observations

    • Analyze the data collected through observation to confirm, reject or modify the original theory.

      • Might have to re-test

  • Inductive approach

    • starts with empirical observation

    • works to form a theory

    • determines if a correlation exists by noticing if a change is observed in two things simultaneously.

The Scientific Method

• Theory: a system of orienting ideas

• Hypothesis: A tentative statement, based on research, theory or prior evidence, that asserts a relationship between two factors

• Induction: reasoning from the particular to the general

• Observations: systematic collection of ‘social facts’

• Deduction: reasoning from the general to the specific

Causality v Correlation

• Correlation (or association) is when two variables tend to track each other positively or negatively (i.e., they tend to vary together).

• Causality is the idea that a change in one factor results in a corresponding change in another factor.

Macro-level vs micro-level orientations

• Macro-Level Orientation: The Top-Down View

  • Focuses on large-scale patterns of society

• Micro-Level Orientation: The Bottom-Up View

  • Focuses on small-scale patterns of society

Concepts and Variables

• Concept: a formal definition of what is being studied

• Operationalization: definition of a concept into a term that varies & can be measured

• Variable: measured concept that changes from case to case or time to time

  • Types

    • Independent

      • A variable believed to cause change in another variable [predictor]

    • Dependent

      • A variable believed to change because of another variable [outcome]

  • Hypothesis about crime

    • An increase in the level of inequality in society will result in an increase in the crime rate in that society.

      • In this hypothesis, we are claiming that our independent variable,  inequality, impacts our dependent variable, crime.

  • Measurement of variables

    • Reliability: Degree to which a measurement instrument gives the same results each time that it is used,

      • May not reflect what the researcher is trying to uncover.

    • Validity:  Degree to which the measurement reflects what the researcher is hoping to understand about the social world

Research Methods

• Surveys

• Interviews

• Ethnographic research

• Experiments

• Historical research

Sampling

• Random

  • sampling technique in which each sample has an equal probability of being chosen

• Representative

  • subset of a population that seeks to accurately reflect the characteristics of the larger group

• Access

  • Volunteers