Semester Review – Sociology 364 / 497

 

What  :  How  :  Where  :  When

 

 

 

I.   What is Science?

 

A.     What are the procedures?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Operational Definitions

                                                                                                   ii.      Replication

 

B.     What are the motivations for doing research?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Personal

                                                                                                   ii.      Intellectual

                                                                                                 iii.      Institutional

 

C.     What are sources of information?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Books – e.g. Melyvl

                                                                                                   ii.      Journals – e.g. Jstor

                                                                                                 iii.      Newpapers – Lexus-Nexis

                                                                                                 iv.      The Web – e.g. Google

                                                                                                  v.      Data – e.g. ICPSR

 

 

 

II.  How do we design research?

 

D.     How do we measure?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Levels of Measurement

                                                                                                   ii.      Getting to Variables (Simple Statistical Tabulation / Description)

                                                                                                 iii.      Reliability

                                                                                                 iv.      Validity

 

E.      How do we construct samples

 

                                                                                                    i.      Vocabulary

                                                                                                   ii.      Non-probability samples

                                                                                                 iii.      Probability samples

                                                                                                 iv.      Testing the adequacy of samples (Probability and z- / t-tests)

 

F.      How do we design experiments?

 

                                                                                                    i.      simple designs

                                                                                                   ii.      complex designs

                                                                                                 iii.      quasi-designs

                                                                                                 iv.      Analysing experiments (two-sample t-tests and ANOVA)

 

 

 

III.   Where do we get the data?

 

A.     Where are Surveys carried out?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Definition

                                                                                                   ii.      Type of Surveys

                                                                                                 iii.      Types of questions

                                                                                                 iv.      Issues with formatting and writing questions

 v.   Describing relationships between variables (Lambda, Gamma and Pearson’s r)

 

B.     Where are Observations taken?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Types of Observations

                                                                                                   ii.      Lofland categories

 

C.     Where are Simulations performed?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Pure Machine – Computer Models

                                                                                                   ii.      Person Machine -

                                                                                                 iii.      Pure Person – Game Theory

 

D.     Where do we get Existing Information?

 

                                                                                                    i.      Secondary Analysis

                                                                                                   ii.      Content Analysis

 

 

 

IV.  When does a causal system exist?

 

           K.   When is it cause?

 

                       i.  Co-variation

                       ii.  Valid time frame

                      iii.  Non-spurious

                      iv.  Grounded in theory

 

L.   When does a third variable enter in?

 

i   Statistical elaboration

           ii.  Partial tabular and partial correlational analysis

 

M.  When do multiple independent variables create a causal system?

 

i.  Multiple Correlation - Coefficient of Determination (R-squared)

            ii.  Multiple Regression / Path Analysis