Social Research and Broad Street Pump Information and Assignment

I. SCIENCE VERSUS EVERYDAY KNOWLEDGE Most social researchers make every effort to be scientific in the way they conduct their research. To understand better how they proceed, we need to consider how scientific research differs from everyday knowledge.

Our everyday knowledge-gathering strategies suffer from a number of weaknesses. First, we are not always the most careful observers. Considering your friends, for instance, can you say who is right and left-handed? Do you know what color clothing your professor wore the last time you went to class? Unless we work consciously to observe and note behaviors or traits, there is much we can overlook.

Second, we also tend to "overgeneralize"–that is, to draw conclusions about many based on only a few cases. Suppose you talk with 3 out of 300 student demonstrators on campus and all 3 say they are protesting the food in the dining room. It is tempting but faulty to infer that all 300 are demonstrating for the same reason.

Third, we tend to overlook cases that run counter to our expectations. If you think all football players are politically conservative, you may ignore the ones who are not. Or if you notice some exceptions, you may conclude they are not really football players. Often there is an emotional stake in our beliefs about the world that causes us to resist evidence that challenges those beliefs. This tendency may lead to closing one's mind to new information –an "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts" approach. Research seeks to overcome these pitfalls of everyday inquiry.

Although some people complain that research is simply an expensive way of finding out what everyone already knew, the results sometimes contradict commonsense expectations. The existence of research findings that run counter to what we might expect suggests that we should pause before we say "everyone knows that...." Instead, we should ask: "What evidence do we have for believing that to be true?" Social research is concerned with how evidence is gathered and evaluated.

A. Science as a Form of Knowing

A central feature of human existence is the desire to know and to understand the world. Knowledge is part of all human cultures, along with strategies for obtaining knowledge and for deciding whether or not something is true. In all cultures the major sources of knowledge are tradition, authority, and observation and reasoning. Cultures differ with respect to how much they emphasize each source. Science flourishes in societies that place relatively greater stress on observation and reasoning. Some societies see the natural and social worlds as caused, patterned, and open to human understanding through observation and logic. Others see the world as mysterious.

Social theory and research deal with what is and why it is that way in social life, not with what should be. "Should-be" issues are the concern of philosophy, religion, and ethics, although they invariably color the problems researchers wish to study and the ethical principles they follow in conducting their research. A carefully done research study could add to our understanding, for example, of the social causes and consequences of drug use. How you react to that knowledge depends on your own values. Sometimes personal, religious, or political concerns lead people to deny or ignore unappealing research results. This fact helps explain why research supporting key values or interests tends to be more widely accepted than research that opposes strong values and interests. It also suggests why some research may be utilized by policy makers and other research may not be utilized.

B. Assumptions Underlying Social Theory and Research

Social theory and research assume there are patterns in social life. This assumption is sometimes challenged on several grounds. First, there are always individual exceptions. For instance, whereas whites earn more than blacks in the United States in general, some individual blacks earn more than some individual whites. Theory and research generate knowledge about collections of individuals, not about lone individuals. In addition, they make these statements in terms of percentages or probabilities.

Sociology helps us understand the chances people have of being in certain situations and of behaving in certain ways. Sociologists can make strong statements about the approximate percentage of people who will behave in certain ways, even though they cannot say how particular individuals may act. Similarly, life insurance specialists can say with confidence that nonsmokers in general will live several years longer than smokers; they cannot say that any particular nonsmoker will live longer than any specific smoker.

Generalizations and predictions are possible when they deal with large numbers of people, but not when they refer to single individuals. We can know the general tendencies about the sex, race, or class to which we belong and yet still hope that we as individuals will be exceptions to general sociological trends that are problematic.

The accuracy of general statements in the social sciences depends on how observations are conducted. The social sciences do not consist simply of one person's opinion pitted against that of someone else. There are rules of evidence and inference that social scientists follow. Some evidence is better than other evidence; some conclusions are more supportable than others. The difference lies in the methodology – that is, in the rules, principles, and practices that guide the collection of evidence and the conclusions drawn from it.

