Summary of the book Introduction to social science research from Earl Babbie, the 7th edition. Also attached a summary from Gilbert Chapter 3.
appropriate for Premaster media studies and IBCOM students from the EUR.
Summary of The Basics of Social Research
+ Gilbert Chapter 3
Babbie
7th edition
Year: 2019
1
,Table of contents
CHAPTER 1: HUMAN INQUIRY AND SCIENCE................................................................................................3
CHAPTER 2: PARADIGMS, THEORY, AND RESEARCH.......................................................................................8
CHAPTER 3: THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH..........................................................................13
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN...............................................................................................................15
CHAPTER 5: CONCEPTUALIZATION, OPERATIONALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT.................................................19
CHAPTER 7: THE LOGIC OF SAMPLING.......................................................................................................22
CHAPTER 8: EXPERIMENTS.....................................................................................................................26
CHAPTER 9: SURVEY DESIGN..................................................................................................................29
CHAPTER 10: QUALITATIVE FIELD RESEARCH..............................................................................................34
CHAPTER 11: UNOBTRUSIVE RESEARCH....................................................................................................41
CHAPTER 13: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS...............................................................................................44
GILBERT CHAPTER 3 FORMULATING AND REFINING A RESEARCH QUESTION.......................................................47
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,Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and science
How do people identify if something is real?
- Through agreement; believing things that other people say
- Direct experience or through observation
When your experience conflicts with what everyone else knows, there’s a good chance you will
surrender your experience in favor of agreement.
Agreement reality = those things we “know” as part and parcel of the culture we share with those
around us
Knowledge from agreement reality
- Logical and empirical support: it must make sense and it must not contradict actual
observation
Epistemology = the science of knowing ; systems of knowledge
Methodology = the science of finding out ; procedures for scientific investigation
Inquiry is a natural human activity. Much of ordinary human inquiry seeks to explain events and
predict future events.
People exhibit a desire to predict their future circumstances. We seem quite willing to undertake this
task using causal and probabilistic reasoning.
1. We generally recognize that future circumstances are somehow caused or conditioned by
present ones
2. We also learn that such patterns of cause and effect are probabilistic in nature ; the effects
occur more often when the causes occur than when the causes are absent.
We need to distinguish between prediction and understanding in ordinary human inquiry. Often, we
can make predictions without understanding. We are willing to act on the basis of a demonstrated
predictive ability.
If we understand why things are related to one another, why certain regular patterns occur, we can
predict even better than if we simply observe and remember those patterns.
Human inquiry aims at answering both “what” and “why” questions, and we pursue these goals by
observing and figuring out.
Important sources of secondhand knowledge
1. Tradition
2. Authority
Both can be positive and negative for inquiries.
Common errors in inquiry and solutions
- Inaccurate observations. Solutions are simple and complex measurement devices
- Overgeneralization; we tend to overgeneralize on the basis of limited observations. Solution
is replication.
- Selective observation; tending to focus on things that fit the pattern, and ignoring those that
don’t. Solution is committing yourself to making a specified number of observations and
finding deviant cases, those who do not fit into the pattern.
- Illogical reasoning. Solution is using systems of logic consciously and explicitly.
3
, Replication = repeating an experiment to expose or reduce error
The two pillars of science are
- Logic
- Observation
A scientific understanding of the world must
- Make sense
- Correspond with what we observe
Both elements are essential to science and relate to 3 major aspects of the overall scientific
enterprise:
- Theory (logic)
- Data collection (observation)
- Data analysis (patterns in what is observed)
Social science is theory, not philosophy or belief
Theory = a systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life
In large part, social science theory aims to find patterns in social life. The vast number of formal
norms in society create a considerable degree of regularity.
Objections that are raised in regard to social regularities
- Trivial, obvious things
- Contradictory cases may be cited, indicating that the regularity isn’t totally regular
- People involved in the regularity could upset the whole thing if they wanted to.
Reference group theory = this theory says that people judge their lot in life less by objective
conditions than by comparing themselves with others around them – their reference group.
The objection that there are always exceptions to any social regularity does not mean that the
regularity itself is unreal or unimportant. Social regularities are probabilistic patterns, and they are no
less real simply because some cases don’t fit the general pattern.
The objection that the conscious will of the actors could upset observed social regularities does not
pose a serious challenge to social science.
There is a slightly different form of human interference that makes social research particularly
challenging. Social research has a recursive quality, in that what we learn about society can end up
changing things so that what we learned is no longer true.
Social regularities do exist and are worthy of theoretical and empirical study. As such, social scientists
study primarily social patterns rather than individual ones. These patterns reflect the aggregate or
collective actions and situations of many individuals. They create theories about the nature of
groups, rather than individual life.
Social science theories try to explain why aggregated patterns of behavior are so regular, even when
the individuals participating in them may change over time. Scientists don’t seek to explain people
per se. they try instead to understand the system in which people operate, which in turn explain why
people do what they do. The elements in such a system are not people but variables.
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