Research Methods in Social Science

Class: Research Methods in Social Science The research process: ●​ Topic Selection: academic or personal motivations -> Research question ●​ Theory Development: existing theories or development -> Hyp​otheses ●​ Study Design: selection of method based on practical considerations ●​ Operationalization: create instruments and measurable variables ●​ Sampling: census, random, or convenience ●​ Data Collection: method dependent ●​ Data Management: clean and wrangle ●​ Data Analysis: computer assisted, iterative process ●​ Publication: agency report or journal Science as in Institution “Knowledge is power” ●​ Scientific revolution: -​ Slow progress through much of human history. -​ 14 times as many people need 115 times the energy and produce 240 times as much Medicine -​ Average age jumped from 40 in the 18th century to 67 today (80 in the first world. -​ In the 18th century: 15% die before age 1 (today .5%); ⅓ of all kids before age 15 (today .7%) Queen Elanor Example: 16 kids between 1255 and 1284: ●​ 9 died before the age of 7 ●​ 3 died before the age 35 ●​ And 3 died before age 60 ●​ They lost a child every 3 years -Science to legitimize not for progress. -Changing mindset- knowledge is uncertain. -If uncertain, we can judge it by how useful it is. -Even in 1800 science did not pay for research technologies. Today: ●​ Research is paid for by organizations with the aim to use it for political and economic gains. ●​ Science does not set its own priorities and does not control findings. History of Empirical Social Research in the US ●​ Precursors: administrative statistics (e.g., tax purposes, births, deaths) and some social statistics (i.e., suicide rates, life expectancy) ●​ Reformers: Starting in the early 19th century investigative journalism (precursor to participant observations) and statistical societies were founded. ●​ Social Physics: Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) collected data on demographics as well as crime - the average being as the ideal. Le Play (1806-1882) as the other major figure focused on collecting detailed enquiries of social life. ●​ Research was largely unsystematic and low response rates ●​ Social surveys: Local assessments of social infrastructure and local problems-city surveys ●​ Atlanta sociological laboratory: the earliest high quality empirical social research - W.E.E DuBois pioneered diverse techniques (1899). ●​ Chicago school: Pioneering especially qualitative work from ethnographies to biographic work. Also, freedom of research due to the academic environment. ●​ Polling: newspaper used pre-ballots to predict elections (millions of them). Political pollsters predicted the 1936 election correctly, random sampling made major strides. ●​ Survey research: At the end of the 1930 survey research became more common. Research was founded, and governmental funding increased. HeLa Cells ●​ In 1951 tissue samples taken without knowledge ●​ First cell line to survive in culture indefinitely ●​ Used all over the world in academic and industrial research Tuskegee Syphilis Study ●​ Started in the 1930s as a study on the “natural” course of syphilis ●​ Recruited from low-income African American communities ●​ Participants were not provided penicillin after it was discovered as a treatment ●​ Was only stopped after it was exposed in 1972 Stanford Prison Experiment “...[if] you put good people in a bad place, do the people triumph or does the place corrupt them?” Milgram Obedience Experiments ●​ Research question: Under what conditions will “normal” people inflict pain on others? ●​ Set up: Participants had to administer “fake” electroshocks of increasing intensity to learners (which were actors) ●​ Was deception necessary? Tearoom Trade ●​ Study on male same-sex encounters in public bathrooms ●​ Ethical issues: -​ Deception- misrepresentation of intend -​ No consent to participate in study -​ Invasion of privacy Institutionalization of Ethical Research ●​ National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavior Research -​ The Belmont Report ●​ The common rule ●​ Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) The Three Basic Ethical Principles ●​ Respect for persons: Treating persons as autonomous agents and protecting those with diminished autonomy ●​ Beneficence: Minimizing possible harms and maximizing benefits in research ●​ Justice: Distributing benefits and risks of research fairly Guidelines for protecting research participants ●​ Research should expose participants to no more than minimal risk of personal harm. ●​ Participation in research should be voluntary and, therefore, subjects must give their informed consent to participate in the research. ●​ Researchers should fully disclose the purposes of their research. ●​ Confidentiality must be maintained for individual research participants unless it is voluntarily and explicitly waived. Research with Special Populations ●​ Research with children -​ Requires active parental consent -​ Challenge: Reduces participation. ●​ Passive consent procedure ●​ United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Research with Special Populations ●​ Research with prisoners -​ Prisoners are under constraints that could affect their ability to voluntarily consent. Research with registered populations ●​ What is the main research problem the article addresses ? ●​ Why is the research with registered sex offender populations an important problem? -​ Sex offenders are the most criminal offenders in society due to registration laws. ●​ What are the major ethical issues addressed regarding research subjects (not the researchers)? And how can we protect research subjects from these issues? -​ Check phone Hypothesis example ●​ Theory: Therapeutic Community (TC) program helped veterans assimilate to society after WWII. Possible that this treatment can be applied to people with drug addiction. ●​ Research Hypothesis: Probationers assigned to TC program will be less likely to recidivate than those not assigned to TC. ●​ Null Hypothesis: Probationers assigned to TC programs will be no less likely to reoffend than those not assigned to TC. Hypothesis testing ●​ Goal: To see if there is a relationship between X and Y Nomothetic Causal Explanations ●​ A type of causal explanation involving the belief that variation in an independent variable Counterfactual ●​ The outcome that would have occurred if the subjects who were exposed to the treatment actually were not exposed but otherwise had identical experiences to those they underwent during the experiment. Qualitative (idiographic) Causal Explanation ●​ Concerned with context, deterministic. ●​ Causal effect: series of actions resulting in individual outcome. ●​ Example of an idiographic causal effect. Example: Media and Violent Behaviors ●​ Do individuals who view violent videotape act more aggressively than individuals who view a nonviolent videotape?