Research differs from everyday inquiry in that researchers try to be conscious of what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what their biases are. Bias refers to the way the personal values and attitudes of scientists may influence their observations or conclusions. Objectivity refers to the efforts researchers make to minimize distortions

in observation or interpretation due to personal or social values. Every research report has a section describing what procedures were followed in order to arrive at the results. That section should be explicit enough that another researcher can duplicate the procedure – called replication. Researchers also point out the limitations of their work and highlight questions that remain. Finally, by publishing their work, researchers allow others to question the quality of their procedures, evidence, and conclusions. These practices help to keep inquiry open to new or better evidence.

II. TOOLS OF THE TRADE: DEFINITIONS AND PROCEDURESPart of encountering any new field involves learning the names of some of the "tools of the trade," so that you know what people are talking about. If you are learning to work with wood, for example, it helps to know the difference between a claw hammer and a ball-peen hammer, so that you will use the right one. To understand a piece of social research, you need to know the unit of analysis in a study; what sampling procedures were used; the difference between a descriptive and an explanatory study; what a hypothesis is; and how concepts, variables, operational measures, and relationships between variables are defined.

A second step in exploring a new area involves learning something about the procedures people use to do their work. Certain procedures used in research are very powerful; they enhance our potency in everyday life as well as in social research. At the top of this list are rules for believing that one factor may have caused another one and the steps in doing research.

A. Some Research Terms

1. Units of AnalysisOne of the first things to know about research is the unit of analysis–that is, who or what is being studied. Social researchers often look at individuals–at their attitudes or behaviors. Sometimes the unit of analysis that interests us is something larger, like a social group or an organization. Units of analysis can also refer to families, ethnic groups, nation-states, or societies, when appropriate. Social artifacts such as books, TV shows, sculptures, songs, scientific inventions, and jokes could all be units of analysis for social research.

2. Descriptive and Explanatory StudiesThere are two major types of research studies: descriptive and explanatory. In a descriptive study the goal is to describe something, whether it is the behavior and values of a religious cult, the culture of an old-age community, or the nature of a national population. Such studies help to outline the social world. Explanatory studies seek to explain why or how things happen the way they do in the social world (see Broad St. Pump study below).

3. HypothesesA hypothesis is a tentative statement– based on theory, prior research, or general observation–asserting a relationship between variables.

Researchers try to design studies to test whether or not their hypotheses are true and to rule out rival hypotheses (that is, explanations that compete with the original hypothesis). They reason the way a detective does in trying to figure out who the murderer is. The data uncovered in a study may support the original hypothesis, refute it, support a rival hypothesis, or suggest conditions under which the hypothesis is supported. This method of reasoning goes beyond the testing of academic social science hypotheses. It is widely used by market researchers to test ideas for designing and selling new products or services, by political candidates seeking to understand public sentiments, and by policy makers developing new social programs.

One source of hypotheses for a research study may be social theory, which can be defined as a general statement about specific facts and how they are related. The interplay between theory and research is a key element in doing social research.

Science develops as theories generate hypotheses that guide specific observations. A number of specific observations begin to form sets of general research findings, which may shape future theories.

Deduction refers to reasoning from the general to the specific. Deductive reasoning happens when a researcher works from the more general information to the more specific. Sometimes this is called the “top-down” approach because the researcher starts at the top with a very broad spectrum of information and they work their way down to a specific conclusion. For instance, a researcher might begin with a theory about his or her topic of interest. From there, he or she would narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that can be tested. The hypotheses are then narrowed down even further when observations are collected to test the hypotheses. This ultimately leads the researcher to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data, leading to a confirmation (or not) of the original theory and arriving at a conclusion.

4. Reasoning: Induction and DeductionInduction refers to reasoning from the particular to the general moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. This is sometimes called a “bottom up” approach. The researcher begins with specific observations and measures, begins to then detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses to explore, and finally ends up developing some general conclusions or theories.

