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Thursday, September 14, 2023
1.6 Research Methods
As we wait for class to start, be sure you have an original research article ready to dissect. If you are not sure of your article, feel free to call me over to look at it. Try to label the different sections of your article:
Abstract
Introduction
Literature Review
Methods
Data/Stats
Conclusion
Discussion/moving forward
Also - please look over the reading, Gang Leader for a Day Introduction and be ready to discuss it.
HW: Read Joel Charon's Should We Generalize?
Today's lesson focus:
What are the different types of sociological research?
How do sociologists do research?
Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day
Thoughts on the reading?
Questions?
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| Here is a view of the complex of Robert Taylor Homes, a CHA project that used to be near U of Chicago. It was 28 buildings along a two-mile stretch designed for 11,000 people but peaked at 27,000 residents, of which 95% were unemployed and 96% were black. |
1. What are the two broad ways sociologists gather data? (Venkatesh mentions these).
2. Brainstorm:
What are the advantages and disadvantages of these 2 broad ways of researching?
Today's lesson will focus on how sociologists actually do the work that they publish about. Venkatesh highlights a number of different ways that sociologists examine society. We will use his introduction to dive into how sociologists do research.
Now, let's add other types of general research.
General Types of Sociological Research
- Qualitative or Quantitative - qualitative is subjective and descriptive; it examines the qualities about a subject. Quantitative is objective and involves examining numbers or statistics.
Quantitative Qualitative
statistical analysis comparable descriptive analysis
value free values are present and explicit
less context contextual/nuanced
many cases/subjects fewer cases/subjects
researcher is detached researcher is involved
research is pointed research is open-ended
- Longitudinal - a study that examines subjects over an extended period time. For example, a researcher might interview kids at age 5, then at age 15 and then again at 25. Some research is conducted over the course of decades by different researchers.
- Cross-sectional - a study that examines a group of people at a single point in time. For example, like taking a section of cake that has different layers, a researcher might take a sample of people from a group like SHS. The research might examine 10 students from each grade to get an understanding of the school as a whole. The key here is that the researcher studies a bunch of people from the same group/society.
- Cross-cultural - a study that compares subjects from two or more cultures. The key here is that a cross-cultural study examines people that are part of different groups/societies and compares them.
3. Is Venkatesh's research better considered longitudinal or cross-sectional? Why?
4. Any questions about the general types of research?
5. What general types of research is the article that you found?
Now let's examine the specific ways that sociologists gather their research.
Methods of sociological research
These are some of the more common methods of research that you will come across in sociology:
Qualitative Methods:
Field work/ethnography - observing subjects by living with them, watching them and taking notes, such as Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve's research about the Cook County Courthouse System.
Historical analysis - examing changes over time in comparison to present day.
Content Analysis - examining the content of media or other cultural productions
Here is an example of content analysis about climate change.
Survey - interviews that are open-ended questions.
Quantitative Methods:
Survey - questionnaires that are close-ended such as multiple choice or likert scale.
Experiment/Audit study - comparing the responses of two or more different reactions.
Statistical analysis - existing sources (data sets, such as GSS or Census data) There are many data sets available to sociologists and other researchers. This type of research involves examining the data in new ways. Here is a list of data sets that are often used by sociologists:
Jacob Farber from NYU explains his research based on existing data here in his study titled "Complaining while Black".
For more detail about the research methods in sociology, Open Stax sociology textbook explains the methods in this chapter.
The ASA has many more brief explanations of sociological research on their Youtube channel here (see below). watch one and try to figure our what type of research the author used.
6. Which of the methods above does Venkatesh use in the excerpt from Gang Leader? Explain when/how. (Arguably he does 5 of them!)
Important considerations in research; The importance of both ethics and peer-review in research:
The Importance of Peer Review and Ethics in Research
Read this critique of Venkatesh's work and answer the question below.
7. What are the criticisms of Venkatesh's Gang Leader research?
For more info on Venkatesh's work:
- Gang Leader for a Day on Amazon.
- Read an excerpt from the book and download Venkatesh reading and talking about his book from NPR.
- Venkatesh speaking on the Colbert Report and he explains that there are important ways of doing research correctly.
- Venkatesh speaking about his book and the research he did.
- An interview at slate.com between Venkatesh and Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here).
8. Analyze the article that you found and determine the research method(s) that the author(s) use.
Research Bingo
Find someone who has one of the following. You can only use each person once. Have that person sign the square. When you have five in a row, shout bingo!
