SYA 4300 Methods of Social Research B Knop Final Exam Review Secondary Data What is Secondary Data Primary Data data we collect ourselves Secondary Data data collected by others o Data that have been collected by someone else and made available to the researcher mostly survey data collected by others Secondary analysis is done on secondary data someone else gathered the data for their own purposes and then you analyze it for your own purposes o Unit of Analysis almost always the individual o Many data sets found via ICPSR Advantages of using Secondary Data Cost data is already available so you don t have to spend money conducting the research Time don t have to spend time collecting the data Quality it depends Longitudinal analysis data over time Sub group analysis get at nuances among groups Cross cultural analysis merge country level data or regional level Learning the data if you did not collect it it may take some time to learn the ins and outs Complexity survey codebooks depending on comprehensiveness help with this Data quality validity reliability generalizability Availability of variables even if a data set is super cool does it have the variables you need Disadvantages Steps in using Secondary Data Step One find the data Sources ICPSR data websites Step Two read the accompanying data documentation o Read the user guide codebook other publications Step Three clean organize and recode Know available variables skip patterns missingness created variables Step Four begin analysis o Depends on the level of analysis your questions requires o Descriptive univariate correlations bivariate predictive causal multivariate Step Five report your findings Publications presentations etc o o o Crosstabs Quantitative Analysis Cross tabulation tables displays distribution of one variable within each category of another variable Calculate percentages within the levels of the independent variable Percentages are calculated by dividing the number in the cell by the total o Example o 2 12 17 multiply by 100 to get 17 Be able to interpret them make sense of it Statistical Power Chi square test statistics used to test hypotheses about relationships between 2 or more variables test relationship between two variables with it o Cut off point is 05 p 05 Translation the probability that the association was due to chance is less than 5 out of 100 Gamma value that ranges from 1 to 1 o The closer to 1 or 1 the stronger the relationship between two variables gamma of 0 indicates no relationship What is Qualitative Research Qualitative Research It was designed to capture social life as participants experience it rather than in categories the researcher predetermines The purpose is to understand the world through the people the researcher is studying Often involves exploratory research o This asks what s going on in this group Qualitative Methods know types Field research Participant observation Intensive interviewing Focus groups Processes Processes a collection of actions that occur in interactions o Qualitative research is making an inference about processes o Examples Becoming a college student Othering a person or group Controlling emotions o Each of these phrases has an ing verb processes have to do with people doing things Distinguishing Features Exploratory Research Question begins with an exploratory research question about what people think how they act and why in some social setting Focuses on unstudied processes and unanticipated phenomena Previously unstudied attitudes and actions can t adequately be understood with a structured set of questions or within a highly controlled experiment Social Context has an orientation to social context Interconnections within the social world between social phenomena rather than to discrete features Human Subjectivity focuses on human subjectivity which are the meanings participants attach to events and that people give to their lives o o Field Research Field Research research in which natural social processes are studied as they happen and left relatively undisturbed Ethnography From an anthropological tradition who studied cultures tribes and communities o o Refers to participant observation by a single observer immersing in the group for a long period of time with the group for at least 1 2 years sometimes more Example o Code of the Street by Elijah Anderson a study of Philadelphia s inner city Netnography Analyzing groups on the internet o o Using ethnographic methods to study online communities Online communities have their own cultures norms etc Ethnomethodology Focuses on o How people create reality rather than trying to describe the social world How reality is constructed not on what it is Types of Participant Observations Complete Observation researcher does not participate in group activities and is publicly defined as a researcher no way involved in the group simply just watching o Researchers must take into account ways that their presence alters the social situations being observed Reactive Effects changes in individual or group behavior due to being observed Complete Participation researcher is engaged in the activities of the group o Can be convert o Researcher has to write up notes when they are away from the scene Gatekeeper person in the field setting who can grant the researcher access to the setting person that lets you into the group that you re studying Key Informant insider who is willing and able to provide a field researcher with information and credibility within the group o Can be the same person as the gatekeeper very knowledgeable and can give researcher insight Entering the Field Finding a Sample about the group and or a situation Snowball Sampling respondents are selected as successive informants or interviewees identify them find one person to interview with and then ask who they know that you can interview etc The sample snowballs in size o o Useful for hard to reach or hard to identify populations Goals of Interviewing Two Main Goals In Depth Interviewing o Giving Voice helps people understand the world of a particular group Often marginalized groups o Advancing Theory involves reading between the lines of what people do and say Can come up with new concepts advance new theories or adding to existing theories Characteristics of Interviewing Relies on open ended questions o The goal is to develop an understanding of the interviewee s world Unstructured allow specific content and the order of questions to vary rather than