Earl R Babbie - Chapter 1 PDF

CHAPTER 1 Human Inquiry and Science chapter overview All of us try to understand and predict the social world. Scientific inquiries— and social research in particular—are designed to avoid the pitfalls of ordinary human...

CHAPTER 1 Human Inquiry and Science chapter overview All of us try to understand and predict the social world. Scientific inquiries— and social research in particular—are designed to avoid the pitfalls of ordinary human inquiry. © Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com Introduction Aggregates, Not Individuals Concepts and Variables Looking for Reality The Purposes of Social Research Knowledge from Agreement Reality The Ethics of Human Inquiry Ordinary Human Inquiry Some Dialectics of Social Research Tradition Idiographic and Nomothetic Authority Explanation Errors in Inquiry and Some Inductive and Deductive Theory Solutions Determinism versus Agency The Foundations of Social Science Qualitative and Quantitative Data Theory, Not Philosophy or Belief The Research Proposal Social Regularities Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  P A R T 1 An Introduction to Inquiry Learning Objectives After studying this chapter, you will be able to... Identify the different ways people decide what’s real. Understand the basic options for conducting social science Be able to explain the fundamental nature of social research. science. Introduction So, most of what you know is a matter of believing what you’ve been told. Understand This book is about knowing things—not so much that there’s nothing wrong with you in that what we know as how we know it. Let’s start respect. That’s simply the way human societies by examining a few things you probably know are structured. The basis of knowledge is agree- already. ment. Because you can’t learn all you need to You know the world is round. You probably know through personal experience and discovery also know it’s cold on the dark side of the moon alone, things are set up so you can simply believe (the side facing away from the sun), and you what others tell you. You know some things know people speak Japanese in Japan. You know through tradition and others from “experts.” I’m that vitamin C can prevent colds and that unpro- not saying you shouldn’t question this received tected sex can result in AIDS. knowledge; I’m just drawing your attention to How do you know? If you think for a min- the way you and society normally get along re- ute, you’ll see you know these things because garding what is so. somebody told them to you, and you believed There are other ways of knowing things, them. You may have read in National Geographic however. In contrast to knowing things through that people speak Japanese in Japan, and that agreement, you can know them through direct made sense to you, so you didn’t question it. experience—through observation. If you dive Perhaps your physics or astronomy instruc- into a glacial stream flowing through the tor told you it was cold on the dark side of the Canadian Rockies, you don’t need anyone to moon, or maybe you heard it on the news. tell you it’s cold. Some of the things you know seem obvious When your experience conflicts with what to you. If I asked you how you know the world everyone else knows, though, there’s a good is round, you’d probably say, “Everybody knows chance you’ll surrender your experience in favor that.” There are a lot of things everybody knows. of agreement. For example, imagine you’ve Of course, at one time, everyone “knew” the come to a party at my house. It’s a high-class world was flat. affair, and the drinks and food are excellent. In Most of what you know is a matter of agree- particular, you’re taken by one of the appetizers ment and belief. Little of it is based on personal I bring around on a tray: a breaded, deep-fried experience and discovery. A big part of growing tidbit that’s especially zesty. You have a couple— up in any society, in fact, is the process of learn- they’re so delicious! You have more. Soon you’re ing to accept that what everybody around you subtly moving around the room to be wherever “knows” is so. If you don’t know those same I am when I arrive with a tray of these nibblies. things, you can’t really be a part of the group. If Finally, you can contain yourself no longer. you were to question seriously that the world is “What are they?” you ask. I let you in on the round, you’d quickly find yourself set apart from secret: “You’ve been eating breaded, deep-fried other people. You might be sent to live in a hos- worms!” Your response is dramatic: Your stom- pital with others who ask questions like that. ach rebels, and you promptly throw up all over Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  4 Part One What do you think? The decision to have a baby is deeply personal. No one is in charge of who will have babies in the United States in any given year or of how many will be born. Although you must get a license to marry or go fishing, you do not need a license to have a baby. Many couples delay pregnancy, some pregnancies happen by accident, and some pregnancies are planned. Given all these un- certainties and idiosyncrasies, how can baby-food and diaper manufacturers know how much inventory to produce from year to year? By the end of this chapter, you should be able to answer this question. Earl Babbie See the What do you think?... Revisited box toward the end of the chapter. the living room rug. What a terrible thing to societies that lack our agreement that worms serve guests! are disgusting. Some people might love the The point of the story is that both of your feel- worms but be turned off by the deep-fried ings about the appetizer were quite real. Your ini- breading. tial liking for them