Understanding the Social World: Research Methods for the 21st Century PDF

Understanding the Social World 2 To Julia Ellen Schutt 3 Understanding the Social World Research Methods for the 21st Century Russell K. Schutt University of Massachusetts Boston 4 FOR...

Understanding the Social World 2 To Julia Ellen Schutt 3 Understanding the Social World Research Methods for the 21st Century Russell K. Schutt University of Massachusetts Boston 4 FOR INFORMATION: SAGE Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: [email protected] SAGE Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 India SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd. 3 Church Street #10-04 Samsung Hub Singapore 049483 Copyright © 2017 by SAGE Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Schutt, Russell K., author. 5 Title: Understanding the social world : research methods for the 21st century / Russell K. Schutt. Description: Thousand Oaks, California : SAGE, | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015040054 | ISBN 978-1-5063-0601-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences—Research—Methodology. Classification: LCC H62.S3497 2017 | DDC 300.72/1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040054 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Publisher: Jerry Westby Associate Editor: Jessica Miller eLearning Editor: Nicole Mangona Editorial Assistant: Laura Kirkhuff eLearning Editor: Nicole Mangona Production Editor: David C. Felts Copy Editor: Amy Marks Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Christine Dahlin Indexer: Maria Sosnowski Cover Designer: Gail Buschman Marketing Manager: Amy Lammers 6 Brief Contents About the Author Preface Acknowledgments Section I. Foundations for Social Research Chapter 1. Science, Society, and Social Research Chapter 2. The Process and Problems of Social Research Chapter 3. Research Ethics Section II Fundamentals of Social Research Chapter 4. Conceptualization and Measurement Chapter 5. Sampling and Generalizability Chapter 6. Causation and Experimental Design Section III. Basic Social Research Designs Chapter 7. Survey Research Chapter 8. Qualitative Methods Chapter 9. Unobtrusive Methods Chapter 10. Evaluation and Mixed-Methods Research Section IV. Analysis and Reporting of Social Research Chapter 11. Quantitative Data Analysis Chapter 12. Qualitative Data Analysis Chapter 13. Summarizing and Reporting Research Appendix A: Questions to Ask About a Research Article Appendix B: How to Read a Research Article On the Study Site edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw Appendix C: Table of Random Numbers Appendix D: How to Use a Statistical Package Appendix E: Annotated List of Web Sites Glossary Bibliography Index 7 Detailed Contents About the Author Preface Acknowledgments Section I. Foundations for Social Research Chapter 1. Science, Society, and Social Research The Value of Social Research Avoiding Errors in Reasoning About the Social World Observing Generalizing Reasoning Reevaluating Research in the News: Why Doesn’t the Internet Reach Everyone? Types of Social Research Descriptive Research Exploratory Research Explanatory Research Careers and Research Evaluation Research Quantitative and/or Qualitative Methods Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 2. The Process and Problems of Social Research Social Research Questions Social Research Foundations Searching the Literature Reviewing Research A Single-Article Review An Integrated Literature Review Social Theories Social Research Strategies Explanatory Research Research in the News: Messaging and Emotions Domestic Violence and the Research Circle Exploratory Research Battered Women’s Help Seeking Descriptive Research 8  Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Designs Cross-Sectional Designs Longitudinal Designs Repeated Cross-Sectional Designs (Trend Studies) Fixed-Sample Panel Designs (Panel Studies) Event-Based Designs (Cohort Studies) Social Research Standards Measurement Validity Generalizability Causal Validity Authenticity Careers and Research Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 3. Research Ethics Historical Background Ethical Principles Achieving Valid Results Honesty and Openness Protecting Research Participants Avoid Harming Research Participants Obtain Informed Consent Avoid Deception in Research, Except in Limited Circumstances Maintain Privacy and Confidentiality Consider Uses of Research So That Benefits Outweigh Risks The Institutional Review Board Research in the News: Is Same-Sex Marriage Bad for Children? Careers and Research Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Section II. Fundamentals of Social Research Chapter 4. Conceptualization and Measurement Concepts Poverty Youth Gangs 9  Trust From Concepts to Indicators Operationalizing the Concept of Race Operationalizing the Concept of Trust From Observations to Concepts Measurement Alternatives Asking Questions Research in the News: Do You Tweet What You Think? Making Observations Combining Measurement Operations Levels of Measurement Nominal Level of Measurement Careers and