Deduction refers to reasoning from the general to the particular. This is sometimes called a “top down” approach. The case of the infamous “Broad St. Pump” in the Soho District of London is an example of deductive reasoning. Dr. John Snow (1813–1858) speculated that a cholera outbreak in 1854 was being spread through contaminated water. Over the previous 25 years, about 11,500 people had died in the London area alone. Dr. Snow’s previous research

on cholera had convinced him that the infectious bacterium primarily originates in sewage-tainted water, a theory that most people were unwilling to accept. He saw his chance in Soho to prove his theories once and for all. And he did. He successfully linked the cholera outbreaks of 1854 to a single source of polluted water, i.e., the water pump on Broad St.

5. Concepts and VariablesOne of the first steps in any research study is to define the concepts. A concept is a formal definition of what is being studied. Researchers must define what their major concepts include and do not include, what they are like and unlike. In research, concepts are refined further into variables. A variable is any quantity that varies from one time to another or one case to another. Variation can be seen in different categories or in different degrees of magnitude.

6. Operationalizing VariablesVariables are said to be operationalized when we define the procedures used to measure them. This helps subsequent researchers.

7. Relationships between Variables: Cause and EffectFrequently hypotheses suggest that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable. If one variable is thought to cause another one, we call the first variable the independent variable and the second variable the dependent variable, because it is believed to depend on the independent one. Put differently, the independent variable is the hypothesized cause and the dependent variable is the hypothesized effect.

B. Correlation and Causality

A correlation is an observed association between a change in the value of one variable and a change in the value of another variable. Although we can say that two variables are correlated, we cannot say necessarily that one caused the other. Correlation is only the first piece of evidence needed to decide that one factor caused the other one. We also need to know that the independent variable occurred before the dependent variable (a time order that is clear in this example), and that no other factors might have caused the observed result. Causation, or causality, is the capacity of one variable to influence another. The first variable may bring the second into existence or may cause the incidence of the second variable to fluctuate. If the relationship between the variables is non-spurious (there is not a third variable causing the effect), the temporal order is in line (cause before effect), it may be deduced that it is a causal relationship.

In general, social researchers try to rule out alternative explanations by controlling for other factors that might be affecting the relationship.

No matter how strong a correlation is, it is important to remember that it does not indicate causality unless time order and the elimination of alternative explanations are

also present. We can sharpen our everyday thinking and our critical appraisal of causal claims made by others by asking whether all three of these criteria are being met.

C. Steps in the Research Process

Although not all research studies follow the same pattern, it is possible to spell out the steps that occur frequently in the research process.

1. Defining the ProblemDefining the problem involves selecting a general topic for research, identifying a research question to be answered, and defining the concepts of interest.

2. Reviewing the LiteratureThe next step is to review the existing literature to determine what is already known about the problem.

3. Devising One or More HypothesesIdeally, in their effort to build knowledge, researchers develop several competing hypotheses.

4. Designing the ResearchResearchers then decide on a design for the study that will allow them to eliminate one or more of the hypotheses. Research design is the specific plan for selecting the unit of analysis; determining how the key variables will be measured; selecting a sample of cases; assessing sources of information etc.

5. Collecting the DataSociologists gather information in a variety of ways, depending on what they want to investigate and what is available. They may use field observations, interviews, written questionnaires, existing statistics, historical documents, content analysis, or artifactual data. Each of these methods will be discussed briefly in the next section.

6. Analyzing the DataOnce the data are collected, they must be classified and the proposed relationships analyzed. Is a change in the independent variable indeed related to a change in the dependent variable? Are alternative explanations ruled out?

7. Drawing ConclusionsDrawing conclusions involves trying to answer such questions as these: Which of the competing hypotheses are best supported by the evidence? Which are not? What limitations in the study should be considered in evaluating the results? What lines of further research does the study suggest? Conclusions rest heavily on the way research is designed and data are gathered.

