Explain the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods.
Please post thoughtful responses and comments to the following questions.
- Watch the video ‘Sociological Research’ on the Week 3 Videos and read Chapter 2. Sociological Research on the Week 2 Learning Resources. Explain the steps of the sociological research using your own sociology topic. Discuss also your reaction of the sociological research.
- Explain the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods. Give examples of each from the sociological research (not from the Internet examples).
- You wished to understand a social phenomenon, such as what causes poverty, what kind of research do you think would be necessary? What would be the advantages or disadvantages of asking a large number of people a set of fixed questions about poverty, or alternatively, of interviewing a group of poor people by asking open ended questions?
- Distinguish between deductive and inductive approaches to research. Provide examples of each from the sociological research (not from the Internet examples).
- Imagine you are a researcher interested in the effect TV watching has on schoolchildren’s grades. Identify independent and dependent variables. How might you go about setting up a design to measure this effect?
- If you wanted to conduct research that examined the relationship between family background and student alcohol use, what indicators would you use to measure these two variables? Identify independent and dependent variables. How might you design your study?
- Discuss the role of ethics in social science research. Include in your discussion examples of research that presented ethical dilemmas for the researcher and the importance of human subjects’ review committees.
‘Sociological Research’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHuEoZ97BgA&ab_channel=Janux
OpenStax Introduction to Sociology 2e – Chapter 2 – https://d3bxy9euw4e147.cloudfront.net/oscms-prodcms/media/documents/IntroductionToSociology2e-OP_tbTLqMj.pdf