was certainly real, but so was Here’s a question to consider: “Are worms re- the feeling you had when you found out what ally good or really bad to eat?” And here’s a more you’d been eating. It should be evident, however, interesting question: “How could you know which that the disgust you felt was strictly a product of was really so?” This book is about answering the the agreements you have with those around you second question. that worms aren’t fit to eat. That’s an agreement you began the first time your parents found you sitting in a pile of dirt with half of a wriggling worm dangling from your lips. When they pried Looking for Reality your mouth open and reached down your throat Reality is a tricky business. You’ve probably long for the other half of the worm, you learned that suspected that some of the things you “know” worms are not acceptable food in our society. may not be true, but how can you actually know Aside from these agreements, what’s wrong what’s real? People have grappled with this ques- with worms? They’re probably high in protein tion for thousands of years. and low in calories. Bite-sized and easily pack- aged, they’re a distributor’s dream. They are Knowledge from Agreement also a delicacy for some people who live in Reality One answer that has arisen out of that grap- pling is science, which offers an approach to both agreement reality and experiential reality. Scientists have certain criteria that must be met before they’ll accept the reality of something they haven’t personally experienced. In general, an assertion must have both logical and empiri- cal support: It must make sense, and it must not contradict actual observation. Why do earth- bound scientists accept the assertion that it’s cold on the dark side of the moon (away from the Earl Babbie sun)? First, it makes sense, because the surface We learn some things by experience, others by agreement. This young man heat of the moon comes from the sun’s rays. seems to be learning by personal experience. Second, the scientific measurements made on Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and Science 5 the moon’s dark side confirm the expectation. As we’ll see throughout the book, science So, scientists accept the reality of things they makes these concepts of causality and probability don’t personally experience—they accept an more explicit and provides techniques for deal- agreement reality—but they have special ing with them more rigorously than does casual standards for doing so. human inquiry. It sharpens the skills we already More to the point of this book, however, sci- have by making us more conscious, rigorous, and ence offers a special approach to the discovery explicit in our inquiries. of reality through personal experience—that is, In looking at ordinary human inquiry, we to the business of inquiry. Epistemology is the need to distinguish between prediction and science of knowing; methodology (a subfield understanding. Often, we can make predic- of epistemology) might be called the science of tions without understanding—perhaps you can finding out. This book is an examination and predict rain when your trick knee aches. And presentation of social science methodology, or often, even if we don’t understand why, we’re how social scientists find out about human social willing to act on the basis of a demonstrated life. You’ll see that some of the methods coincide predictive ability. The racetrack buff who finds with the traditional image of science but oth- that the third-ranked horse in the third race of ers have been specially geared to sociological the day always wins will probably keep betting concerns. without knowing, or caring, why it works out In the rest of this chapter, we’ll look at in- that way. quiry as an activity. We’ll begin by examining Whatever primitive drives or instincts mo- inquiry as a natural human activity, something tivate human beings, satisfying these urges you and I have engaged in every day of our lives. depends heavily on the ability to predict future Next, we’ll look at some kinds of errors we make circumstances. However, the attempt to pre- in normal inquiry, and we’ll conclude by exam- dict is often placed in a context of knowledge ining what makes science different. We’ll see and understanding. If we can understand why some of the ways science guards against common things are related to one another, why certain human errors in inquiry. regular patterns occur, we can predict even “Issues and Insights: Social Research Making a better than if we simply observe and remember Difference” gives an example of controlled social those patterns. Thus, human inquiry aims at research challenging what “everybody knows.” answering both “what” and “why” questions, and we pursue these goals by observing and figuring out. Ordinary Human Inquiry As I suggested earlier, our attempts to learn Practically all people exhibit a desire to predict about the world are only partly linked to direct, their future circumstances. We seem quite will- personal inquiry or experience. Another, much ing, moreover, to undertake this task using causal larger, part comes from the agreed-on knowledge and probabilistic reasoning. First, we generally that others give us. This agreement reality both recognize that future circumstances are some- assists and hinders our attempts to find out for how caused or conditioned by present ones. We ourselves. To see how, consider two important learn that swimming beyond the reef may bring sources of our secondhand knowledge—tradition an unhappy encounter with a shark. As students and authority. we learn that studying hard will result in better grades. Second, we also learn that such patterns of cause and effect are probabilistic in nature: The effects occur more often when the causes agreement reality Those things we “know” as occur than when the causes are absent—but not part and parcel of the culture we share with those around us. always. Thus, students learn that studying hard produces good grades in most instances, but not epistemology The science of knowing; systems of knowledge. every time. We recognize the danger of swim- ming beyond the reef, without believing that methodology The science of finding out; proce- dures for scientific investigation. every such swim will be fatal. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  6 Part One Issues and Insights Social Research Making a Difference effectiveness of the new technology. Their conclusion: CPOE was not Medication errors in U.S. hospitals kill or injure about 770,000 patients nearly as effective as claimed; it did not prevent errors in medication each year, and the newly developed Computerized Physician Order Entry (Koppel et al., 2005). (CPOE) systems have been widely acclaimed as the solution to this enor- As you can imagine, those manufacturing and selling the equip- mous problem, which stems in part from the traditional system of using ment were not thrilled by the research, and it has generated an ongo- handwritten prescriptions. ing discussion within the health-care community. At last count, the Medical science research has generally supported the new study had been cited over 20,000 times in other articles, and Koppel technology, but an article in the Journal of the American Medical As- has become a sought-after expert in this regard. sociation in March 2005 sent a shock wave through the medical com- Source: Kathryn Goldman Schuyler, Medical Errors: Sociological Research munity. The sociologist Ross Koppel and his colleagues used several Makes News, Sociological Practice Newsletter (American Sociological Association, of the research techniques you’ll be learning in this book to test the Section on Sociological Practice), Winter 2006, p. 1. Tradition Authority Each of us inherits a culture made up, in part, Despite the power of tradition, new knowledge of firmly accepted knowledge about the work- appears every day. Aside from our personal in- ings of the world and the values that guide our quiries, we benefit throughout life from new participation in it. We may learn from others that discoveries and understandings produced by oth- eating too much candy will decay our teeth, that ers. Often, acceptance of these new acquisitions the circumference of a circle is approximately depends on the status of the discoverer. You’re twenty-two sevenths of its diameter, or that mas- more likely to believe the epidemiologist who turbation will make you blind. Ideas about gen- declares that the common cold can be transmit- der, race, religion, and different nations that you ted through kissing, for example, than to believe learned as you were growing up would fit in this your Uncle Pete saying the same thing. category. We may test a few of these “truths” on Like tradition, authority can both assist and our own, but we simply accept the great majority hinder human inquiry. We do well to trust the of them, the things that “everybody knows.” judgment of the person who has special train- Tradition, in this sense of the term, offers ing, expertise, and credentials in a given matter, some clear advantages to human inquiry. By especially in the face of controversy. At the same accepting what everybody knows, we avoid time, inquiry can be greatly hindered by a legiti- the overwhelming task of starting from scratch mate authority who errs within his or her own in our search for regularities and understand- special province. Biologists, after all, do make ing. Knowledge is cumulative, and an inherited mistakes in the field of biology. body of knowledge is the jumping-off point Inquiry is also hindered when we depend on for developing more of it. We often speak of the authority of experts speaking outside their “standing on the shoulders of giants”—that is, realm of expertise. For example, consider the starting with the knowledge base of previous political or religious leader with no biochemical generations. expertise who declares that marijuana is a dan- At the same time, tradition may be detrimen- gerous drug. The advertising industry plays heav- tal to human inquiry. If we seek a fresh under- ily on this misuse of authority by, for example, standing of something that everybody already having popular athletes discuss the nutritional understands and has always understood, we may value of breakfast cereals or movie actors evalu- be marked as fools for our efforts. More to the ate the performance of automobiles. point, however, most of us rarely even think of Both tradition and authority, then, are seeking a different understanding of something double-edged swords in the search for knowl- we all “know” to be true. edge about the world. Simply put, they provide Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and Science 7 us with a starting point for our own inquiry, but they’re demonstrating. If the first two demonstrators they can lead us to start at the wrong point and you interview give you essentially the same reason, can push us off in the wrong direction. you might simply assume that the other 3,000 would agree. Unfortunately, when your story appears, your Errors in Inquiry and Some editor could get scores of letters from protesters who were there for an entirely different reason. Solutions Realize, of course, that we must generalize Quite aside from the potential dangers of tradi- to some extent in order to survive. It’s prob- tion and authority, we often stumble and fall ably not a good idea to keep asking whether when we set out to learn for ourselves. Let’s this rattlesnake is poisonous. Assume they all look at some of the common errors we make in are. At the same time, we have a tendency to our casual inquiries and the ways science guards overgeneralize. against those errors. Scientists guard against overgeneralization by seeking a sufficiently large sample of observa- Inaccurate Observations tions. The replication of inquiry provides another Quite frequently, we make mistakes in our observa- safeguard. Basically, this means repeating a study tions. For example, what was your methodology and checking to see if the same results occur instructor wearing on the first day of class? If you each time. Then, as a further test, the study can have to guess, that’s because most of our daily obser- be repeated under slightly varied conditions. vations are casual and semiconscious. That’s why we often disagree about “what really happened.” Selective Observation In contrast to casual human inquiry, scientific One danger of overgeneralization is that it can lead observation is a conscious activity. Simply making to selective observation. Once you have concluded observation more deliberate can reduce error. If that a particular pattern exists and have developed you had to guess what your instructor was wearing a general understanding of why it does, you’ll tend the first day of class, you’d probably make a mis- to focus on future events and situations that fit the take. If you had gone to the first class meeting with pattern, and you’ll ignore those that don’t. Racial a conscious plan to observe and record what your and ethnic prejudices depend heavily on selective instructor was wearing, however, you’d likely be observation for their persistence. more accurate. (You might also need a hobby.) In another example, here’s how Lewis Hill In many cases, both simple and complex recalls growing up in rural Vermont: measurement devices help guard against inac- curate observations. Moreover, they add a degree Haying began right after the Fourth of July. The of precision well beyond the capacity of the un- farmers in our neighborhood believed that any- one who started earlier was sure to suffer all the assisted human senses. Suppose, for example, storms of late June in addition to those following that you had taken color photographs of your the holiday which the old-timers said were caused instructor that day. (See earlier comment about by all the noise and smoke of gunpowder burning. needing a hobby.) My mother told me that my grandfather and other Civil War veterans claimed it always rained hard Overgeneralization after a big battle. Things didn’t always work out the way the older residents promised, of course, but When we look for patterns among the specific everyone remembered only the times they did. things we observe around us, we often assume that a few similar events are evidence of a gen- (Hill, 2000: 35) eral pattern. That is, we tend to overgeneralize Sometimes a research design will specify in on the basis of limited observations. This can advance the number and kind of observations to be misdirect or impede inquiry. made, as a basis for reaching a conclusion. If you Imagine that you’re a reporter covering an animal-rights demonstration. You have just two hours to turn in your story. Rushing to the scene, replication Repeating an experiment to expose you start interviewing people, asking them why or reduce error. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  8 Part One and I wanted to learn whether women were more observing and understanding reality is not an likely than men to support the legality of abor- obvious or trivial matter, as we’ll see throughout tion, we’d commit ourselves to making a specified this chapter and this book. number of observations on that question in a re- Before moving on, I should caution you that search project. We might select a thousand people scientific understandings of things are also con- to be interviewed on the issue. Alternatively, when stantly changing. Any review of the history of making direct observations of an event, such as an science will provide numerous examples of old animal-rights demonstration, social scientists make “knowledge” being supplanted by new “knowl- a special effort to find “deviant cases”—those who edge.” It’s easy to feel superior to the scientists do not fit into the general pattern. of a hundred or a thousand years ago, but I fear there is a tendency to think those changes are all Illogical Reasoning behind us. Now, we know the way things are. In The Half-Life of Facts (2012), Samuel Arbes- There are other ways in which we often deal with man addresses the question of how long today’s observations that contradict our understanding of scientific “facts” survive reconceptualization, re- the way things are in daily life. Surely one of the testing, and new discoveries. For example, half of most remarkable creations of the human mind what medical science knew about hepatitis and is “the exception that proves the rule.” That idea cirrhosis of the liver was replaced in 45 years. doesn’t make any sense at all. An exception can The fact that scientific knowledge is constantly draw attention to a rule or to a supposed rule (in changing actually points to a strength of scientific its original meaning, “prove” meant “test”), but in scholarship. Whereas cultural beliefs and supersti- no system of logic can it validate the rule it con- tions may survive unchallenged for centuries, sci- tradicts. Even so, we often use this pithy saying entists are committed to achieving an ever better to brush away contradictions with a simple stroke understanding of the world. My purpose in this of illogic. This is particularly common in relation book is to prepare you to join that undertaking. to group stereotypes. When a person of