Design In Social Research

Front 1

What are nomothetic explainations?

Back 1

nomothetic seeks to explain a class of situations or events rather then a single event. It explains using just a few events and is partial rather then a full explanation.

Front 2

What is the idiographic model?

Back 2

Is the complete, and in depth understanding of one specific case and its causes.

Front 3

what are some downfalls of exploratory research?

Back 3

- they seldom provide satisfactory answers
- they lack repersentativeness; meaning the people studied are not typical of the larger population

Front 4

What is scientific inquiry?

Back 4

Scientific inquiry is making observations and interperting what you've observed.

Front 5

Exploratory and description are two of the three purposes of social research. What is the third way and what purpose does it fill?

Back 5

Explaination is the third and its purpose is to explain the why in things.

Front 6

What is exploration and what purpose does it serve in social research? What methods are typically used?

Back 6

Exploration is used to familiarize a researcher with a specific topic and occurs when a researcher examines a new interest or when the research of a topic is new.
Exploration has three purposes: 1. to satisfy curiosity; 2. to test feasiblity of more indepth study; 3. to develop methods
Methods used in exploratory research are focus groups, and small group discussions.

Front 7

What is are some of the falacies in causal relationships? and what does each one mean?

Back 7

Complete causation means that it is the only cause of the effect.
Exceptional cases do not disprove causal relationships
Majority of Cases this means that causal relationships can be true even if they don't apply to the majority.

Front 8

Why is description a usefull purpose in the role of social research?

Back 8

This method is used to describe situations and events. Qualitative studies aim primarly description

Front 9

What are the three main criteria for nomothetic casual relatinships?

Back 9

- variables must correlate
- cause takes place before the effect
- the variables are nonspurious

Front 10

What is a spurious relationship?

Back 10

A spurious relationship is when the effect is explained in terms of a third variable.

Front 11

What is a necessary cause?

Back 11

A necessary cause is a condition that must be present for the effect to fallow, but is not the only or sufficent cause.

Front 12

What is correlation?

Back 12

is a relationship between two variables.

Front 13

What is a sufficient cause?

Back 13

a sufficient cause is condition that when present guarantees the effect.

Front 14

What two tasks does the social researcher face in designing a project?

Back 14

(1)specify what you want to find out and(2)determine the best way to do it.

Front 15

What is ment by unit of analysis?

Back 15

The unit of analysis is who and what is being studied.

Front 16

What are the three most common purposes social research can serve?

Back 16

- exploration
- description
- explaination