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Summary ''The Practice of Social Research'' of Earl R. Babbie
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Summary study book The practice of social research of Earl R. Babbie - ISBN: 9780495598411, Edition: 13, Year of publication: 2010
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InhoudChapter one ......................................................................................................................................... 2
Chapter two ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter three ...................................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter four ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Chapter five ......................................................................................................................................... 7
Chapter six ......................................................................................................................................... 11
Chapter seven.................................................................................................................................... 13
Chapter eight ..................................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter nine ...................................................................................................................................... 18
Chapter ten........................................................................................................................................ 19
Chapter eleven .................................................................................................................................. 21
Chapter twelve .................................................................................................................................. 22
Chapter thirteen ................................................................................................................................ 24
Chapter fourteen ............................................................................................................................... 26
Chapter fifteen .................................................................................................................................. 28
1
,Chapter one
When we understand through direct experience, we make observations and seek patterns in
regularities in what we observe.
Agreement reality: those things we know as part and parcel of the culture we share with
those around us
Epistemology is the science of knowing
Methodology is the science of finding out; procedures for scientific investigation
Replication is repeating a research study to test and either confirm or question the findings
of an earlier study.
Theory is a systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of
life.
Much of what we know, we know by agreement rather than by experience.
Important sources of agreed-on knowledge are tradition and authority, however, this could
also lead us astray.
Science seeks to protect against the mistakes we make in day-to-day life.
Scientists seek to avoid overgeneralization. They do this to do sufficient observations and by
replicating studies. We sometimes jump to general conclusions based on only a few
observations.
Social theory attempts to discuss and explain what is, not what should be.
Theory should not be confused with philosophy or belief.
Social science looks for regularities in social life
Social scientists are interested in explaining human aggregates, not individuals.
Attribute: characteristics of people or things.
Theories are written in the language of variables
A variable is a logical set of attributes. An attribute is a characteristic. Sex is a variable made
up of the attributes male and female.
Independent variable is a variable with values that are not problematic in an analysis but are
taken as simply given. An independent variable is presumed to cause or determine a
dependent variable.
Dependent variable is a variable assumed to depend on or be caused by another. Income is a
dependent variable because it is partly a function of amount of formal education.
In causal explanation, the cause is the independent variable. The affected variable is the
dependent variable.
Purposes of social research: exploration, description and explanation.
An Idiographic explanation presents a specific case fully.
Nomothetic explanations present many cases.
Inductive theories reason from observation to pattern.
Deductive reason theories reason start from general statement and predict specific
observation.
Quantitative data are numerical, qualitative data are not.
Research projects often begin with the preparation of a research proposal, describing the
purpose and methods of the study.
2
,Chapter two
Social research projects are likely to be shaped by administrative, ethical and political
considerations.
What ethical and unethical in research is, is a matter of what a community of people agree is
right or wrong
Researchers agree that participation in a research normally be voluntary and that
participation should not harm the participants, unless they give their informed consent,
thereby willingly and knowingly accepting the risks of harm.
Informed consent is a norm in which subject base their voluntary participation in research
project on a full understanding of the possible risks involved
Anonymity is achieved in a research project when neither the researchers nor the readers
can identify someone with a given response.
Confidentially is when a researcher can identify a given person’s responses but promises not
to do so publicly.
Debriefing is interviewing subjects to learn about their experience of participation in the
project.
Deception (bedrog) in research requires a strong justification, and then it may be challenged.
Because deceiving people violates common standards of ethical behaviour.
Social researchers have ethical obligations to the community of researchers as well as to
subjects. This includes report results fully, disclosing errors, limitations and other
shortcomings.
Social research has a political and ideological dimension.
Science is neutral political matters. Much social research involves the political beliefs of
people outside the research community.
Scientists are not neutral on political matters.
Most researchers agree that political orientation should not influence research.
A shared ideology can affect the way other researchers receive one’s research.
The norms of science cannot force individual researchers to give up their personal values.
Chapter three
Paradigm is a model or frame of reference through which to observe and understand
Theories function in three ways
o Helping to avoid flukes (stomgeluk)
o Making sense of observed patterns
o Shaping and directing research efforts
Social scientists use a variety of paradigms to organize how they understand and inquire into
social life.
Macro theory: theory about large-scale features of society. A theory aimed at understanding
‘the big picture’ of institutions, whole societies and interaction among societies.
