2. Concepts
• Highest level of generality
• “A formal definition of what is being studied.”
• “The mental images we use to bring order to the mass of” things in
the social world
• Examples:
• Adjustment to college (academic, social, and psychological adjustment)
• Collective efficacy: social cohesion/trust & informal social control…..

3. What is a variable?
• Variables
• Logical groupings of attributes.

4. What is a variable?
• Example: To measure adjustment, you can think of questions such
as the following:
• Academic: Are you doing in your work? Are you attending your
classes?
Social: Have you made any friends? What degree of social life do
you have?

5. • 3. Attributes The categories of a variable
• Example: The attributes of the variable,
religion….

6. Making an argument
• Relationship between two or variables
• Example: Is low voter turnout explained by
the educational levels of the population?
– Do you buy the relationship exists?
– How will you support your case?

7. Statistic
• Categories of one VAR are related to
the categories of another

8. Causal
• 0ne variable is the cause, and the other
variable is the effect.

9. Causal
• Causal variable -- independent variable
• "effect" variable --dependent variable.
– The dependent variable (attitude or behavior)
– The independent variable (age, income,
race..)

10. Causal relationship
• differences in one VAR explain differences in the
other VAR
10

11. Four types of social research
• Descriptive Research: research that defines and describes
social phenomena
• Example: Shows frequencies (how many are doing something)
• Focus is on describing some phenomenon…..

12. Four types of social research
• Exploratory Research: investigation of social phenomena
without expectations
• Meanings
– actions and issues.
• Large amounts (unstructured information)
• New direction of inquiry

13. Four types of social research
• Explanatory Research
• research that identifies causes and effects of social phenomena
• Goal: predict how one thing will change when another.

14. Four types of social research
Evaluation Research: research that determines
the effects of a social program or other type of
intervention. How effect is a particular program?
–Is our smoking prevention program working?
–Is our needle exchange program working?

15. Two Traditions
• Qualitative • Quantitative
– Microsociology – Macrosociology
– Study of everyday life – Study of large-scale
– Acknowledges patterns
subjectivity of research – Assumes research
– Methods: objectivity
• Observation – Methods:
• Interviews • Surveys
• Visual analysis • Scales
• Databases

16. Two Traditions
• Quantitative
– Relationships between
variable
– Gender and income

17. Qualitative Approach
Issue or
Setting
Representation
Observations
and/or
Researcher Analysis and Interviews
Interpretation Images or Documents
Review of the Literature
(theories) Data Collection
Fieldnotes, interview
transcripts

18. Qualitative
• interactions, behaviors, and attitudes
– narrative representations

19. Qualitative
• Researcher does the analysis through
careful, ongoing “readings” of data

20. Value of Qualitative Research
• Debated within discipline for decades
• “legitimacy” as a science

21. A Striking Difference
• Qualitative researchers: enter a setting (the
field) and spend significant amounts of time
(often years) interviewing and observing.
– They are known by their subjects and come to know
their subjects well.
• Quantitative researchers: don’t meet their
subjects. Data is often collected through other
organizations (e.g., U.S. Census) or through
mail surveys.

22. Research Design and theory
• Quant: Theory -> hypothesis -> DATA
(deductive)
• Qual: Data – Take findings and then link to
theory (inductive)