Download Social Research Methods: Exploring, Describing, and Explaining Social Phenomena and more Summaries Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Fundamentals of Social Research Methods Social Research Methods Purposes of Research The major purposes of social research are exploration, description, and explanation. Exploration Exploratory research typically occurs when a researcher examines a new interest or when the subject of study is relatively new. The purpose of exploratory studies is to satisfy the researcher's curiosity, to test the feasibility of understanding a more extensive study, and to develop the methods to be employed in any subsequent study. However, exploratory studies seldom provide satisfactory answers to research questions, and the people studied in exploratory research may not be typical of the larger population of interest. Description The major purpose of social scientific studies is to describe situations and events. The researcher observes and then describes what was observed, including what, where, when, and how. Explanation Explanatory studies focus on why, aiming to explain the presence of the dependent variable by the presence of the independent variable. The independent variable is the cause, and the dependent variable is the effect. Criteria for Nomothetic Causality For a nomothetic causal relationship to be established, the following criteria must be met: the variable must be correlated, the cause must take place before the effect, and the variables must be non-spurious. Correlation Correlation is an empirical relation between two variables such that (a) changes in one are associated with changes in another and (b) particular attributes of one variable are associated with particular attributes of another variable. Time Order For a causal relationship to be established, the independent variable must precede the dependent variable in time. Non-Spurious The observed correlation between the variables must not be explained in terms of a third variable. Spurious Relationship A spurious relationship is a coincidental statistical correlation between two variables that is shown to be caused by some third variable. Complete Causation Whereas an idiographic explanation of causation is relatively complete, a nomothetic explanation is probabilistic and incomplete. In nomothetic explanations, exceptions do not disconfirm a causal relationship, as exceptional cases do not disconfirm the overall causal patterns. Units of Analysis The units of analysis are the what or who being studied, the things we examine in order to create a summary. The most typical units of analysis are people, social artifacts, and populations. Researchers may also study groups, organizations, social artifacts, and various other entities as units of analysis. Ecological Fallacy The ecological fallacy is the error of drawing conclusions about individuals based solely on the observations of groups. Time Dimensions Time plays many roles in the design and execution of research, quite aside from the time it takes to do the research. Cross-sectional studies are based on observations representing a single point in time, while longitudinal studies involve the collection of data at different points in time. Types of Longitudinal Studies Longitudinal studies include trend studies, cohort studies, and panel studies. Trend studies monitor a given characteristic of a population over time, cohort studies study a specific sub-population over time, and panel studies collect data from the same set of people at several points in time.