III. DESIGNING STUDIES AND GATHERING DATASocial researchers study and try to understand the social world. Either they seek to describe some feature of social life or they try to analyze and explain interrelationships among social factors. Various types of data are available for both goals, and those data may be collected in different ways.

A. Experiments

In an experimental design, the independent and dependent variables are tightly controlled in a specific environment like a laboratory. Experiments are limited by the practical and ethical restraints that exclude the study of private or dangerous behavior.

B. Interviews and Surveys

The use of interviews and questionnaires enabled researchers to ask everyone the same questions (operationalization), so that comparisons can be made between respondents. Surveys are useful for describing the characteristics of large numbers of people in an efficient way. Surveys of carefully selected samples permit the accurate determination of rates of behavior or the frequency with which certain attitudes are held.

C. Sampling Procedures

The special sampling procedures researchers have developed are among the most powerful tools in their kit. Properly done, sampling permits conclusions about entire populations (of individuals, groups, organizations, or other aggregates) by studying only a few of them. The key lies in how those few are selected.

D. Observational or Field Research

Field research involves going where people are. It includes observation and sometimes participant observation, in which the researcher makes observations while taking part in the activities of the social group being studied. A social researcher can do fieldwork by being a complete participant, only an observer, or anything in between.

E. Other Sources of Data

1. Existing Data and Government DocumentsGovernment documents are a major source of social statistics. The United States and many other governments spend millions of dollars each year gathering information from residents and private and state sources.

2. Comparative Historical MethodsIn order to make causal inferences, one must study events over time and compare cases that differ in certain key respects but are similar in other

important ways. For some problems this is possible only by using historical materials.

3. Unobtrusive Measures: Physical Traces and ArtifactsSome of the methods mentioned so far are limited by the fact that when people know they are being studied, they may try to influence what is learned about them. One solution is to look for nonreactive measures--that is, indicators that do not change because they are being studied. For example, one could assess the amount of drinking that occurs on a "dry" college campus by counting the number of beer, wine, and liquor bottles in the trash rather than by asking people about their drinking behavior.

4. Content AnalysisHow can we analyze the mass media? The method, content analysis, is used to describe and analyze in an objective and systematic way the content of literature, speeches, or media. It helps to identify cultural themes or trends. Alone it cannot tell us whether people think or behave differently as a result of reading certain stories, but it can measure the ideas that are in circulation.

IV. CONCLUSIONResearchers seek to grasp vibrant human issues with scientific procedures. Sociologists do not just sit in their armchairs and spin grand schemes; they go out in the world, observe, talk with people, and systematically analyze existing data to try to understand what is going on and why. This paper examined some of the most common ways social researchers do their work. After reading it, you should have a better idea of how social scientists conduct their inquiries; you should be acquainted with a number of important research terms that will reappear this semester and you should be more aware of your own reasoning processes.

And remember.........

Broad Street Pump Outbreak (Soho District London 1854)

The following description of the Broad Street Pump Outbreak was written by Judith Summers in her history of the Soho neighborhood of London. 

Cholera [kol-er-uh] is an infection of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are watery diarrhea and vomiting and may result in dehydration and death. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by the feces (waste product) of an infected person, including one with no apparent symptoms.

By the middle of the 19th century, Soho had become an insanitary place of cow-sheds, animal droppings, slaughterhouses, grease-boiling dens and primitive, decaying sewers. And underneath the floorboards of the overcrowded cellars lurked something even worse -- a smelly sea of cesspools as old as the houses, and many of which had never been drained. It was only a matter of time before this hidden festering time-bomb exploded. It finally did so in the summer of 1854.