Research Ordinal Level of Measurement Interval/Ratio Level of Measurement The Special Case of Dichotomies Comparison of Levels of Measurement Units of Analysis Evaluating Measures Measurement Validity Face Validity Content Validity Criterion Validity Construct Validity Measurement Reliability Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 5. Sampling and Generalizability Sample Planning Defining Sample Components and the Population Evaluating Generalizability Sampling Methods Research in the News: Challenges of Conducting a Census Probability Sampling Methods Simple Random Sampling Systematic Random Sampling Stratified Random Sampling Cluster Sampling Sampling Error Probability Sampling Methods Compared 10  Nonprobability Sampling Methods Availability Sampling Quota Sampling Careers and Research Purposive Sampling Snowball Sampling Generalizability in Qualitative Research Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 6. Causation and Experimental Design Causal Explanations and Experimental Design Careers and Research Association Time Order Nonspuriousness Research in the News: Long Term Impact: How Can Research Make the Connection? Limitations of True Experimental Designs Quasi-Experimental Designs Validity in Experimental Designs Causal (Internal) Validity Generalizability Sample Generalizability Factorial Surveys External Validity Interaction of Testing and Treatment Ethical Issues in Experimental Research Deception Selective Distribution of Benefits Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Section III. Basic Social Research Designs Chapter 7. Survey Research Survey Research in the Social Sciences Errors in Survey Research Poor Measurement Nonresponse 11  Inadequate Coverage of the Population Sampling Error Writing Survey Questions Avoid Confusing Phrasing Minimize the Risk of Bias Maximize the Utility of Response Categories Avoid Making Either Disagreement or Agreement Disagreeable Minimize Fence-Sitting and Floating Combine Questions in Indexes Designing Questionnaires Build on Existing Instruments Refine and Test Questions Add Interpretive Questions Maintain Consistent Focus Order the Questions Careers and Research Research in the News: Movie “Facts”... or Fantasy? Make the Questionnaire Attractive Consider Translation Organizing Surveys Differences by Survey Type Manner of Administration Questionnaire Structure Setting Cost Mailed, Self-Administered Surveys Group-Administered Surveys Phone Surveys Reaching Sample Units Maximizing Response to Phone Surveys In-Person Surveys Web Surveys Mixed-Mode Surveys Comparing Survey Designs Ethical Issues in Survey Research Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 8. Qualitative Methods Fundamentals of Qualitative Methods The Case Study 12  Ethnography Netnography Careers and Research Research in the News: Facelessness and Social Research Primary Qualitative Methods Participant Observation Choosing a Role Entering the Field Developing and Maintaining Relationships Sampling People and Events Taking Notes Managing the Personal Dimensions Intensive Interviewing Establishing and Maintaining a Partnership Asking Questions and Recording Answers Interviewing Online Focus Groups Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research Voluntary Participation Subject Well-Being Identity Disclosure Confidentiality Appropriate Boundaries Researcher Safety Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 9. Unobtrusive Methods Unobtrusive Measures of Behavior Secondary Data Analysis Research in the News: Trash: The Focus of Anthropological Research in New York Secondary Data Sources Careers and Research Challenges for Secondary Data Analyses Big Data Historical and Comparative Research Methods Historical Social Science Methods Comparative Social Science Methods Comparative Historical Methods Cautions for Historical and Comparative Analysis 13  Content Analysis Identify a Population of Documents or Other Textual Sources Determine the Units of Analysis Select a Sample of Units From the Population Design Coding Procedures for the Variables to Be Measured Develop Appropriate Statistical Analyses Ethical Issues in Unobtrusive Methods Secondary Data Analysis and Big Data Historical and Comparative Research and Content Analysis Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 10. Evaluation and Mixed-Methods Research Evaluation Research Basics Questions for Evaluation Research Needs Assessment Process Evaluation Impact Analysis Efficiency Analysis Mixed Methods Integrated Designs Embedded Designs Staged Designs Strengths and Limitations of Mixed Methods Research in the News: Can We Save (More) Babies? Ethics in Evaluation Careers and Research Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Section IV. Analysis and Reporting of Social Research Chapter 11. Quantitative Data Analysis Introducing Statistics Displaying Univariate Distributions Frequency Distributions Graphs Summarizing Univariate Distributions Measures of Central Tendency Mode 14  Research in the News: Googling as Social Data Median Mean Median or Mean? Measures of Variation Range Standard Deviation