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
1.5 Finding and Reading Sociological Research
HW: (Due after our next lesson) Read Chapter 1: How Does It Feel to Be Black and Poor from Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day here. (For background info, see this post about Chicago Housing Projects Leader for a Day.)
This is the introductory chapter of Venkatesh’s book, Gang Leader for a Day. As you read the chapter, look for all of the ways that Venkatesh gathers data and attempts to study race and poverty. NOTE: there is offensive language in the chapter which Venkatesh included in order to preserve the authenticity of his interactions with the people he meets. Please do not take the use of this language as making light of the offensivesness of this language.
As we wait for students to show, please open this Common Sense Quiz and answer True or False for questions 1-15.
Use your previous knowledge or simply use common sense to guess the answers for each question. Do not spend much time on these questions. If you don't know the answer, go with your intuition or common sense.
PLEASE DO THE GOOGLE DOC FOR THIS LESSON - as we go along. Start with Q1 only.
1a. How many answers from the quiz did you get correct?
1b. What is one of the answers that you were surprised about?
I was not thrilled with my last lesson so please check for understanding with understanding the focus of the three foundational paradigms:
Structural Functional - how the structures (social institutions like family, education, media, work, government) shape the individuals within society.
Conflict - how inequality is shaped by power
Symbolic Interaction - How people interact based on shared meaning
Why is research important?
Hopefully, the quiz above shows that common sense and your own experiences are not always reliable in understanding society. Human psychology has a tendency to make incorrect assumptions especially because of these psychological concepts:· overgeneralization - basing all of your understanding on a limited experience.· selective observation/confirmation bias - seeking out only evidence that supports your opinion.· premature closure - deciding on a conclusion and then being unable to see evidence contrary to that conclusion.· halo effect - having a positive view of one aspect of a person or idea and that affects your view of all other aspects associated with it.· false consensus - the tendency to overestimate how much others agree with us.
Background - The Beginning of Sociology as a Science
1c. Do you understand why research and the scientific method is important to sociology? Any questions?
Primary Research in Sociology
First-hand research in sociology is usually published in journals that include the methods used to gather data as well as the data itself. I will show you where to find this research and I want you to find a primary research article, but first, here are some tips for reading academic journal articles.
Reading Primary Research Articles in Sociology
Open this research article published by Venkatesh about Street Gangs in Chicago.
Don't let the length of the journal article intimidate you, nor should you be intimidated by the loquaciousness of the author's writing. Academic professors often use fancy jargon (like loquaciousness). It makes the reading longer and sometimes confusing, but you can still understand what the researcher is getting at. Especially if you understand the structure that I explain below. Here is a funny example of how writing gets more complicated even though it says the same idea:
Simply put - read through the jargon and decipher what you can. If necessary, look up the words you need to know to understand the main point, but don't be intimidated by the length or the wording of the article.
Applying this to the article published by Venkatesh. Note how long the article is - DON'T BE INTIMIDATED!
2a. Is there any jargon that you notice? Quickly circle or underline the words, but don't let that intimidate you!
B. Understand the structure
Most of the research articles have a similar structure. Once you understand the structure, it is easier to find what you need and make sense of the article. Sometimes these sections will even be labeled for you.
Most research articles have a format that looks like this: (sometimes a couple of these sections are combined)
**Abstract (Most useful section - read first) - A summary before the actual article, usually in italics or set off from the actual article. Not all articles have this, but most do.
Introduction - The beginning of the research explaining what the author set out to study and why it is important.
Literature Review - This is often confused by students for being the actual research, but it is just a review of previous research that has been done. This section might point out previous research that informs the author's research or shortcomings of the previous research that the author hopes to address. Karen Sternheimer explains the literature review here on the Everyday Sociology blog.
Methods - This explains how the author gathered data. It might include multiple methods such as surveys, ethnography, existing data, etc...
Data/Stats - The author will make sense of the data that they gathered. For quantitative data, the analysis might be complex such as regression analysis, or a discussion of p-value. Don't let the complicated discussion of the statistics intimidate you. You can make sense of the data without understanding all of the statistical jargon.
**Conclusion (Second most useful - read second!) - After the explanation of the methods and data, the author will summarize the data and make sense of it. Finding this section will help you understand what the most important parts of the research was.
Discussion/moving forward - This section is sometimes at the end of the article suggesting either future research or policy implications or the limitations of the research. Authors might critique their own research here.
2b. Which of these sections can you identify in the article?
Here is a link to a guide created by Nora Weber. And here is her Twitter feed that shared it.
