Assignment 2 Sociology

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Research Methods

Value Committed v. Value Free Sociology

  • Value Committed Sociology seeks to link academic work to a vision of a better world. It has a long history in sociology and is especially visible in the work of Jane Addams, WEB DuBois, and C. Wright Mills.
  • Value Free Sociology sought to conduct completely unbiased research with no commitment to one’s topic. Classical theorists such as August Comte and Emile Durkheim promoted value free sociology.

Scientific Method

  • What makes something scientific?
  • Repeated observations
  • Systematic
  • Unbiased/objective

Types of Bias

  • Personal bias
  • Statistical bias
  • Research design bias

Cause & Effect v. Correlations

  • What is meant by Cause & Effect?
  • Instead - Correlations
  • Positive and Negative Correlations

VARIABLES

  • To understand correlations need to understand variables
  • DV – dependent variable (explain)
  • IV – independent variable (influence)

CORRELATIONS

  • Positive – both variables go in the same direction (as IV goes up, DV goes up; as IV goes down DV goes down)
  • Negative – both variables go in the opposite direction (as IV goes up, DV goes down; as IV goes down, DV goes up)

EXAMPLES

  • DV – murder
  • IV – alcoholism
  • Positive correlation

  • DV – fertility rate
  • IV – education
  • Negative correlation

Types of Research

  • Univariate – One DV and one IV – can make correlations
  • Multivariate – multiple variables – can make cause & effect conclusions

Types of Studies

  • Cross-Sectional Studies – involves measurements taken at a single point in time
  • Longitudinal Studies - involves a series of measurements taking over a period of time

Who Do We Study?

  • Population vs. Sample
  • Population – unit of study, largest group from which a sample is taken
  • Sample – subset of a population, smaller group taken from a population

Want Our Samples to Be
Random and Representative

  • Randomization

- all subjects in the population have an equal chance of being selected to the sample

  • Representation

- sample reflects the population proportionately

Types of Data

  • Incidence – measure of new cases

  • Prevalence – measure at one time or over time; how widespread something is

Research Process

7 step research process

1. Define variables - dependent variable, independent variable, establish correlation

Write your hypothesis

Conduct a literature review

Select a research design

Collect the data

Analyze the data

7. Make conclusions – generalizations, inferences

Formula to Write an Hypothesis

  • IV is more likely to DV than opposite of IV.

Homework

  • Write 10 hypotheses, state the DV and IV of each, and what you think the correlation is for each, as well.
  • DV1 = cancer
  • IV1 = smoking
  • H1 = Smokers are more likely to get cancer than non-smokers. (+ correlation)
  • DV2 =
  • IV2-=
  • H2=…

Generalizations vs. Inferences

  • Generalization – statement of a relationship between two variables, applies to sample studies
  • Inference – applies to population from which sample is drawn

Generalizations to Inferences
How can we do this?

  • Because Sample Drawn from Population
  • Randomization
  • Representation
  • High powered statistics

5 Major Research Designs

  • Observation
  • Experiment
  • Survey
  • Case Study
  • Content Analysis

Observation

  • Process of investigation where the researcher observes behavior
  • Participant observation
  • Non-participant observation
  • Hawthorne effect

Hawthorne Effect

  • When subjects know they are being studied they change their behavior.
  • Stems from studies conducted by G.E. at The Hawthorne Works Co., Cicero, IL, 1924-1927.
  • The purpose was to find the optimum level of lighting for productivity.

Classic Observation Studies

  • Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin, 1961

Black Like Me

  • The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes (1902-1967) poem "Dream Variations":
  • Rest at pale evening...
  • A tall slim tree...
  • Night coming tenderly
  • Black like me.

Black Like Me Methodology

  • The book describes Griffin's (a white native of Mansfield, TX) six-week experience traveling throughout the racially segregated states of LA, MS, AL, and GA, passing as a Black man.
  • At the time, race relations were particularly strained in the U.S.
  • Griffin's aim was to explain the difficulties facing Blacks in certain areas.
  • To expedite this, under the care of a doctor, Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a black man.

Black Like Me Study Results

  • Griffin discovers that when African Americans are mistreated or deprived of rights they in turn do bad things in order to manage their lives or to ease off the pain which they receive from their abuses.
  • Because their acts are considered bad, those who inflict the pain on them only hate them more.
  • This contributes to segregation and racism, even today.

Tearoom Trade Study (1970)

  • Laud Humphreys (1930-1988)
  • Ph.D. candidate, Washington U., St. Louis
  • Pioneering and fearless sociologist, an Episcopal priest, and a civil rights, and antiwar activist.

Tearoom Trade Study Methodology

  • Laud Humphreys, a sociology graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, published "Tearoom Trade", a study of homosexual encounters in men's rooms (called "tearooms") at public parks.
  • To gather data for his doctoral dissertation on restroom sex, Humphreys pretended to be gay, and assumed the role of a lookout for the police.
  • He copied the license-plate numbers of participants in order to obtain their names and addresses.
  • Then he waited a year, disguised his appearance, and interviewed about 50 of the tearoom regulars at their homes (sometimes in the presence of their wives and children), on the pretext of administering a social health survey. 