Crosstabs Controlling for a Third Variable Regression Analysis Careers and Research Analyzing Data Ethically Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 12. Qualitative Data Analysis Features of Qualitative Data Analysis Alternatives in Qualitative Data Analysis Ethnomethodology Conversation Analysis Narrative Analysis Grounded Theory Case-Oriented Understanding Institutional Ethnography Visual Sociology Systematic Observation Careers and Research Participatory Action Research Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Corroboration/Legitimization of Conclusions Research in the News: Secret Photographing of Students at Harvard? Ethics in Qualitative Data Analysis Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Chapter 13. Summarizing and Reporting Research Writing Research Journal Articles 15  Research in the News: Do Social Scientists Do Better Than Pollsters? Applied Research Reports Careers and Research Reporting Quantitative and Qualitative Research Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports Plagiarism Conclusions Key Terms Highlights Chapter Questions Practice Exercises Appendix A: Questions to Ask About a Research Article Appendix B: How to Read a Research Article On the Study Site edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw Appendix C: Table of Random Numbers Appendix D: How to Use a Statistical Package Appendix E: Annotated List of Web Sites Glossary Bibliography Index 16 About the Author Russell K. Schutt, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Lecturer on Sociology in the Department of Psychiatry (Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) at the Harvard Medical School. He completed his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University. In addition to Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research, now in its eighth edition, and adaptations of that text—Making Sense of the Social World (with Dan Chambliss), Research Methods in Psychology (with Paul G. Nestor), The Practice of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice and Fundamentals of Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice (with Ronet Bachman), The Practice of Research in Social Work and Fundamentals of Social Work Research (with Ray Engel), and Research Methods in Education (with Joseph Check)—he is the author of Homelessness, Housing, and Mental Illness and coeditor of Social Neuroscience: Brain, Mind, and Society (both with Harvard University Press) and author of Organization in a Changing Environment (SUNY), coauthor of Responding to the Homeless: Policy and Practice (Plenum), and coeditor of The Organizational Response to Social Problems (JAI). He has authored and coauthored 50 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as many book chapters and research reports on mental health, homelessness, service preferences and satisfaction, organizations, law, and teaching research methods. His research has included a mixed-methods investigation of a public health coordinated care program, a study of community health workers and recruitment for cancer clinical trials, a mixed-methods study of a youth violence reduction program, a randomized trial of a peer support program for homeless dually diagnosed veterans, and a randomized evaluation of housing alternatives for homeless persons diagnosed with severe mental illness, with funding from the National Cancer Institute, the Veterans Health Administration, the National Institute of Mental Health, the John E. Fetzer Institute, and state agencies. His current scholarly foci are the impact of the social environment on cognitive and community functioning, the meaning of housing and service preferences, and the value of alternative organizational and occupational structures for service delivery. His prior research has also included investigation of social factors in legal decisions and admission practices and of influences on job and service satisfaction. Details are available at http://rschutt.wikispaces.umb.edu. 17 Preface The social world in the 21st century presents new problems for society and new challenges for researchers, but it also offers many opportunities for progress and understanding. Rapid advances in information technology; growing global trade and communication; and intersecting social, environmental, and economic transformations require innovative social research methods to describe an increasingly complex reality and to identify its diverse sources. You are already part of this transformative process, both in your expectations for the social world and in the ways you interact with it. From Facebook to WhatsApp, from Uber to Google, the way you interact with the social world and the way you obtain information from it differs in many ways from those in the last century. Understanding the Social World: Research Methods for the 21st Century is a new type of research methods textbook for this new environment. It reflects the research requirements of a social world shaped by Big Data and social media, Instagram and avatars, blogs and tweets; and it confronts the research difficulties