Social Research

Introductions

• What is your name?
• Where are you from?
• What did you do before this?
• What program are you in and what are your fields?
• Have you ever had a statistics course? If so, what did you cover?
• What do you do in your free time?

Social Research

• What is social research?
  • Attempt by social scientists to develop and sharpen our understanding of human society and social relationships
• Why do we engage in social research?

Normative vs. Empirical Research

• Normative research seeks to answer questions about how the world should or ought to be
  • Philosophical, based on values, subjective
  • Example: what is the best management style?
• Empirical research seeks to answer questions about how the world is
  • Factual, based on observation (data), (more) objective
  • Example: what management style optimizes employee retention?

Basic vs. Applied Research

• Basic research seeks to develop new knowledge about the nature of phenomena
  • Innate curiosity
  • Example: why are people violent?
• Applied research seeks to answer specific questions about real-world problems and their solutions
  • Problem solving
  • Example: how do we reduce violence in schools?

Descriptive vs. Explanatory Research

• Descriptive research seeks to characterize the nature of a problem of phenomena.
  • Example: how pervasive is school violence?
• Explanatory research seeks to explain the causes of a problem or phenomena and/or the effectiveness of particular solutions
  • Example(s):
    • What causes school violence?
    • Do metal detectors reduce the likelihood of school violence?

Research Process

Research Question

• The question you plan to answer in a given study

• Can be challenging—should be narrow enough to answer in a given study, but broad enough to matter

  • Too broad: Why do people vote?
  • Too narrow: Did rain during the presidential election in 2012 reduce turnout in Oklahoma City?
  • Just right: Do weather patterns affect voter turnout in presidential elections?

Review Previous Research

• Place your research within the context of existing scholarship—what do we know and what do we need to know about the relationship between weather and voter turnout?
  • Have other scholars addressed the question? If so, what did they find and what are you adding to their findings?
  • Do theories/findings exist in other areas of research (i.e., consumer behavior) that might speak to your question? If so, what are those theories/findings and how might they relate to your question?

Develop Theory

• Set of interrelated propositions that seek to explain and, in some cases, predict an observed phenomenon
  • Inclement Weather \(\Rightarrow\) Traffic \(\Rightarrow\) Cost of Voting \(\Rightarrow\) Turnout

Develop Theory

• Good theories are:

  1. Accurate—consistent with reality
  2. Generalizable—applicable to a wide variety of cases
  3. Productive—generate testable(falsifiable) hypotheses

Develop Theory

• Where does theory come from?

  1. Logic (deduction)
  2. Observation (induction)

Construct Hypotheses

• Specific statement about the expected relationship between the dependent (outcome) and independent (explanatory) variables in a theory
  • Dependent variables are affected by (“depend on”) other variables; sometimes called outcome variables
  • Independent variables affect/explain/cause changes in dependent variables; sometimes called explanatory or treatment variables

Construct Hypotheses

• Dependent variables (\(y\)) vary as a function of independent variables (\(x\)):
  • \(y=f(x)\) \(\Rightarrow\) \(Turnout = f(Weather)\)
  • \(y \sim x\) \(\Rightarrow\) \(Turnout \sim Weather\)

Construct Hypotheses

• Good hypotheses…

  1. Match the theory
  2. Specify the expected direction of the relationship between the independent and dependent variables (positive or negative)
  3. Are falsifiable—clear enough to be wrong!

Construct Hypotheses

• Example hypotheses: if my theory is correct, then…

  • Inclement weather will affect turnout during presidential elections.
  • People who experience inclement weather during presidential elections will be less likely to vote than people who do not experience inclement weather.

Design and Collect Data

Assignment 1: Find an Article

Different types of articles:

Where to Find an Article

How to Find an Article

• OU Library Web Site
  • https://libraries.ou.edu
  • If you are on campus, you generally don’t have to login
  • If you are off campus or on the OU Guest Wi-Fi, you need to login with your OU account
• Google Scholar
  • http://scholar.google.com
• Google
  • When in doubt, Google it