When a wave of cholera first hit England in late 1831, it was thought to be spread through the air. By the time of the Soho outbreak 23 years later, medical knowledge about the disease had barely changed, though one man, Dr. John Snow (1813–1858), an anesthesiologist and pioneer of the science of epidemiology, had recently published a report theorizing that it was spread by contaminated water -- an idea with which neither the authorities nor the rest of the medical profession had much truck. Whenever cholera broke out -- which it did four times between 1831 and 1854 -- nothing whatsoever was done to contain it, and it rampaged through the industrial cities, leaving tens of thousands dead in its wake. The year 1853 saw outbreaks in Newcastle and Gateshead as well as in London, where a total of 10,675 people died of the disease. In the 1854 London epidemic the worst-hit areas at first were Southwark and Lambeth. Soho suffered only a few, seemingly isolated, cases in late August. Then, on the night of the 31st, what Dr. Snow later called "the most terrible outbreak of cholera which ever occurred in the kingdom" broke out.

It was as violent as it was sudden. During the next three days, 127 people living in or around Broad Street died. Few families, rich or poor, were spared the loss of at least one member. Within a week, three-quarters of the residents had fled from their homes, leaving their shops shuttered, their houses locked and the streets deserted. Only those who could not afford to leave remained there. It was like the Great Plague all over again.

By 10 September, the number of fatal attacks had reached 500 and the death rate of the St Anne's, Berwick Street and Golden Square subdivisions of the parish had risen

to 12.8 per cent -- more than double that for the rest of London. That it did not rise even higher was thanks only to Dr. John Snow.

Snow lived in Frith Street, so his local contacts made him ideally placed to monitor the epidemic which had broken out on his doorstep. His previous research had convinced him that cholera, which, as he had noted, "always commences with disturbances of the functions of the alimentary canal," was spread by a poison passed from victim to victim through sewage-tainted water; and he had traced a recent outbreak in South London to contaminated water supplied by the Vauxhall Water Company -- a theory that the authorities and the water company itself were, not surprisingly, reluctant to believe.

Now he saw his chance to prove his theories once and for all, by linking the Soho outbreak to a single source of polluted water (independent and dependent variables).

From day one he patrolled the district, interviewing the families of the victims. His research led him to a pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street, at the epicenter of the epidemic. "I found," he wrote afterwards, "that nearly all the deaths had taken place within a short distance of the pump." In fact, in houses much nearer another pump, there had only been 10 deaths -- and of those, five victims had always drunk the water from the Broad Street pump, and three were schoolchildren who had probably drunk from the pump on their way to school.

The Broad Street pump can be seen on the street corner at the lower left. The map to the right shows the location of the pump, and the home or business location of the

victims is shown by stacks of small dark marks that are clearly clustered around the pump. This type of map, which marks the location of disease cases, is now referred to as a "spot map."

Dr. Snow took a sample of water from the pump, and, on examining it under a microscope, found that it contained "white, flocculent particles." By 7 September, he was convinced that these were the source of infection, and he took his findings to the Board of Guardians of St James's Parish, in whose parish the pump fell.

Though they were reluctant to believe him, they agreed to remove the pump handle as an experiment. When they did so, the spread of cholera dramatically stopped. [actually the outbreak had already lessened for several days]. The graph below is an "epidemic curve" that plots the number of new cases that occur over time. This graph shows the number of cholera deaths over time. With knowledge of the incubation period for the disease, the shape of an epidemic curve can sometimes provide clues regarding the source of the epidemic. Cholera has an incubation period of only 1-3 days, and this graph indicates that new cases occurred over a period of about 10 days.

At the end of September the outbreak was all but over, with the death toll standing at 616 Sohoites. But Snow's theories were yet to be proved. There were several unexplained deaths from cholera that did not at first appear to be linked to the Broad Street pump water -- notably, a widow living in West End, Hampstead, who had died of cholera on 2 September, and her niece, who lived in Islington, who had succumbed with the same symptoms the following day. Since neither of these women had been near Soho for a long time, Dr. Snow rode up to Hampstead to interview the widow's son. He discovered from him that the widow had once lived in Broad Street, and that she had liked the taste of the well-water there so much that she had sent her servant down to Soho every day to bring back a large bottle of it for her by cart. The last bottle of water -- which her niece had also drunk from -- had been fetched on 31 August, at the very start of the Soho epidemic.

