Lectures advanced methods and techniques

Lecture 1: Research strategies and ethics
Content
- Research strategies
- Criteria for social research
- Research designs
- Research ethics

Qualitative and quantitative research differ in terms of:
- General orientation to social research
- Epistemological foundations
- Ontological basis

Deductive and inductive theory
- Deductive: theory > data. Explicit hypothesis to be confirmed or rejected. Quantitative
- Inductive: data > theory. Generalizable inferences from observations. Qualitative

The research wheel




Epistemological considerations
- What is considered acceptable knowledge? Understanding or theory?
- Can the social world be studied scientifically?
- Is it appropriate to apply the methods of the natural sciences to social science research?
- Positivist and interpretivist epistemologies

Ontological considerations
- Social ontology: the nature of social entities
- What kind of objects exist in the social world?
- Do social entities exist independently of our perceptions of them?
- Is social reality external to social actors or constructed by them?

Quantitative research
- Measurement of social variables
- Common research designs: surveys and experiments
- Numerical and statistical data
- Deductive theory testing