How Sociologists Do Research

This article starts out with an example of a rape crime. A girl named Renee, age 19, was very scared because she had never went anywhere with a stranger let alone be in the car with one. The man's name was George and she had met him at her friend Patricia's party. They had danced and he asked if she would like if he took her home. She accepted the offer of him taking her home. While he was driving he passed her turn to her dorm and mumbled that he had to get something. He turned off onto a country road and that’s when she became scared. He looked at her and told her, "It’s time to pay babe," and started clawing at her shirt. Renee won't talk about that night.

Now the question is:

How can we gather reliable information on rape?

Sociologist and Common Sense:

            Common sense- A kind of knowledge not based on formal investigation, but on ideas that we pick up from our groups, mixed with abstractions from our own experiences.

o   From common sense we know that rape has ongoing effects, that it can trigger fears and anxieties, and that it can make women distrust me.

o   Also, some common sense ideas are not right.

Research Model:

            A research model has eight basic steps some have less, some are in different order, and some could have more.

1)     SELECTING A TOPIC

What you want to know about. It’s a sociologist own interest that helps them pick a topic or just because the funds are available.

2)     DEFINING THE PROBLEM

This is the second step to determine what you want to learn about the topic.

       Ex: You may want to determine the education and work experience of a rapist, or the average age of their victims.

3)     REVIEWING THE LITERATURE

Third step to reviewing the literature to see what has been published on the topic. If a question has already been answered, you want to know that. It can help you accomplish more.

4)     FORMULATING A HYPOTHESIS

A statement of what you expect to find based on a theory. A hypothesis predicts a relationship between or among variables.

5)     CHOOSING A RESEARCH METHOD

Ways by which sociologist collect data.

6)     COLLECTING THE DATA

Now you gather your data and make sure that it is accurate and reliable.

a.     SURVEYS

Let’s say you want to know how many women are raped each year then you will want to take a survey. Then you have to decide who you’re going to survey. What is the target group that you want to learn about? It’s best to do a random sample to generalize the whole population. Let’s say you’re at a college … you will need a list of all the women on campus. Then assign a number to each name on the list. You then will use random numbers to determine which particular women will become part of the sample. There is always some variation.

In some surveys, questionnaires, a list of questions are mailed to people. Other surveys use interviews: Respondents are asked questions directly. Usually surveys are done face-to-face, although they could be done over the phone. An advantage is that the researchers bring control to the situation. A disadvantage is the effects that interviewers can have on respondents that lead to biased answers. Some respondents try to make their answers match what they think the interviewer wants to hear.

b.     SECONDARY ANALYSIS

This is when researchers analyze data already collected by others. Ordinarily, researchers prefer to gather their own data, but lack of resources, especially money, may make this impossible. This approach can solve problems of access, but it also poses its own problems.

c.      DOCUMENTS

This is a written source of data. They are not commonly called documents, also included in this are movies, television programs, videotapes, computer disks, CD-ROMs, and other digitized records.

To apply this method to the study of rape, you might examine police reports.

a.     EXPERIMENTS

Sociologists seldom use this method. However, because they are more likely to be interested in broad features of society and social behavior, or in studying a social group in a natural setting, neither of which lends itself to an experiment.

The basic purpose of an experiment is to identify cause-and-effect relationships-to find out what causes what.

b.     UNOBTRUSIVE MEASURES

       Observing people’s behavior when they do not know they are being studied.

c.      PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION (FIELD WORK)

                                  The researcher participates in a research setting while observing what is

                                  happening in that setting.

7)     ANALYZING THE RESULTS

a.     Now it’s time to analyze your results. Sociologist use specific techniques for doing this, each of which requires special training. Ranging from statistical tests to content analysis.

8)     SHARING THE RESULTS

a.     Write a report to share your findings with the scientific community. Relate your finding to the literature. Explain your research procedures so others can replicate them.

In class we were given an assignment to go out and have 4 different people do the same surveys that were just worded differently. The results of the survey were that many people had the same thoughts and ideas, and understood the different wording. One thing I learned about doing this is that you need to make sure that people can understand what the question is asking them. Also, we watched a video about two men doing a survey asking people if they would like to end women’s suffrage. Many people didn’t understand the true meaning of what they were being asked and ended up signing the petition and only a couple people understood and became infuriated. I actually thought this was a really good lesson so that if I were to ever have to do a survey on my own I will know what I’m doing.