Write a 500 word response regarding the science of sociology

I attached the powerpoint of the lecture below that needs to be addressed. I also gave an example of a response and included the instructions below too.

Instructions:Please write a blog for each class that incorporates the readings, films and lectures into your answer. They should be approximately 500 words

For your blog postings I will be looking for three things: 1. Incorporation of course materials (readings, films, lectures) 2. How well/completely you answered the blog prompt 3. Overall quality of writing. Please think about these elements when writing your blogs.

Example:“The science of sociology” represents human behavior and how we look at and study the idea of society. In order to understand what this is you have to dive deep and try to grasp individuals and people that are in groups, converse or interact with one another. You also have to look at what sort of structure is shaping that individual or groups social life. there are various ways to study the human world and various types of research such as quantitative and qualitative research, observations, historical data, surveys, and other experiments.

The research process in terms of sociology, have various steps in order to achieve final solidified research. First, you have to dissect the question or the problem that you were looking at and understand what it really is, then once you have figured that out, you have to conduct a thorough review in order to form a question that your experiment will surround such as a hypothesis. once you have a hypothesis and you can design your study and collect all the data necessary to analyze it. After the data collection, you then draw conclusions to formulate your theory. It’s easier to be objective and sociologists are objective, but they also understand that there could be various biases that exist in their research.

One example that is a good mention in this case is Emily Durkheim and the famous study that was done on suicide. Using stats in order to study the rate of suicide across various context she dissected the role that influence takes on suicide. Through this research process, there was lots of data collected from a variety of sources, then what needed to be done was an identification and analyzing of several different types of patterns that led suicide in order to develop a solid theory that the studies purpose.

Another example, Erving Goffman, who conducted ethnographic work that represented ideas of every day life. There was an observational study done by him that used surveys to gather data on different people and how much social media was used and how using so much social media can affect such mental health. Using the surveys and in-depth interviews to gain more qualitative insights it showed the variety of results experiences or ways of thinking by teenagers. I feel that using the approach it allows for a more complex and easier understanding of how social media and mental health are tied together.

I feel that studying social media and how it affects mental health among teenagers is such a good topic to study and I would definitely choose that for my topic choice. I feel that using surveys done by several different teenagers, having in person interviews, and hearing what they have to say, in order to get quantitative and qualitative data would allow me to have a concise and solid case to present because it is a mixed-method approach and leads to a better quality study as well.

Ethical issues that I feel are necessary to mention are confidentiality, any potential or possible harm that can occur to participants throughout conducted research, and informed consent. Several larger scale studies that were researched in the past violated core ethical aspects and principles by manipulating the participants and also withholding their treatment. I feel that today ethical guidelines have become more strict, and requiring inform consent and confidentiality lead to little to zero harm and it is better for everybody in the long run. I feel it is very ideal and wise to have these guidelines and for them to be enforced by institutional review boards (IRBs) helps everyone to remain protected.

Lecture Outline
■ Research Process
– Sociological Questions
– Research Methodology
– Research Process
– Understanding and Interpreting Results
■ Quantitative Data Assignment
■ Ethical Issues
– Tuskegee and Stanford Prison Experiment
– Alice Goffman reading
2
Sociological Questions
Help us understand questions like . . . Why do the Amish
stay in the church? OR What impacts our religious beliefs?
Why do these events or social changes happen? Under
what conditions? These are sociological questions.
Types of sociological questions:
-Factual (empirical): what and how
-Comparative: difference in subject across social
contexts
-Developmental (trend study): linking a current
phenomenon to historical factors
-Theoretical: interpreting the answers to
the empirical questions: Why does something happen?
Research Methodology
■
What types of methods do sociologists use to answer research
questions?
– Each method is used to answer a different type of question – choose
your method after you develop your question
■
Experimental
– Set-up a social condition to test a theory or hypothesis you may not be
able to examine in the real world
■
Quantitative
– Surveys, cross-cultural analysis
– Broad questions over long periods of space
and time
■
Qualitative
– Interviews, field research, content analysis
– Answer
5/20/21 in-depth questions about experiences, beliefs, attitudes
3
Example: Health Care
■
■
■
■
How do other countries provide health care? How does the US
compare to other countries in quality of health care?–
– Survey
What is the impact of having health care on someone?
– Interview
How do hospitals treat patients with or without health insurance?
– Field Research
Now Using Your Articles- Make up a research question and
method based on your article
Social Science
Research
Can we study the social world like we study biology?
Put a microscope on our society?
– Build a research process that closely examines the
social world
– Use proper research methods to try and eliminate
your own biases
■ 7 Steps in The Research Process
– Each step builds on the previous one
■ Develop a Research Question from a Sociological
Research Topic
– What are some of your ideas or questions?
■
Understanding The Results
■
Independent vs. Dependent Variables
– Independent- the variable causing the event- in SPE this
was the prison setting
– Dependent- the variable that is changed/impacted- in
SPE this was the changes in behavior
■
Causal Mechanism- one situation produces another
– Very hard to determine causation
– Dependent/Effect: Women having children later in US
– Independent/Cause: changes in working and educational
requirements
Interpreting the Results
■
Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics
– What does the author argue about the use of statistics?
That they can be manipulated so have to be very
careful about making assumptions about causal
relationships
■ Analyzing Research- Be
Very careful when
Researching your topicWhat evidence do you find
Credible? Why? Why not?
■
Quantitative Data
Assignment
■ What is the role of statistics in data
collection and analysis?
■ How do you read statistics?
■ What does the data in these articles
tell us?
■ Why are statistics important?
■ How can they be misleading?
Tuskegee Experiment
■ How did the researchers treat the
subjects they were working with?
■ Is this a problem? Why?
■ What happened long term to subjects in
both studies?
■ How should we treat human subjects?
What are our moral and ethical
obligations?
Review: Science of Sociology
■ Social Science Research Topic and Questions
■ Three Types of Research Methods
■ Steps in the Research Process
■ Understanding and Interpreting the Results
■ Tuskegee and Human Subjects