color, a woman, or a gay violates the stereotype someone holds for that group, it somehow “proves” that, aside from this one exception, the stereotype remains “valid” for all the rest. For example, a The Foundations of Social Science woman business executive who is kind and femi- The two pillars of science are logic and observa- nine is taken as “proof” that all other female ex- tion. A scientific understanding of the world ecutives are mean and masculine. must (1) make sense and (2) correspond with What statisticians have called the gambler’s fallacy what we observe. Both elements are essential to is another illustration of illogic in day-to-day reason- science and relate to three major aspects of the ing. A consistent run of either good or bad luck is overall scientific enterprise: theory, data collec- presumed to foreshadow its opposite. An evening of tion, and data analysis. bad luck at poker may kindle the belief that a win- In the most general terms, scientific theory ning hand is just around the corner; many a poker deals with logic, data collection with observa- player has stayed in a game much too long because tion, and data analysis with patterns in what is of that mistaken belief. (A more reasonable conclu- observed and, where appropriate, the comparison sion is that they are not very good at poker.) of what is logically expected with what is actually Although all of us sometimes fall into embar- observed. Though most of this textbook deals with rassingly illogical reasoning in daily life, scientists data collection and data analysis—demonstrating avoid this pitfall by using systems of logic con- how to conduct empirical research—recognize sciously and explicitly. Chapter 2 will examine that social science involves all three elements. As the logic of science in more depth. For now, it’s such, Chapter 2 of this book concerns the theo- enough to note that logical reasoning is a con- retical context of research; Parts 2 and 3 focus on scious activity for scientists, who have colleagues data collection; and Part 4 offers an introduction around to keep them honest. to the analysis of data. Figure 1-1 offers a sche- Science, then, attempts to protect us from the matic view of how this book addresses these three common pitfalls of ordinary inquiry. Accurately aspects of social science. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and Science 9 Theory Religious affiliation Prejudice Education Voting behavior Social class Chapters 2– 3 Data Collection Planning to do Sampling Observation Data processing research Chapters 4–6 Chapter 7 Chapters 8–12 Chapters 13–14 Data Analysis x x a y 34% 78% Application c d g b y 66% 22% Part 4 FIGURE 1-1 Social Science 5 Theory 1 Data Collection 1 Data Analysis. This figure offers a schematic overview of the major stages of social research, indicating where each is discussed in this book. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  10 Part One Let’s turn now to some of the fundamental action or welfare reform. One of the biggest prob- issues that distinguish social science from other lems researchers face is getting people to agree on ways of looking at social phenomena. criteria of success and failure. Yet such criteria are essential if social science research is to tell us any- thing useful about matters of value. By analogy, Theory, Not Philosophy or Belief a stopwatch can’t tell us if one sprinter is better Social science theory has to do with what is, than another unless we first agree that speed is not with what should be. For many centuries, the critical criterion. however, social theory has combined these two Social science, then, can help us know only orientations. Social philosophers liberally mixed what is and why. We can use it to determine what their observations of what happened around ought to be, but only when people agree on the them, their speculations about why, and their criteria for deciding what’s better than something ideas about how things ought to be. Although else—an agreement that seldom occurs. With that modern social scientists may do the same from understood, let’s turn now to some of the funda- time to time, realize that social science has to do mental bases upon which social science allows us with how things are and why. to develop theories about what is and why. This means that scientific theory—and science itself—cannot settle debates on value. Science cannot determine whether capitalism is Social Regularities better or worse than socialism except in terms In large part, social science theory aims to of agreed-on criteria. To determine scientifically find patterns in social life. That aim, of course, whether capitalism or socialism most supports applies to all science, but it sometimes presents human dignity and freedom, we would first a barrier to people when they first approach have to agree on some measurable definitions social science. of dignity and freedom. Our conclusions would Actually, the vast number of formal norms in depend totally on this agreement and would society create a considerable degree of regular- have no general meaning beyond it. ity. For example, only people who have reached By the same token, if we could agree that a certain age can vote in elections. In the U.S. suicide rates, say, or giving to charity were good military, until recently, only men could partici- measures of a religion’s quality, then we could pate in combat. Such formal prescriptions, then, determine scientifically whether Buddhism or regulate, or regularize, social behavior. Christianity is the better religion. Again, our con- Aside from formal prescriptions, we can clusion would be inextricably tied to the given observe other social norms that create more criterion. As a practical matter, people seldom