What is social scientific inquiry?

Functions – ATP – authorities, tradition, personal inquiry – authorities mean education, family etc, have an egenda. tradition meaning religion or the way things are as a norm, personal inquiry is our own – natural and biased personal experiences *can be misleading or overgeneralized)
Purposes – EDE exploring, description, explanation. Exploring how often (frequency or nature) or a problem – might be used as a future baseline (not so much what is happening). Description – scope of a problem and trying to make formal observations. Will get initial, want to know regularity. Explanation – answers why? Why is there a problem? Why is there a change in scope
Variables – logic, empiricism, objectivity, control cyclical – logic: theoretical sense (can’t change what you’re observing to be a better fit). Empiricism – using all your senses – practical – relying on senses. Objectivity – rid of any bias – see the world the way it is. Control – set limit on research to control factors to avoid bias. Cyclical – TR – relationship between theory and research variable in a shisha is ccoel
Nomothetic and ideographic – ideo: mico, single case, want to know about one case very well – look at one reason for failing a test – more qualitative. Nomothetic – macro, explain class of issues. Based on probability
Paradigms – a model or frame of reference used to organize observations and reasoning. Religion: see the world different. Need to step outside it and see how the world really is. Many theories make up a paradigm. A set of assumptions and theories that shape the way society is. Macro (social economic, government), micro (social life, dating friendships), theory (what we see)
Walter L. Wallace – Theory  Hypothesis  Observations  Empirical Generalizations. UP: inductive reasoning. Down: Deductive reasoning
Deductive – general to specific. Moves from expected pattern to whether the pattern even occurs. Inductive – particular to general. From set of observations to discovery of pattern. The
Tuskegee syphilis study willow brook school study milgrams obedience to authority study
***deception, lack of consent, risk of harm, pressured to participate, lack of understanding
Three criteria for determining a casualty – variables must be correlated (relationship found when related). Time order (what takes place first ie/party before exam) non-spuriousness (comments are not genuine when it is a 3rd party ie/ice-cream kid drowns. Spur = fake)
Unit of analysis: researchers observe, describe and explain these characteristics individual (social groups, how people behave), groups (geographic location, group behaviours, families), organizations (Religions/universities – social organization), social artifacts (concrete objects ecological policy = stereotyping) *analyze the sogi
Conceptualization – make abstractions concrete. Turn vague ideas into a precise definition. Same topic studied differently. Variables created by people.
- concept: indicators and dimensions: what do we mean when we say we love someone? Who do we love? What do we do for our loved ones?
- construct: normal definition: definition assigned to term. Working definition for purpose of inquiry. Love is the feeling of deep caring, affection and intimacy
-variable: operational definition: describe specific methods that can be carried out to measure/manipulate variable (strongly agree etc)
Exhaustive: including all possible variables. All that can come to a readers mind is there they do not have to settle for the best possible answer. Mutually exclusive means that they cannot occur at the same time because they don’t have anything gin common. Each value classified only once.
Reliability – could you replicate an experiment and get comparable results? Maybe an individuals responses are consistent or general overall results are