created by cell phones, privacy concerns, linguistic diversity, and multicultural neighborhoods. What most distinguishes Understanding from Investigating the Social World, the more comprehensive text on which this book is based, and from other texts is its brevity, its focus on the methods most relevant to the 21st-century social world, and its engagement with the most pressing issues in this social world. At the same time, no core social science methods are overlooked and no key research standards are slighted; the emphasis is on engaging material that connects with your experiences and relates to the social theories you are learning, while not neglecting basic concepts or enduring standards. Understanding the Social World is fast-paced and visually sleek, so that it can take you across disciplinary and national boundaries and past conflicts, with an emphasis on mixed methods, ethical practices, and practical application. Each of the major elements and methods in social research are represented in Understanding the Social World: inductive and deductive reasoning, contributing to social theory and reviewing research literature, qualitative and quantitative approaches, measurement validity and reliability, ethical standards and procedures, as well as experiments, surveys, qualitative methods, unobtrusive methods, evaluation research, and mixed methods. Basic techniques in both quantitative and qualitative data analysis are presented and guidelines for research reporting are reviewed. Each chapter uses research examples from the 21st century and provides features that enhance engagement, including Research in the News and Careers and Research. Ethics in research is the focus of an early chapter and then a section 18 of each research design chapter. End-of-chapter materials provide summaries for review, questions for discussion, and exercises for practice. Many research studies used for examples are available on the student study site in their original SAGE journal article format, with questions that encourage further exploration. The study site also offers quizzes, flashcards, interactive exercises, links to relevant resources on the Internet, and extra appendices. 19 Teaching and Learning Goals The first goal of this book is to introduce you to the social science research methods that shape the content of your courses, the programs of government agencies, the sales strategies of businesses, and the news of the day. Each chapter integrates instruction in research methods with investigation of interesting aspects of today’s social world, such as social networking; intimate partner violence; crime and police practices; responding to disasters; and political preferences. You will learn in each chapter how learning the methods of social research can help you to answer questions about the social world. The other key goal of this book is to give you the critical skills necessary to evaluate research. Just “doing research” is not enough. Just reading that some conclusions are “based on a research study” is not sufficient. You must learn to ask many questions before deciding that research-based conclusions are appropriate. What did the researchers set out to investigate? How were people selected for study? What information was collected, and how was it analyzed? Throughout this book, you will learn what questions to ask when critiquing a research study and how to evaluate the answers. You can begin to sharpen your critical teeth on the illustrative studies throughout the book. This book also provides you the foundation for doing research. Substantive examples will help you see how methods are used in practice. Exercises at the end of each chapter give you ways to try different methods alone or in a group. Research methods cannot be learned by rote and applied mechanically. Thus, you will learn the benefits and liabilities of each major approach to research and why employing a combination of them is often preferable. You will learn how to conduct limited research projects throughout the book, and by the time you finish it you will be ready to be a full participant in large research projects and to study more advanced research methods. 20 Organization of the Book Understanding the Social World is organized in four sections that reflect the process of conducting and critiquing research: developing a research question with a foundation in the research literature and social theory and attention to ethical procedures; determining the fundamental elements of conceptualization and measurement, sampling, and procedures for testing cause-effect relations, when appropriate; choosing a basic research design; and analyzing data and reporting findings. The three chapters in the first section, “Foundations for Social Research,” introduce the why and how of research in general. Chapter 1 shows how research has helped us understand the impact of social networking and changes in social ties. It also introduces some alternative approaches to social research, with a particular emphasis on the contrast between quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Chapter 