There were many other factors that led Snow to isolate the cause of the cholera to the Broad Street pump. For instance, of the 530 inmates of the Poland Street workhouse, which was only round the corner, only five people had contracted cholera; but no one

from the workhouse drank the pump water, for the building had its own well. Among the 70 workers in a Broad Street brewery, where the men were given an allowance of free beer every day and so never drank water at all, there were no fatalities at all. And an army officer living in St John's Wood had died after dining in Wardour Street, where he too had drunk a glass of water from the Broad Street well.

Still no one believed Snow. A report by the Board of Health a few months later dismissed his "suggestions" that "the real cause of whatever was peculiar in the case lay in the general use of one particular well, situated at Broad Street in the middle of the district, and having (it was imagined) its waters contaminated by the rice-water evacuations of cholera patients. After careful inquiry," the report concluded, "we see no reason to adopt this belief."

So what had caused the cholera outbreak? The Reverend Henry Whitehead, vicar of St Luke's church, Berwick Street, believed that it had been caused by divine intervention, and he undertook his own report on the epidemic in order to prove his point. However, his findings merely confirmed what Snow had claimed, a fact that he was honest enough to own up to. Furthermore, Whitehead helped Snow to isolate a single probable cause of the whole infection: just before the Soho epidemic had occurred, a child living at number 40 Broad Street had been taken ill with cholera symptoms, and its dirty cloth diapers had been washed in water which was subsequently dumped into a leaking cesspool that was only three feet from the Broad Street water well.

Whitehead's findings were published in The Builder a year later, along with a report on living conditions in Soho, undertaken by the magazine itself. They found that no improvements at all had been made during the intervening year. "Even in Broad-street it would appear that little has since been done... In St Anne's-Place, and St Anne's-Court, the open cesspools are still to be seen; in the court, so far as we could learn, no change has been made; so that here, in spite of the late numerous deaths, we have all the materials for a fresh epidemic... In some [houses] the water-butts were in deep cellars, close to the undrained cesspool... The overcrowding appears to increase..."  The Builder went on to recommend "the immediate abandonment and clearing away of all cesspools -- not the disguise of them, but their complete removal."

In retrospect, Dr. Snow made several important contributions to the development of epidemiologic thinking:

He proposed a new hypothesis for how cholera was transmitted. He tested this hypothesis systematically by making comparisons between

groups of people. He provided evidence for an (correlation/causation) association between

drinking from the Broad St. well and getting cholera. He argued for an intervention which prevented additional cases (removal of the

pump handle).

Source: Summers, Judith. Soho -- A History of London's Most Colourful Neighborhood, Bloomsbury, London, 1989, pp. 113-117.

                                                     Painting                           Dr. Snow              Memorial at Site

Research Assignment Question (s)

Questions – Doing Social Research Handout Doing Social ResearchAfter reading the Doing Social Research article, answer the following questions: 1. List three ways that scientific research differs from everyday knowledge? Explain the way that each one differs. 2. Social theory and research assume there are patterns in social life. Explain what this actually means? 3. Explain what a hypothesis is.4. What is the difference between correlation and causation? Describe an example.5. Come up with a (a.) hypothesis regarding the degree of drunkenness and the (b.) likelihood of an automobile accident. What is the independent variable? What is the dependent variable?Course Objective Met: #1 “Identify and explain the methods that social scientists use to investigate the human condition.”

Questions – Broad St. PumpThe Broad St. PumpAfter reading The Broad St. Pump article, answer the following questions in details and with full sentences.

1. Why was Dr. Snow’s research considered an explanatory study and not a descriptive study?

2. How did Dr. Snow gather his data? Experiments? Interviews and surveys? Sampling? Through existing data? Explain.

3. What do you think would have been Dr. Snow’s hypothesis between the well/water pump and cholera? (you must indicate the independent and dependent variables)

Course Objective Met: #1 “Identify and explain the methods that social scientists use to investigate the human condition.”