C. Don't feel pressured to sit down and read the entire article from beginning to end. Very few readers do this. Instead, researchers bounce around the article to find what they are looking for.
Understanding the structure I explained in B above should help you understand the research efficiently and bounce around the article to find what you are looking for.
For more on how to read journal articles see this post.
Primary Research Example
Here is an example of primary research published by Venkatesh that I annotated. Notice the minimal text that you need to read to understand the article.
Finding Your Own Primary Sociological Research
There three places that I want you to be aware of for finding primary research.
I. ASA journals
The most recent research in a number of journals is available online for free from the American Sociological Association. The journals page on the ASA website lists the journals along with a description of what is published in them. The journals page is here: https://www.asanet.org/publications/journals/
The most useful journals for our class are the following:
American Sociological Review, ASA’s flagship journal, includes the latest general interest scholarship in sociology that advances our understanding of fundamental social processes through theoretical, methodological, and empirical innovation.
City & Community, a journal of the ASA Section on Community and Urban Sociology, aims to advance urban sociological theory, promote empirical research on communities and urban social life, and encourage sociological perspectives on urban policy.
Journal of Health and Social Behavior publishes empirical and theoretical articles that apply sociological concepts and methods to the understanding of health and illness and the organization of medicine and health care.
Journal of World-Systems Research, an open access, online-only journal of the ASA Section on Political Economy of the World-System, publishes research on topics that are relevant to the analysis of world-systems.
Social Psychology Quarterly publishes theoretical and empirical work on the link between the individual and society, including the study of the relations of individuals to one another, as well as to groups, collectivities, and institutions.
Society and Mental Health, a journal of the ASA Section on Sociology of Mental Health, publishes articles that apply sociological concepts and methods to the understanding of the social origins of mental health and illness, the social consequences for persons with mental illness, and the organization and financing of mental health services and care.
Sociology of Education publishes research that examines how social institutions and individuals’ experiences within these institutions affect educational processes and social development.
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, a journal of the ASA Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, publishes sociological research on race and ethnicity across epistemological, methodological, and theoretical orientations.
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World provides an open access online-only forum for rapid publication of sociological research from any subfield of the discipline.
3a. What article did you find from the journals above? What Journal was it from?
II. JSTOR
Once journals are a few years old, they are stored in a searchable, online archive called JSTOR. The limitation for JSTOR is that the articles are older, but the benefits are that the archive will search dozens of journals for you and you can target the search by key words or author, etc... Additionally, you can search JSTOR by subject area so this is a really useful search engine for all of your classes!
Here is how to search JSTOR:
Here is how to search JSTOR:
(Be sure that you are logged in).
Key Words - Type in the key words/topics that you would like to search. Try different search terms using synonyms such as "school" in one search then "education" in another search.
Narrow Results to Articles - Select only "articles" in the filtering menu on the left side - so you don't get results from reviews or book chapters.
Journal Filter - Scroll down to select "sociology" under search by subject. That will limit your search to only journals that are sociological.
Additional tips for finding research in JSTOR - open a few different articles that are possibilities then try different search terms and open more. This might help you find the most relevant articles before you waste time reading one less relevant; quickly read the abstract or introduction to decide if the article is worth looking at in greater detail; start out with a search for general terms then you can narrow down by adding other terms or dates; if you find an interesting secondary source (such as from our previous lesson), note who the researcher was and try searching for their last name.
3b. What article did you find from JSTOR?
III. Institutions that publish primary source research
Many of these institutions publish reports for the general public so the advantage here is that they are likely going to be easier to read. But the disadvantage is that they will be less thorough.
Below is a list of institutions that publish primary research. I want to point these institutions out both as examples of places you can work and also as sources of primary research.
Choose one of the links above. Click on it and try to find some original research that they published.
3c. Which institution did you visit? What research did you find?
Choose 1 original Sociology Research article from the 3 places above (preferably from journals (place 1) because they are most recent. Try to label each section of the article using the structure that I gave you above.
4. What article did you choose?
5. Which of the founding paradigms (Structural-Functional, Conflict, Symbolic Interaction) does your article appear to use? Explain how.
Structural Functional - how the structures (social institutions like family, education, media, work, government) shape the individuals within society.
Conflict - how inequality is shaped by power
Symbolic Interaction - How people interact based on shared meaning
In Conclusion:
Identify why research is important to sociology.
Find original research articles.
Identify the different parts of the articles.
Don't forget to read the Gang Leader for a Day Introduction for homework.
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