Social%20science:%20The%20basics

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Social science The basics

• An introduction to the application of scientific
  method to human behavior

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Knowledge

• What does knowledge allow us to do?
• Predict
• Control
• Understand

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Beattys unscientific sources of knowledge

• Intuition
• Tenacity
• Common sense
• Personal experience
• Authority
• Rationalism

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So what are we to do?

• Develop ways to reduce the bias and improve our
  ability to observe
• Science as a means to systematically study the
  world
• First developed in hard or natural sciences
• Human beings were not the object of study
• Study moves from description to classification to
  correlation to causality

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Science

• Draws upon the other sources of knowledge
• Systematically tests ideas in the empirical world
• Precise
• Objective
• Cumulative

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Appropriate for some but not all questions

• Are Muslims violent?
• Would young children learn more from watching
  educational videos or from unstructured play?
• Do people use the Internet more for entertainment
  or for social contact?
• What is the meaning of life?
• Should the government license websites?
• Does advertising make us feel ugly?
• What colors should I wear together?

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Empiricism

• The kind of evidence that we gather in science is
  empirical evidence
• Drawn from our interaction with the physical
  world
• Science structures experience in ways that help
  us to improve on the lessons we learn from the
  real world

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Social science

• Scientific study applied to human behavior did
  not really get going till the 1800s
• Excitement over the successes of natural sciences
• Industrial machinery
• Vaccines against disease
• Optics
• Astronomical discoveries
• Navigation

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Development of social science

• There was a heated controversy over the
  appropriateness of the scientific study of people
• Religious/ethical concerns over the ethics of
  trying to study people
• Scientific debate over whether humans act
  according to laws of behavior the way inanimate
  objects do
• This debate continues

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Positivism

• From the beginning of the 20th century until the
  latter half of the century, social sciences
  favored an approach that said that the proper
  approach to the study of human behavior was to
  adopt the methods and philosophy dominant in
  natural sciences.
• Empirical
• Hypothetico-deductive
• Nomothetic

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Covering laws

• Scholars during the first half of the 20th
  century were concerned with attempting to
  identify the limited number of laws that
  explained all human behavior.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• Over time, their frustration, coupled with an
  increasing understanding of the uncertainty even
  of natural sciences led to an abandonment of the
  attempt by most social scientists.

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More recent developments

• An approach that accepts some level of
  uncertainty in the prediction and understanding
  of human behavior was adopted (Post-positivism)
• Note a probabilistic model was adopted
  (Trochim)

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The new view of social science

• Social scientists recognize that absolute
  covering laws of human beliefs, attitudes and
  behaviors are probably not there to be found
• Instead, relationships among variables are seen
  as partial and contingent upon circumstances,
  personalities, etc.

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How we study human action with social science
methods

• Social scientists attempt to develop theory by
  generalizing from a number of individual cases or
  examples
• Induction
• They then make predictions from the general rules
  to a new set of events or cases
• Deduction
• They test their predictions
• With the knowledge gained from the tests, they
  reconsider the generalizations they made
• The process begins again (continuous)

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Social science community

• The development of knowledge in a discipline is a
  community undertaking
• The best approximation to truth is attained
  through multiple researchers applying different
  theories and methods to the same questions
• Scientists act as a profession, policing each
  other and critiquing each others theories and
  research
• Conferences, etc. bring researchers looking at
  similar problems together

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Goals of social science

• In modern study of social science topics, the
  goal, generally speaking, is to develop
  probabilistic theories by identifying
  relationships among concepts
• Concepts are generalized ideas that refer to a
  number of individual cases

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Relationships

• The two most common types of relationships in
  research are
• Correlationaltwo concepts are related so that
  variance in one coincides with variance in
  another
• Causaltwo concepts are related so that variance
  in one leads to variance in the other

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Examples Correlation

• If you find that people who use illegal drugs at
  an early age watch druggie movies, it could be
  either that
• kids exposed to druggie movies are more likely to
  use drugs at an early age or
• kids who use drugs at an early age are attracted
  to druggie movies

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Examples Causality

• If you find that exposure to pro-abstinence
  messages leads to later onset of sexual behavior
  but not vice versa, and there is no other
  plausible explanation for the relationship, then
  you conclude that you have a causal relationship

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Representing relationships
Drug movies
Drug use

Exposure to pro-abstinence messages
Onset of sexual activity
__
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Basic theoretical statement
Gender self-definition
Violent video game play
Determines
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Concepts and variables

• Variables are concepts that take more than one
  value
• Otherwise, they are a constant
• E.g., the star that the Earth revolves around

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Basic research statement
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Relationship Determines
Gender identity
Violent video game play
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Antecedent variable
Antecedent Variable
Social construction of gender
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Violent video game play
Gender identity
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Mediating variable
Mediating Variable
Parents political liberalism
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Gender identity
Violent video game play
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Intervening Variable
Intervening Variable
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Gender identity
Violent video game play
Personal aggressiveness
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Confoundthird variable explanation
Antecedent Variable
Hormonal balance
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Gender identity
Violent video game play
X X X
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It can get quite complicated
Papies, Dominik, and Michel Clement. "Adoption of
New Movie Distribution Services on the Internet."
Journal of Media Economics 21.3 (2008) 131-57.
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It can get quite complicated
Papies, Dominik, and Michel Clement. "Adoption of
New Movie Distribution Services on the Internet."
Journal of Media Economics 21.3 (2008) 131-57.
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Paek, Hye-Jin. "Mechanisms through Which
Adolescents Attend and Respond to Antismoking
Media Campaigns." Journal of Communication 58.1
(2008) 84-105.
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Some variables to play around with
Gender Sex Age
Education Interest in technology Video Game Play
Game genre preference Game playing skill Sociability (Tendency toward interaction with others, friendships)
Enjoyment of fantasy Social conservatism Psychological compulsion
Sports experience Income Film genre preference
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Why social science faces special challenges

• The trouble with people

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People are hard to study because

• They think
• (and we dont have direct access to their minds)

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People are hard to study because

• They dont simply react to your stimulus
• They try to guess what youre doing and
  anticipate what your goal is
• They may intentionally help or hinder your goal
  (as they see it)
• They are affected by a wide range of things in
  their environment
• You cant control all the things that might
  affect your subjects

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People are hard to study because

• They are complicated
• They are emotional
• They forget
• They change over time
• Individuals are very different
• They can be uncooperative

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People are hard to study because

• Ethics limit what you can do to study them