Procedures and Ethics in Research

Sociology: Chapter 2, Section 3

Folk Wisdom• Some sayings may seem like common sense, but when

you look at them more closely, they may actually contradict each other

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder• Out of sight, out of mind• Look before you leap• He who hesitates is lost• Birds of a feather flock together• Opposites attract• What do such contradictory sayings suggest about folk

wisdom in general?• Why do we need evidence for “obvious” common sense?

Doing Research in the Social Sciences• Like any science, sociology is based on research• “Common sense” assumptions may seem to make

sense, but often they do not have evidence to back them up and many times they contradict each other

• For example, “opposites attract” and “look before you leap” seem like pretty sound aphorisms

• But “birds of a feather flock together” and “he who hesitates is lost” seem to directly contradict those two, and are considered equally sound

• The goal is to test “common sense” assumptions and replace false ideas with facts and evidence

So which is it?

Steps for Doing Research

• To conduct research, scientists use the scientific method, which involves the pursuit of knowledge in a systematic way

• If one person says, “Birds of a feather flock together,” and another person says, “Opposites attract,” there must be evidence to back up these statements before either one is accepted as true.

• This evidence is gathered in the scientific method

The Scientific Method is circular. Unexpected results in experiments can lead to accidental but important discoveries

in disguise, like the discovery of penicillin and X-rays

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 1. Forming a Research Question• The first step is choosing what topic to study. • Researchers choose a topic that is interesting to

them, or deal with some important social issue, or test a major theory, or respond to a need of their company/ school

• Questions are more easily answered by studying behavior directly rather than constructs. (Psychological constructs are something like kindness or humility; we assume they are there, but they are hard to define or measure directly)

Your overall research question could be somewhat broad, as long as you do focus your

research on specifics that are measurable

The Steps of the Scientific Method

• 2. Review the Literature• Researchers need to find out all they can about

what has already been written about the topic, and look at all the research already done

• Researchers may choose to attempt to replicate results (try the same experiment and see if the results come out the same)

• Or they may choose to try to further the research, by expanding what has been asked before

Reviewing the

literature is key to

advancing the field

with your research

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 3. Formulate Hypotheses• A hypothesis is an educated guess. It is educated

because the literature has been reviewed. It is based on what is already known

• A hypothesis should be testable by research• Hypotheses may be formulated as an if-then

statement• One possible hypothesis could be something like, “If

people don’t see each other for a while, then they will not think about each other as much” (out of sight, out of mind)

Sometimes a hypothesis is just our best guess what happened or what might happen

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 4. Testing the Hypothesis and Developing a

Research Design• No matter how good a hypothesis sounds or how

many people believe it makes good sense, it cannot be considered to be correct until it has been scientifically tested and proven to be right

• What procedures will the researcher follow? • How many and what kind of people will be asked

questions? • How will the results be measured?

You make choices when designing your research. Conclusive research design is a quantitative research approach, while exploratory is a qualitative research.

The Steps of the Scientific Method

• 5. Collect Data• The basic ways of gathering data for research in

the social sciences are: • Asking people questions• Observing behavior• Conducting experiments• Analyzing existing materials and records.

Collecting data involves compiling and tallying all the information gathered from all the people you

talked to

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 6. Analyze Data• After testing their hypothesis, researchers

examine what their results mean• Sometimes the data collection and analysis can

take a very long time for complex problems• The data may not lead to an obvious answer, and

so must be interpreted. • It’s important to judge the data as impartially as

possible, guarding against what you want to be the result.

After collecting and compiling the data, you will need to analyze what it all means

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 7. State findings and conclusions• After analyzing the data, the researcher is ready

to state the conclusions of the study. • In the conclusion, the methods are described

and the hypothesis is formally accepted, rejected, or modified.

• The researcher must keep an open mind if the conclusion proves that the hypothesis needs modification or should be rejected outright

When ready, you publish your findings

so others can examine what you did

The Steps of the Scientific Method• 8. Replication• By publishing, or making the research public, other

researchers can go out and replicate (repeat) the experiment, to try to verify or disprove the research.

• When scientists replicate a study but obtain different results, the findings of the first study are questioned

• Researchers may want to adjust some variables in the experiment, like the age or gender of the research subjects, to see how generalized the conclusions may be to other people

Other scientists will try to replicate your research, to see if your results were just a fluke or if similar results happen again

The Steps of the Scientific Method

• 9. New Questions• Sometimes the more you know, the more

questions you have• Whether the conclusions supported or

contradicted the original hypotheses, new questions probably arose from the data

• Thus the cycle starts again– with new questions come new hypotheses, etc.

The more you know, the more you want to know

Ethics in Social Research• A researcher needs to remember that individual well

being is more important than the experiment• Some scientists have not lived up to ethical

standards• In Nazi Germany, scientists conducted cruel

experiments on concentration camp inmates, such as seeing how much pain a person could go through

• The U.S. government deliberately did not treat 399 African Americans with syphilis so they could see what happened if the disease were left untreated

• In Germany, they used corpses of adults and children instead of crash test dummies to test their cars

Stanley Milgram’s experiment was

meant to test how far people would follow

authority, but it may have scarred

those who thought they had caused real harm

What is Sociology’s Code of Ethics?

• The code of ethics for sociologists is concerned with getting the greatest possible benefit with the least possible harm

• This includes reporting findings truthfully, showing objectivity, and protecting the rights, privacy, and dignity of research subjects

Little Albert was conditioned to fear furry things, so he cried when he saw a rabbit. This conditioning did not stop when he left the laboratory. This was unethical

Assessment

• Complete #1-3 on page 61