An Introductionto Inquiry

Chapter Outline Looking for Reality The Foundations of Social Science Some Dialectics of Social Research The Ethics of Social Research

How We Know What We Know Direct Experience and Observation Personal Inquiry Tradition Authority

Looking for Reality Our attempts to learn about the world are only

partly linked to direct, personal inquiry or experience.

A larger part comes from agreed-on knowledge that others give us, things “everyone knows.”

This agreement reality both assists and hinders our attempts to find out for ourselves.

Sources of Secondhand Knowledge Both provide a starting point for inquiry,

but can lead us to start at the wrong point and push us in the wrong direction.

1. Tradition

2. Authority

Science and Inquiry Epistemology is the science of knowing. Methodology (a subfield of

epistemology) might be called the science of finding out.

Ordinary Human Inquiry Humans recognize that future circumstances

are caused by present ones. Humans learn that patterns of cause and effect

are probabilistic in nature. Humans aim to answer “what” and “why”

questions, and pursue these goals by observing and figuring out.

Inquiry: Errors and Solutions

1. Inaccurate observations• Measurement devices add

precision.2. Overgeneralization

• Repeat a study to make sure the same results are produced each time.

Inquiry: Errors and Solutions

3. Selective observation• Make an effort to find cases that do

not fit the general pattern.

4. Illogical Reasoning• Use systems of logic explicitly.

Foundations of Social Science The foundations of social science are logic

and observation. A scientific understanding of the world must

make sense and correspond to what we observe.

Both are essential to science and relate to the three major aspects of social scientific enterprise: theory, data collection, and data analysis.

Foundations of Social Science Theory - Systematic explanation for the

observations that relate to a particular aspect of life.

Data collection - observation Data Analysis - the comparison of what

is logically expected with what is actually observed.

Social Regularities

Examples of Patterns in social life: Only people 18 and older can vote. Only people with a license can drive.

Aggregates The collective actions and situations of

many individuals. Focus of social science is to explain why

aggregated patterns of behavior are regular even when individuals change over time.

A Variable Language Variable

Logical groupings of attributes.

AttributeCharacteristics or qualities that describe an object.

A Variable Language Independent variable

A variable that is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.

Dependent variableA variable that is assumed to depend on or is caused by another variable.

Variable Language

Relationship Between Two Variables

Education and Racial Prejudice

Level of Education % saying African-

Americans have less inborn ability to learn

Less than high school graduate

26%

High school graduate

10%

Junior college 15%

Bachelor’s degree 6%

Graduate degree 3%

Approaches to Social Research Idiographic -Seeks to fully understand

the causes of what happened in a single instance.

Nomothetic—Seeks to explain a class of situations or events rather than a single one.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Reasoning in Everyday Life Idiographic: “He’s like that because his

father and mother kept giving him mixed signals.The fact that his family moved seven times by the time he was 12 years old didn’t help. Moreover, his older brother is exactly the same and probably served as a role model.”

Nomothetic:“Teenage boys are like that.”

Approaches to Social Research Induction – From specific observations to

the discovery of a pattern among all the given events.

Deduction - From a pattern that might be logically expected to observations that test whether the pattern occurs.

The Wheel of Science

Approaches to Social Research Qualitative Data – Nonnumerical data. Quantitative Data -Numerical data.

Makes observations more explicit and makes it easier to aggregate, compare, and summarize data.

Approaches to Social Research Pure Research - Sometimes justified in

terms of gaining “knowledge for knowledge’s sake.”

Applied Research – Putting research into practice.

Ethical Guidelines of Social Research Two Basic Guidelines:

Participation should be voluntary. Social research must bring no harm to

research subjects.