regularities. Republicans are more likely than agree on criteria for determining issues of value, Democrats to vote for Republican candidates. so science is seldom useful in settling such de- University professors tend to earn more money bates. In fact, questions like these are so much than do unskilled laborers. Men earn more than a matter of opinion and belief that scientific do women. (We’ll look at this pattern in more inquiry is often viewed as a threat to what is depth later in the book.) The list of regularities “already known.” could go on and on. We’ll consider this issue in more detail in Three objections are sometimes raised in Chapter 12, when we look at evaluation research. regard to such social regularities. First, some of As you’ll see, social scientists have become in- the regularities may seem trivial. For example, creasingly involved in studying programs that re- Republicans vote for Republicans; everyone flect ideological points of view, such as affirmative knows that. Second, contradictory cases may be cited, indicating that the “regularity” isn’t totally regular. Some laborers make more money than theory A systematic explanation for the some professors do. Third, it may be argued that observations that relate to a particular aspect of the people involved in the regularity could upset life: juvenile delinquency, for example, or perhaps the whole thing if they wanted to. social stratification or political revolution. Let’s deal with each of these objections in turn. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and Science 11 The Charge of Triviality that same $50,000 salary would make you feel impoverished. During World War II, Samuel Stouffer, one of Stouffer applied this line of reasoning to the the greatest social science researchers, organized soldiers he had studied. Even if a particular MP a research branch in the U.S. Army to conduct had not been promoted for a long time, it was studies in support of the war effort (Stouffer et al. unlikely that he knew some less-deserving per- 1949–1950). Many of the studies focused on the son who had gotten promoted more quickly. No- morale among soldiers. Stouffer and his colleagues body got promoted in the MPs. Had he been in found that there was a great deal of “common the Air Corps—even if he had gotten several pro- wisdom” regarding the bases of military morale. motions in rapid succession—he would probably Much of the research undertaken by this organiza- have been able to point to someone less deserv- tion was devoted to testing these “obvious” truths. ing who had gotten even faster promotions. An For example, people had long recognized MP’s reference group, then, was his fellow MPs, that promotions affect morale in the military. and the air corpsman compared himself with fel- When military personnel get promotions and the low corpsmen. Ultimately, then, Stouffer reached promotion system seems fair, morale rises. More- an understanding of soldiers’ attitudes toward over, it makes sense that people who are getting the promotion system that (1) made sense and promoted will tend to think the system is fair, (2) corresponded to the facts. whereas those passed over will likely think the This story shows that documenting the obvi- system is unfair. By extension, it seems sensible ous is a valuable function of any science, physi- that soldiers in units with slow promotion rates cal or social. Charles Darwin coined the phrase will tend to think the system is unfair, and those fool’s experiment to describe much of his own in units with rapid rates will think the system is research—research in which he tested things fair. But was this the way they really felt? that everyone else “already knew.” As Darwin Stouffer and his colleagues focused their understood, the obvious all too often turns out to studies on two units: the Military Police (MPs), be wrong; thus, apparent triviality is not a legiti- which had the slowest promotion rate in the mate objection to any scientific endeavor. Army, and the Army Air Corps (forerunner of the U.S. Air Force), which had the fastest promo- tion rate. It stood to reason that MPs would say What about Exceptions? the promotion system was unfair and that the The objection that there are always exceptions air corpsmen would say it was fair. The studies, to any social regularity does not mean that the however, showed just the opposite. regularity itself is unreal or unimportant. A par- Notice the dilemma faced by a researcher in ticular woman may well earn more money than a situation such as this. On the one hand, the most men, but that provides small consolation observations don’t seem to make sense. On the to the majority of women, who earn less—the other hand, an explanation that makes obvious pattern still exists. Social regularities, in other good sense isn’t supported by the facts. words, are probabilistic patterns, and they are no A lesser scientist would have set the prob- less real simply because some cases don’t fit the lem aside “for further study.” Stouffer, however, general pattern. looked for an explanation for his observations, This point applies in physical science as well and eventually he found it. Robert Merton, Alice as social science. Subatomic physics, for example, Kitt (1950), and other sociologists at Columbia is a science of probabilities. In genetics, the mat- University had begun thinking and writing about ing of a blue-eyed person with a brown-eyed something they called reference group theory. This person will probably result in a brown-eyed theory says that people judge their lot in life offspring. The birth of a blue-eyed child does less by objective conditions than by comparing not destroy the observed regularity, because the themselves with others around them—their