Results & Ethical Concerns

  • Because Humphreys was able to confirm that over 50% of his subjects were outwardly heterosexual men with unsuspecting wives at home, a primary thesis of Tearoom Trade is the incongruence between the private self and the social self.
  • Humphreys' study has been criticized by sociologists on ethical grounds in that he observed acts of homosexuality, did not get his subjects’ consent, tracked down names and addresses through license plate numbers and interviewed the men in their homes in disguise and under false pretenses.
  • http://web.missouri.edu/~bondesonw/Laud.html

Tally’s Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men

  • Elliot Liebow (1925-1994)
  • Wrote Tally’s Corner (1967) as his Ph.d. Dissertation, Catholic U.
  • Ethnography – field research
  • 1 ½ year study of a group of

disaffected Black males,

who routinely frequented

a street corner in

Washington, D.C.

Tally’s Corner Methodology

  • From 1962-1963, Elliot Liebow lived among a group of Black men in a blighted inner-city neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
  • What he recorded, opened America's eyes to the circumstances faced by Black men in our society.

A Few Blocks from the White House…

More About Tally’s Corner

  • Liebow found the men created an alternative world in which they reconstructed and retold their setbacks and humiliations as proud rebellions or potently funny stories.
  • "Tally" was a former boxer and menial laborer, who had gotten a job in construction and worked about eight months a year. He had three children by his wife, and five children with five other women.

  • Liebow spent almost two years with Tally and his crowd, men in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, who were drifting through wrecked marriages and chaotic relationships, only intermittently employed, scrambling to make ends meet, struggling with drugs and alcohol.

Tally’s Corner Results Continued

  • Tally and his friends weren't merely victims of character and self-created culture. Their weaknesses and self-destructive behavior had been fostered by punishing social structures.

1993

Experiment

  • Process of investigation where the researcher manipulates the IV and compares two groups
  • What two groups?
  • Experimental v. Control

Examples of Experiments

  • DV – Children’s violent behavior
  • IV - ?

  • DV – Domestic Violence on Super Bowl Sunday
  • IV - ?

The Stanford Prison Experiment

  • Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D. (1933- )
  • Psychologist, Stanford U.
  • The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Milgram Experiment

  • Stanley Milgram, Ph.D. (1933-1984)
  • Social Psychologist,Yale, Harvard, CUNY
  • Obedience to Authority (1962-1963)

“Obedience to Authority”

Milgram Experiment Results

Survey

  • What is a survey?
  • Set of questions

Types of Surveys

  • Interviews
  • Questionnaires

Interviews

  • In-person, face to face questioning

Questionnaires

  • Invented by Sir Francis Galton (promoter of Eugenics), a questionnaire is a series of written questions.
  • Questionnaires are cheap, do not require as much effort from the questioner as interviews, and often have standardized answers that make it simple to compile data.

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)

  • Half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian Anthropologist, Eugenicist, Explorer, Geographer, Inventor, Meteroloist, Geneticist, and Statistician.
  • He was a pioneer in Eugenics, coining the term itself and the phrase “Nature versus Nurture".

Galton

  • He devised a method for classifying fingerprints for forensic science.

Galton

Galton

  • He also initiated meteorology and devised the first weather map.

Back to Surveys:
Types of Questions

  • Closed-ended questions and…
  • Open-ended questions

Problem Questions

  • Loaded/leading questions

- “You don’t believe in abortion, do you?”

  • Double barreled questions

- Two questions in one – “Do you drink alcohol and do you smoke marijuana?”

  • Double negative questions

- “I didn’t do nothing.”

What Do We Do Surveys On?

  • Behavior, Especially Sexual Behavior
  • Attitudes/Opinions
  • Interests
  • Voting

  • Demographic Variables – re: income, occupation, education, religion, etc., etc.

How Can We Administer Surveys?

  • Three most popular methods:
  • Mail
  • Telephone
  • Online

Case Study

  • Set of questions, usually open-ended
  • Usually investigates phenomenon within its real-life context
  • Family, psychiatric, and

criminal research often

use case studies

Example of a Case Study

Content Analysis

  • Analyzing already recorded material
  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
  • Compilation data (U.S. Census, U.C.R.)

U.S. Census Bureau

Uniform Crime Reports

Example of Theory Making

  • Emile Durkheim, Le Suicide (1897)

Durkheim’s Hypothesis

  • DV – Suicide
  • IV?
  • IV- Social Integration

(sense of belonging)

  • Hypothesis?
  • People who feel lowly integrated into a group are more likely to commit suicide than those that don’t feel lowly integrated into a group.

Types of Suicide

  • Egoistic
  • Altruistic
  • Anomic
  • Fatalistic

Egoistic Suicide

  • Low degree of social integration
  • Examples?

Altruistic Suicide

  • High degree of social integration
  • You would do anything for a group
  • Terrorists, etc.

Acceptable Altruism

  • Some groups, professions, occupations expect altruistic behavior
  • Families/parents, military, police, etc.

Anomic Suicide

  • Confused sense of belonging
  • Feeling of normlessness
  • Examples?
  • Newly arrived immigrants, people who move/relocate, children who attend a new school, etc., and…

Lottery Winners!!

  • Yes, lottery winners have a higher suicide rate!! Why?
  • Can’t take your family/friends with you
  • Don’t know norms, values, behavior of another social class

Fatalistic Suicide

  • Opposite of Anomic
  • Too much social regulation (norms)
  • Examples?
  • Prisoners, military, some schools, families, etc., teens often feel they live

with too many rules

  • No hope of change, oppressive

Durkheim’s Results

  • Suicide rates are higher for those widowed, single and divorced than married.

Durkheim’s Results

  • Suicide rates are higher for people without children than with children.

Durkheim’s Results

  • Suicide rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics.