The practice of Social Research (Babbie)
Hoofdstuk 1 – Science and Social Research
Most of what you and I know is a matter of agreement and belief. Little of it is based on personal
experience and sicovery.
A scientific assertion must have both logical and empirical support: It must make sense, and it must
nog contradict (tegenspreken) actual observation.
Agreement reality: scientist accept the reality of things they don’t personally experience, but
they have special standards for doing so (the things everyone knows as part
of the culture that’s surrounding us).
Ordinary human inquiry
We need to distinguish between prediction and understanding. Often we can make predictions
without understanding and often , even if we don’t understand why, we’re willing to act on the basis
of a demonstrated predictive ability. Human inquiry aims at answering both what and why questions.
- Tradition, in this sense of term, offers some clear advantages to human inquiry. By accepting
what everybody knows, we avoid the overwhelming task of starting from scratch in our
search for regularities and understanding.
- It also can hinder because you can be marked as fools for your efforts when researching it.
- Authority has the same influence as tradition.
Errors in inquiry , and Some Solutions
1. Inaccurate Observations
2. Overgeneralization
3. Selective Observation
4. Illogical Reasoning
Replication Repeating a research study to test and either confirm or question the dfindings of an
earlier study.
Theory: A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life:
juvenile delinquency, for example, or perhaps social stratification or political
revolution.
Social Regularities
The Charge of Triviality: Dat de al bestaande feiten wat anders zeggen dan de observatie.
Whereas psychologists focus on what happens inside individuals, social scientists study what goes on
between them: examining everything from couples to small groups and organizations, and on up to
whole societies an even interactions between societies. Ze kijken echt naar patronen en niet naar het
individu en ook al zijn sommige dingen individueel veranderd proberen sociale onderzoekers toch
een patroon te vinden voor het waarom. Social research, then, involves the study of variables and
their relationships.
Variables: logical sets of attributes.
The variable sex is made up of the attributes male and female
Attributes: characteristics of people or things
Hoofdstuk 1 – Science and Social Research
Most of what you and I know is a matter of agreement and belief. Little of it is based on personal
experience and sicovery.
A scientific assertion must have both logical and empirical support: It must make sense, and it must
nog contradict (tegenspreken) actual observation.
Agreement reality: scientist accept the reality of things they don’t personally experience, but
they have special standards for doing so (the things everyone knows as part
of the culture that’s surrounding us).
Ordinary human inquiry
We need to distinguish between prediction and understanding. Often we can make predictions
without understanding and often , even if we don’t understand why, we’re willing to act on the basis
of a demonstrated predictive ability. Human inquiry aims at answering both what and why questions.
- Tradition, in this sense of term, offers some clear advantages to human inquiry. By accepting
what everybody knows, we avoid the overwhelming task of starting from scratch in our
search for regularities and understanding.
- It also can hinder because you can be marked as fools for your efforts when researching it.
- Authority has the same influence as tradition.
Errors in inquiry , and Some Solutions
1. Inaccurate Observations
2. Overgeneralization
3. Selective Observation
4. Illogical Reasoning
Replication Repeating a research study to test and either confirm or question the dfindings of an
earlier study.
Theory: A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life:
juvenile delinquency, for example, or perhaps social stratification or political
revolution.
Social Regularities
The Charge of Triviality: Dat de al bestaande feiten wat anders zeggen dan de observatie.
Whereas psychologists focus on what happens inside individuals, social scientists study what goes on
between them: examining everything from couples to small groups and organizations, and on up to
whole societies an even interactions between societies. Ze kijken echt naar patronen en niet naar het
individu en ook al zijn sommige dingen individueel veranderd proberen sociale onderzoekers toch
een patroon te vinden voor het waarom. Social research, then, involves the study of variables and
their relationships.
Variables: logical sets of attributes.
The variable sex is made up of the attributes male and female
Attributes: characteristics of people or things