Karl Marx’s examination of the class struggle
Micro theory: theory about smaller units or features of society. A theory aimed at
understanding social life at the intimate level of individuals and their interactions.
Examining how the play behaviour of girls differs from that of boys.
3
, Positivism is a philosophical system that is grounded on the rational proof/disproof of
scientific assertions; assumes a knowable objective reality.
The positivistic paradigm assumes that we can scientifically discover the rules governing
social life.
The social Darwinist paradigm sees a progressive evolution in social life.
The conflict paradigm focuses on the attempt of in individuals and groups to dominate others
and to avoid being dominated.
Symbolic interactionism is a paradigm that views human behaviour as the creation of
meaning through social interactions, with those meanings conditioning subsequent
interactions.
The symbolic interactionist paradigm examines how shared meanings and social patterns
develop in the course of social interactions.
Ethnomethodology focuses on the ways people make sense out of social life in the process of
living it, as though each were a researcher engaged in an inquiry.
Structural functionalism is a paradigm that divides social phenomena into parts, each of
which serves a function for the operation of the whole.
The structural functionalist (or social systems) paradigm seeks to discover what functions the
many elements of society perform for the whole system.
Feminist paradigms are paradigms that view and understand society through the experiences
of women and/or examine the generally deprived status of women in society.
Feminist paradigms, in addition to drawing attention to the oppression of women in most
societies, highlight how previous images of social reality have often come from and
reinforced the experience of men.
Like feminist paradigms, critical race theory both examines the disadvantage position of a
social group (African Americans) and offers a different vantage point from which to view and
understand society.
Critical race theory is a paradigm grounded in race awareness and an intention to achieve
racial justice.
Interest convergence is the thesis that majority group members will only support the
interests of minorities when those actions also support the interest of the majority group.
Postmodernism is a paradigm that questions the assumptions of positivism and theories
describing an objective reality.
Critical realism is a paradigm that holds things are real insofar as they produce effects.
Hypothesis is specified testable expectations about empirical reality that follows from a more
general proposition; more generally, an expectation about the nature of things derived from
a theory. It is a statement of something that ought to be observed in the real world if the
theory is correct.
Null hypothesis is in connection with hypothesis testing and tests of statistical significance,
that hypothesis that suggests there is no relationship among the variables under study. You
may conclude that the variables are related after having statistically rejected the null
hypothesis.
Operationalization is one step beyond conceptualization. Operationalization is the process of
developing operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring
a variable.
4
, An operational definition is the concrete and specific definition of something in terms of the
operations by which observations are to be categorized. The operational definition of
‘’earning an A in this course’’ might be ‘’correctly answering at least 90 percent of the final
exam questions.’’
Some contemporary theorists and researchers have challenged the long-standing belief in an
objective reality that abides by rational rules. They point out that it is possible to agree on an
‘’intersubjective’’ reality, a view that characterizes postmodernism.
The elements of social theory include:
o Observations
o Facts
o Laws (which relate to the reality being observed)
o Concepts
o Variables
o Axioms
o Postulates
o Propositions
o Hypotheses (which are logical building blocks of the theory itself)
In the traditional image of science, scientists proceed from theory to operationalization to
observation. But this image does not accurately depict how scientific research is actually
done.
Social scientific theory and research are linked through the two logical methods of deduction
(the derivation of expectations and hypotheses from theories) and induction (the
development of generalizations from specific observations)
In practice, science is a process involving an alternation of induction and deduction
Deductive theory construction: a theory of Guillermina Jasso about distributive justice. He
illustrates how formal reasoning can lead to a variety of theoretical expectations that can be
tested by observation.
Inductive theory construction: a study of David Takeuchi about factors influencing marijuana
smoking among university of Hawaii students illustrates how colleting observations can lead
to generalizations and an explanatory theory.
In practice there are many possible links between theory and research and many ways of
going about social inquiry.
Researchers should not use paradigm and theory selection as a means of achieving desired
research goals.
The collective nature of social research offers protection against biased research findings.
Chapter four
Any research design requires researchers to specify as clearly as possible what they want to
find out and then determine the best way to do it.
The principal purposes of social research include exploration, description and explanation.
Research studies often combine more than one purpose.
Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon.
Description is the precise measurement and reporting of the characteristics of some
population or phenomenon under study.
5
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