Intro to Research Methods Test 1 Guide How do people tend to evaluate research Based on personal values Public debate tends to rely on simplistic argument and common sense o Focus on the exception rather than the rule and give great weight to personal experiences Personal values exception personal experience What are some of the basic sources of knowledge Authorities Trusting judgment of someone with special expertise Tradition Things everyone knows The Media The things we know from direct experience touching a stove Experiential Reality Agreement Things we consider real because we have been told they are real and everyone agrees sun sets in West Why we cant trust ourselves to make unscientific observations Inaccurate selective observations o Using both simple complex measurement devices helps to guard against inaccurate observations o Selective observation paying attention to what you believe Overgeneralization o To avoid over generalizing survey a large sample of observations o Also replicate the survey to see if you get similar results Illogical reasoning o An idea that makes no sense o Gamblers fallacy Ideology and politics opposite interested way A consistent run of good or bad luck is presumed to foreshadow its o We cannot trust ourselves to report info accurately and in a non self o These issues can undermine objectivity in the research process o The scientific approach to the study of crime guards against but does not prevent ideology and theology from coloring the research process Be familiar with the term probabilistic outcomes or relationships We assume that what we are trying to manipulate explain is probabilistic where the presence of X means a more likely chance of Y occurring Y does not have to occur every time there is X so individual exceptions do not disprove the rule A type of casual reasoning that certain factors make outcomes more or less likely o Having been arrested as a juvenile makes it more likely someone will be to happen arrested as an adult What is theory Social scientific theory has to do with what is not what should be Theory is a systematic explanation for the observed facts and laws that relate to a particular aspect of life o EX Juvenile Delinquency A set of concepts and the proposed relationship among these a structure that is intended to represent or model something about the world Theory guides research In grounded theory observations contribute to theory development Causation Independent Variable something else Dependent Variable A persons attributes on one variable are expected to cause or encourage a particular attribute on another variable The cause variable or the one that indentifies forces or conditions that act on A cause variable that produces an effect of results on a dependent variable The variable that is the effect or is the result or outcome of another variable The effect or result variable that is caused by an independent variable IV DV How are the IV and DV related The dependent variable depends on an independent variable What is a hypothesis What relationship does a hypothesis try to explain An expectation about the nature of things derived from a theory A statement of something that will be observed in the real world if the theory is Observations aimed at finding out An idea or interests turns into the development of a theory which turns into a hypothesis What is an ethical dilemma in scientific inquiry No harm to participants is a fundamental ethical dilemma in all research What does voluntary participation mean Why is this important Cannot use force or threaten participation but can sometimes use deception trick correct people Anonymity A research subject is considered anonymous when the researcher cannot associate a given piece of information with the person Addresses many potential ethical difficulties o Studies that use field observation techniques are often able to ensure that research subjects cannot be indentified Confidentiality promises not to A researcher who is able to link information with a given persons identity but What were the problems with the Tearoom study Laud Humphreys o Studied same gender sexual acts between strangers who meet in public restrooms in parks o Served as watch queen o Noted plate numbers of participants tracked down names and addresses through police conducted a survey to obtain personal info at their homes o Used extreme deception not voluntary participation What were the problems with the Stanford Prison Study o Subjects were not fully informed of the procedures o Guards were granted the power to make up and modify rules as the study progressed and their behaviors became increasingly authoritarian What is a research design What things influence research designs Why is the research design important Research design is the plan or blueprint for a study o Includes the who what when where and how of an investigation As social scientists we seek to explain the causes of a phenomenon crime What is a Probabilistic Causal Model Certain factors make crime delinquency more or less likely within groups of people o Two models of explanation Idiographic lists the many considerations behind an action Tries to rule out spuriousness List as many factors possible Nomothetic lists the most important and fewest considerations variables that best explain general patterns of cause and effect Fewest possible variables o Necessary and Sufficient Causes Within the probabilistic model two types Necessary cause Sufficient cause o Represents a condition that must be present for the effect to occur being charged before being convicted o Represents a condition that if it is present will pretty much guarantee that the effect will occur pleading guilty before being convicted What are the criteria for causality in the scientific inquiry The two variables must The cause must precede the effect in time The independent variable must occur before the dependent variable o It makes no sense to imagine something being caused by something else that happened later on A bullet leaving the muzzle of a gun does not cause the gunpowder to explode it s the other way around Must be empirically correlated with each other they must occur together the independent and dependent variables must be empirically related to each other o It makes no sense to say that exploding gun powder causes a bullet to leave the muzzle of a gun if in observed reality a bullet does not come out after the gunpowder explodes The observed empirical correlation
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