Exam Two SOC 001 Monday 3 21 50 Multiple Choice Questions Readings Review Session Sunday 3 20 from 7 8pm in 262 Willard o Readings for this exam Anderson Zimbardo Brint Textbook Notes Chapter Five The Vocabulary of Science o o o Concept a label that is applied to things with similar characteristics or attributes Things in our mind that seemed to belong to the same category Ex figure 5 1 Elementary exercises in conceptualization circle the thing in the box that does not belong How is a concept related to a variable The first step in scientific research involves picking the concept or constructs of interest to us o We call these concepts variables Variable a thing of interest in a particular piece of research o They have two important characteristics 1 A variable is something that is thought to influence or be influenced by another thing Ex Gender is thought to influence occupation 2 A variable has to do with the idea of variation or difference Ex Attributes of gender vary from female to male Attributes a characteristic or a quality that describes a thing Depending on the situation the attributes of a particular variable will be defined in different ways How you define your list depends on the nature of the group you are studying Independent Variables vs Dependent Variables The distinction between influence and influenced by is a clue that there are two kinds of o variables Variables that influence or affect other things Causes Variables that are influenced or affected by other things effects A variable that is believed to influence another variable to be a cause is called an A variable that is thought to be influenced by the independent variable to be an effect independent variable is called the dependent variable A way to remember recall that the effect depends on the cause just as the dependent variable depends on the independent variable o After we identify the variables of interest to us we posit a relationship between them Examples gender affects occupation o When we create a hypothesis we aren t saying its necessarily true because it could be either true or false We create hypothesis to test whether the posited relationships between the variables are true or false Short hand way to say the hypothesis variable X influences variable y Precise way of saying it Different attributes of variable X are related to different attributes of variable Y o o Hypotheses Kinds of relationships directionally Relationships between two variables may be one of two types positive or negative o o Variables that vary in the same direction have a positive relationship Ex increased eating causes increased weight Abstractly Independent Variable Independent Variable Independent Variable Independent Variable Abstractly Positive relationship Dependent variable Dependent variable Dependent variable Dependent variable Negative relationship o Variables that vary in opposite direction have a negative relationship Ex increased exercise causes decreased weight Tables from book that we needed to know o 5 1 Table 5 1 Attributes of religious List One List Two Catholic Jewish Protestant Other None Buddhist Confucian Islamic Jewish Hindu Tao Protestant Roman Catholic Rosicrucian Shinto Other None o 5 2 5 3 o o 5 5 Review Questions for Chapter Five Answers in bold first bullet is question or concept of question o o o 5 1 5 3 5 4 o 5 5 o 5 6 Just understand you can derive a variable from a list of attributes Attributes can be sometimes listed as categories Read a hypothesis and identify the variables Ex poor people tend to commit street crimes whereas rich people tend to commit white collar crimes level of wealth or poverty type of crime committed Identify the independent variable the cause in each of the following hypothesis Hint logically the cause has to come before the effect Ex education effects income Independent variable education Identify the variables in each hypothesis and then indicate whether the posited relationship is positive or negative Ex the longer you live the more money you will earn Variables age income positive relationship Operationalize the following variables Remember that operationalizing simply means turning a variable into something that can be observed and measured which generally involves coming up with a list of the variables attributes Each list of attributes must be exhaustive and the attributes must be mutually exclusive Ex Race a Black b White c Asian d Hispanic e Other o 5 7 or false Use data from table 5 2 to determine whether each of the following statements are true Earnings tend to rise with increase in educational attainment regardless of race or gender True b White male high school graduates have higher median earnings then white c White women with bachelor s degrees have higher median earnings then white women with associate s degrees True men with associate s degrees False o 5 10 Use data from table 5 3 to determine whether each of the following statements are true or false a It s true that males tend to earn more money than women in low paying jobs but there are only small differences between the earnings of men and women in high paying jobs False b According to table 5 3 women are paid less than men because women are more likely than men to have low paying jobs False o 5 12 Table 5 5 shows that among male victims of nonfatal violent crimes more than half of the perpetrators 54 1 were strangers Among female victims only 34 1 percent of the perpetrators were strangers On the other hand notice that female victims of nonfatal violence s were nearly seven time more likely than men to have been victims of violent crimes perpetrated by inmates only 2 6 percent of men who were victims if violent crimes were victimized by inmates compared to the 18 1 percent of women Chapter Six Doing Social Research Two traditions quantitative and qualitative research o Quantitative social science Research done according to the natural sciences model gathers data that are relatively expressed in numbers As scientists sociologists should observe and measure the actions of social facts Scientist associated with this concept Emile Durkheim o Qualitative social sciences Scientist associated with this concept Max Weber Weber said that sociology should go beyond the natural science it must take into account meanings reasons attached to behaviors Weber proposed that sociologists adopt two goals predicting and understanding social behavior This sort of research is frequently called qualitative