Babbie Chapter 1

Foundations of Social Science Theory - logic Empirical – observation (data collection) Analysis - the comparison of what is logically expected with what is actually observed.

Aggregates & Enduring Patterns The collective actions and situations of many individuals. Focus of social science is to explain why aggregated patterns of behavior are regular even when individuals change over time.

Education and Racial Prejudice Level of Education % saying Black- Americans have less ability to learn Less than high school graduate 27% High school graduate13% Junior college 9% Bachelor’s degree5% Graduate degree2%

Approaches to Social Research Idiographic -Seeks to fully understand the causes of what happened in a single instance. Nomothetic—Seeks to explain a class of situations or events rather than a single one.

Approaches to Social Research Induction – From specific observations to the discovery of a pattern among all the given events. Deduction - From a pattern that might be logically expected to observations that test whether the pattern occurs.

Approaches to Social Research Qualitative Data – Nonnumerical data. Quantitative Data -Numerical data. Makes observations more explicit and makes it easier to aggregate, compare, and summarize data.

Approaches to Social Research Positivist- a knowable and predictable world; an objective and expert researcher; hypothesis driven methods; statistically significant, quantitative findings Post-Positivist– a world that is ambiguous and variable; researchers that can be subjective; methods that can be inductive and exploratory; and findings that can be idiographic and qualitative.

9 The Assumptions