Avenues to Knowledge and Reasoning
- The kinds of research questions you will ask will always depend on the theoretical perspective from which you are working
Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches
- Quantitative
- refers to numerical data
- involves converting aspects of social life into numbers and determining whether a significant relationship exists between sets of numbers
- Qualitative
- refers to non-numerical data
- focus’ on rich detail
- tend to have smaller sample sizes & are more expensive
- researchers themselves are research instruments
- use interviewing and observation as the main techniques of data collection
Systems of Reasoning
- Researchers use two systems of reasoning: inductive logic and deductive logic
- Inductive logic
- Researcher gathers information about a topic before developing theories about how to explain particular aspects of it
- Deductive logic
- Researchers develop a theory or set of theories to explain or predict a pattern
- They then test their theory to see if the expected pattern transpires
Essential Research Components
- Hypothesis
- Independent and dependant variables
- Validity and reliability
- Correlation and causality
- Research population
Research Methods
- Surveys
o Self-administered questionnaires
o Telephone surveys
o In-person surveys
- Interviews
o Interviews in qualitative studies
o Interviews in quantitative studies
o Interviews and relations of power
- Participant Observation
- Secondary Analysis
- Participatory Action Research
- Mixed Methods
Sexism in Research
- Androcentricity – a vision of the world in male terms
- Overgeneralization – when researchers include only one sex in their study
- Gender insensitivity – when a gender is ignored as a socially important variable
- Double standard – when a study employs different means to evaluate or measure the same actions, qualities, or circumstances
- Sex appropriateness – when human traits or attributes are assigned only to one sec or the other are treated as more important for the sex to which they have been assigned
- Familism – when families are taken as the smallest unit of analysis in situations where specific individuals within those families are responsible for particular actions or experiences
- Sexual dichotomism – when two sexes are treated as completely separate and distinct social and biological groups rather than as two groups
The Ethics of Research
- Those wishing to conduct research must receive clearance from their institution’s regulatory body
Ethical guidelines intend to ensure that researchers will balance the risks people are subject to in the course of their involvement in a research study and the benefits of the study to the wider comm
