Soc 101 - Chapter 4

Front 1

Subjectivity
(df, 2)

Back 1

1. People possess subjectivity
2. a complex of individual perceptions, motivations, ideas, and really messy things like emotions

Front 2

IQs in identical twins

Back 2

The impact of growing up in poverty (an environmental effect) completely offset the effects of heredity. Nature, Nurture, and class matter. Poor twins show greater differences in IQ than do middle class twins, whose IQs are very similar. By Turkheimer

Front 3

Data
(df)

Back 3

Science requires the use of data. Data refers to formal and systematic information, organized and coherent

Front 4

Verstehen
(df, 4)

Back 4

1. Max Weber
2. Inductive reasoning is reasoning from the specific to the general.
3. This is what Weber called verstehen, a method that uses "intersubjective understanding"
4. Meaning, you use your own abilities to see the world from others' point of view

Front 5

How to choose a method

Back 5

Actually, the methods that sociologists use to study sociological problems depend more on the kind of problem we want to study than whether one method is better than any other

Front 6

Quantitative methods
(df)

Back 6

Using quantitative methods, one uses powerful statistical tools to help understand patterns in which the behaviors, attitudes, or traits under study can be translated into numerical values
*rely on deductive reasoning

Front 7

Qualitative methods
(df)

Back 7

Qualitative methods often rely on more inductive and inferential reasoning to understand the texture of social life, the actual felt experience of social interaction
*thought of as less scientific

Front 8

Research in the social sciences follows eight basic steps:

Back 8

1. choosing an issue
2. defining the problem
3. reviewing the literature
4. developing a hypothesis
5. designing a project
6. collecting data
7. analyzing the data
8. reporting the findings

Front 9

Hypothesis
(df)

Back 9

A hypothesis predicts a relationship between two variavles, independent and dependent

Front 10

Independent variable
(df)

Back 10

An independent variable is the event or item in your experiment tht you will manipulate to see if that difference has an impact

Front 11

Dependent variable
(df)

Back 11

1. depends on, or is caused by, the independent variable
2. what gets measured in an experiment
3. the change to the dependent variable that constitutes your results

Front 12

Data must be:
(2)

Back 12

1. valid
2. reliable

Front 13

Validity
(df)

Back 13

Validity means that your data must actually enable you to measure what you want to measure

Front 14

Reliability
(df)

Back 14

Reliability means that another researcher can use the same data you used and would find similar results

Front 15

Do sociologists conduct experiments?

Back 15

Sociologists rarely conduct experiments

Front 16

Sociologists engage in the following types of research
(4)

Back 16

1. observation
2. interviews
3. surveys
4. content analysis

Front 17

Literature review
(df)

Back 17

Carefully examines all available research already done on a topic or at least a systematic sample of that research

Front 18

Milgram's experiment
(df)

Back 18

The subject ("teacher") was asked to give the "learner" an electrical shock when he got an answer wrong. 2/3 gave shocks that would have been lethal to learners. The only did it because they were asked to

Front 19

Self-fulfilling prophesy experiement
(df, 2)

Back 19

1. Rosenthal and Jacobson
2. Hypothesized that teachers' expectations were actually the ause of student performance

Front 20

Participant observation
(df, 2)

Back 20

1. requires that researcher participate in the activities of the people he is studying AND observe
2. many participant observers conceal their identity to blend in better

Front 21

Correlation
(df)

Back 21

A correlation, or some relationship between the two phenomena, doesn't necessarily mean that one is the cause of the other

Front 22

IRB
(df, 2)

Back 22

1. institutional review board
2. every research project that goes through a university must pass the inspection of an IRB, which has strict guidelines to protect test subjects

Front 23

Research must guarantee:
(7)

Back 23

1. informed consent
2. continuous consent
3. confidentiality
4. anonymity
5. freedom from deception
6. freedom from harm
7. protected groups

Front 24

Ethnography
(df, 2)

Back 24

1. field method most often used by anthropologists
2. don't try to be a participant but try to understand the world from the point of view of the people whose lives you are interested in and attempt to put your own values and assumptions about their activities "on hold"

Front 25

Surveys
(df)

Back 25

Surveys are the most common method that sociologists use to collect information about attitudes and behavior

Front 26

Most common form of scale for a survey question

Back 26

Likert scale: arranges possible responses from lowest to highest (5 or 7 points)

Front 27

Sample
(df)

Back 27

Sociologists take a sample (or a subset) of the population they want to study

Front 28

Random sample
(df)

Back 28

Asks a number of people, chosen by an abstract and arbitrary method. Each person has an equal chance of being selected

Front 29

Secondary analysis
(df)

Back 29

Involves reanalyzing data that have already been collected.

Front 30

Generalizability
(df)

Back 30

When two researchers find the same results, the similar conclusions actualy strengthen the generalizability of the findings of each

Front 31

Content analysis
(df)

Back 31

Usually not a quantitative method but istead involves an intensive reading of certain "texts"

Front 32

Predictability
(df)

Back 32

Refers to the ability to generate testale hypotheses from data and to "predict" the outcomes of some phenomenon or event

Front 33

Causality
(df)

Back 33

Refers to the relationship of some variable to the effects it produces