ref- geneticist states only that a brown-eyed offspring erence group. For example, if you lived among is more likely and, further, that brown-eyed off- poor people, a salary of $50,000 a year would spring will be born in a certain percentage of the make you feel like a millionaire. But if you lived cases. The social scientist makes a similar, proba- among people who earned $500,000 a year, bilistic prediction—that women overall are likely Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  12 Part One to earn less than men. Once a pattern like this is were quietly selling their shares in the company. observed, the social scientist has grounds for ask- During this period, those very executives were reas- ing why it exists. suring employees of the corporation’s financial sol- vency and recommending that workers keep their People Could Interfere own retirement funds invested in the company. As a Finally, the objection that the conscious will of consequence of this deception, those employees lost the actors could upset observed social regularities most of their retirement funds at the same time that does not pose a serious challenge to social sci- they were becoming unemployed. ence. This is true even though a parallel situation The events at Enron led two Stanford does not appear to exist in the physical sciences. business-school faculty, David Larcker and An- (Presumably, physical objects cannot violate the astasia Zakolyukina (2010), to see if it would laws of physics, although the probabilistic nature be possible to detect when business executives of subatomic physics once led some observers are lying. Their study analyzed tens of thou- to postulate that electrons had free will.) There sands of conference-call transcripts, identified is no denying that a religious, right-wing bigot instances of executives fibbing, and looked for could go to the polls and vote for an agnostic, speech patterns associated with those depar- left-wing African American if he wanted to upset tures from the truth. For example, Larcker and political scientists studying the election. All vot- Zakolyukina found that when the executives ers in an election could suddenly switch to the lied, they tended to use exaggerated emotions, underdog just to frustrate the pollsters. Similarly, for instance, calling business prospects “fan- workers could go to work early or stay home tastic” instead of “good.” The research found from work and thereby prevent the expected other tip-offs that executives were lying, such rush-hour traffic. But these things do not happen as fewer references to shareholders and fewer often enough to seriously threaten the observa- references to themselves. Given the type of tion of social regularities. information derived from this study—uncover- Social regularities, then, do exist, and social ing identifiable characteristics of lying—who do scientists can detect them and observe their effects. you suppose will profit most from it? Probably When these regularities change over time, social the findings will benefit business executives and scientists can observe and explain those changes. those people who coach them on how to com- There is a slightly different form of human municate. There is every reason to believe that interference that makes social research particu- a follow-up study of top executives in, say, ten larly challenging. Social research has a recursive years will find very different speech patterns quality, in that what we learn about society from those used today. can end up changing things so that what we learned is no longer true. For example, every now and then you may come across a study Aggregates, Not Individuals reporting “The Ten Best Places to Live,” or Social regularities do exist, then, and are worthy something like that. The touted communities of theoretical and empirical study. As such, social aren’t too crowded, yet they have all the stores scientists study primarily social patterns rather you’d ever want; the schools and other public than individual ones. These patterns reflect the ag- facilities are great, crime is low, the ratio of gregate or collective actions and situations of many doctors per capita is high, and the list goes on. individuals. Although social scientists often study What happens when this information is pub- motivations and actions that affect individuals, licized? People move there, the towns become they seldom study the individual per se. That is, overcrowded, and eventually, they are not they create theories about the nature of group, such nice places to live. More simply, imagine rather than individual, life. Whereas psychologists what results from a study that culminates in a focus on what happens inside individuals, social published list of the least-crowded beaches or scientists study what goes on between them: ex- fishing spots. amining everything from couples, to small groups In 2001, the Enron Corporation was fast ap- and organizations, on up to whole societies—and proaching bankruptcy and some of its top executives even interactions between societies. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  Chapter 1: Human Inquiry and Science 13 Sometimes the collective regularities are “Applying Concepts in Everyday Life: Fertility- amazing. Consider the birth rate, for example. Rate Implications” for a look at how the analy- People have babies for an incredibly wide range sis of fertility rates can serve many purposes.) of personal reasons. Some do it because their Social science theories try to explain why parents want them to. Some think of it as a way aggregated patterns of behavior are so regular, of completing their womanhood or manhood. even when the individuals participating in them Others want to hold their marriages together. may change over time. We could say that social Still others have babies by accident. scientists don’t seek to explain people per se. If you have had a baby, you could probably They try instead to understand the systems in tell a much more detailed, idiosyncratic story. Why which people operate, which in turn explain did you have the baby when you did, rather than why people do what they do. The elements in a year earlier or later? Maybe your house burned such a system are not people but variables. down and you had to delay a year before you could afford to have the baby. Maybe you felt that Concepts and Variables being a family person would demonstrate maturity, Our most natural attempts at understanding are which would support a promotion at work. usually concrete and idiosyncratic. That’s just the Everyone who had a baby last year had a dif- way we think. ferent set of reasons for doing so. Yet, despite this Imagine that someone says to you, “Women vast diversity, despite the idiosyncrasy of each ought to get back into the kitchen where they individual’s reasons, the General Fertility Rate belong.” You’re likely to hear that comment in in a society (the number of live births per 1,000 terms of what you know about the speaker. If it’s women 15 to 50 years of age) is remarkably con- your old Uncle Harry who is also strongly opposed sistent from year to year. See Table 1-1 for some to daylight saving time, ZIP Codes, and personal fertility rates in the United States. computers, you’re likely to think that his latest If the U.S. fertility rates were 30, 20, 70, pronouncement simply fits into his rather dated 55, and 80 in five successive years, demogra- point of view about things in general. phers would begin dropping like flies. As you If, on the other hand, the statement issues forth can see, however, social life is far more orderly from a politician who is trailing a female challenger than that. Moreover, this regularity occurs and who has also begun making statements about without society-wide regulation. As mentioned women being emotionally unfit for public office and earlier, no one plans how many babies will be not understanding politics, you may hear his latest born or determines who will have them. (See comment in the context of this political challenge. In both examples, you’re trying to understand TABLE 1-1 the thoughts of a particular individual. In social Fertility Rates in the United States: 2006–2013 science, researchers go beyond that level of un- derstanding to seek insights into classes or types of Fertility Rate per 1,000 Women individuals. Regarding the two examples just de- Year Ages 15–50 scribed, they might use terms such as old-fashioned 2006 54.9 or bigot to describe the kind of person who made the comment. In other words, they try to place 2007 55.0 the individual in a set of similar individuals, ac- 2008 58.5 cording to a particular, defined concept. 2009 57.0 By examining an individual in this way, social 2010 54.6 scientists can make sense out of more than one person. In understanding what makes the bigoted 2011 54.0 politician think the way he does, they’ll also learn 2012 54.1 about other people who are “like him.” In other 2013 51.6 words, they have not been studying bigots as much as bigotry. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Table 3. Births in the past year per 1,000 women, by Age: ACS, 2006–2013 [XLSX], accessed July 15, 2016, at http:// Bigotry here is spoken of as a variable because it www.census.gov/hhes/fertility/data/cps/historical.html. varies. Some people are more bigoted than others. Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.  14 Part One Applying Concepts in Everyday Life Fertility-Rate Implications What if we analyzed fertility rates by region of the country, by Take a minute to reflect on the practical implications of the data you’ve ethnicity, by income level, and so forth? Clearly, these additional just seen. The What Do You Think? box for this chapter asked how analyses could make the data even more useful. As you learn about baby-food and diaper manufacturers could plan production from year the options available to social researchers, I think you’ll gain an to year. The consistency of U.S. fertility rates suggests that this is not the appreciation for the practical value that research can have for the problem it might have seemed. whole society. Who else might benefit from this kind of analysis? What about health-care workers and educators? Can you think of anyone else? Social scientists are interested in understanding Variables, on the other hand, are logical sets the system of variables that causes bigotry to be of attributes. The variable occupation is composed high in one instance and low in another. of attributes such as farmer, professor, and truck The idea of a system composed of variables driver. Social class is a variable composed of a set may seem rather strange, so let’s look at an of attributes such as upper class, middle class, and analogy. The subject of a physician’s attention lower class. Sometimes it helps to think of attri- is the patient. If the patient is ill, the physi- butes as the categories that make up a variable. See cian’s purpose is to help that patient get well. Figure 1-2 for a schematic review of what social By contrast, a medical researcher’s subject scientists mean by variables and attributes. matter is different: the variables that cause a Sex and gender are examples of variables. disease, for example. The medical researcher These two variables are not synonymous, but may study the physician’s patient, but only as distinguishing them can be complicated. I will a carrier of the disease. try to simplify the matter here and abide by that Of course, medical researchers care about di