2 illustrates the basic stages of research with a series of experiments on the police response to intimate partner violence, it emphasizes the role of theory in guiding research, and it describes the major strategies and goals for research projects. Chapter 3 highlights issues of research ethics by reviewing classic studies and contemporary debates and by introducing the institutional review boards that examine the ethics of proposed research. The three chapters in the second section, “Fundamentals of Social Research,” discuss how to evaluate the way researchers develop their concepts and design their measures (Chapter 4), draw their samples (Chapter 5), and justify their statements about causal connections (Chapter 6). As you learn about these processes, you will also read about research on poverty, trust, gangs, homelessness, and violence. Chapter 6 also serves as a bridge to the next section by introducing experimental methods, a basic research design that focuses attention on tests about cause-effect relationships. “Basic Social Research Designs,” the third section, presents the primary designs used by researchers to collect data about the social world (in addition to experiments): survey research, qualitative methods, unobtrusive methods, and evaluation research. Each chapter presents several different approaches to these basic research designs, so that part of what you will learn is how to select the best possible design for a research question (and how to critique researchers’ choices to rely on a particular design). Chapter 7, on survey methods, reviews multiple variable features that shape the success of survey designs, while Chapter 8, on qualitative methods, reviews the logic of qualitative research as well as the different types of participant observation methods and the strategies of intensive interviewing and focus groups. Chapter 9, on unobtrusive methods, presents five different approaches that are all “unobtrusive” but that require very different 21 techniques: unobtrusive measures, secondary data analysis, Big Data analysis, historical and comparative methods, and content analysis. Chapter 10 concludes this section with a review of the methods used in evaluation research and the logic behind the mixed-methods approaches that are increasingly used in evaluation research and many other research projects. The final section, “Analyzing and Reporting of Social Research,” presents the processes required for successful completion of a research project. Chapter 11 gives you a hands-on introduction to analyzing quantitative data, with interesting statistical examples you can carry out on the web (see also Appendix D). This chapter will also show you exactly what to look for when evaluating basic statistics in research reports. Chapter 12 introduces some of the rapidly developing approaches to analyzing qualitative data, ranging from conversation analysis and institutional ethnography to visual sociology. You will also learn about the method of participatory action research, which engages research participants in both the design and the analysis of research projects, as well as about using computer programs for analyzing qualitative data. Chapter 13 finishes up with an overview of the process of writing and organizing journal articles and research reports and a discussion of ethical problems related to social research and reporting. 22 Distinctive Features Understanding the Social World breaks new ground with newly popular research methods, enhanced tools for learning in the text and online, and contemporary, fascinating research findings. Other innovations in approach, coverage, and organization are: Up-to-date coverage of research methods. Research methods continue to develop and new challenges must be overcome as our social world continues to change. This text reflects increased attention to visual methods, expanded use of web surveys, growing reliance on smartphones, and use of social media. Some researchers have begun to explore the Internet with qualitative techniques, so there is expanded coverage of web surveys and related issues and sections on Internet-based forms of qualitative research. The chapter on mixed methods and the sections on Big Data and institutional ethnography also reflect recent developments in research. Examples of social research as it occurs in real-world settings. The leading examples that introduce research in each chapter are current and plentiful. Fascinating examples of research on social ties, domestic violence, crime, and other social issues demonstrate that the exigencies and complexities of real life shape the application of research methods. Web-based instructional aids. The book’s study site includes interactive exercises that link directly to original research articles, published by SAGE, on each major research topic. It is important to spend enough time with these exercises to become comfortable with the basic research concepts presented. The interactive exercises allow you to learn about research on a range of interesting topics as you practice using the language of research. Careers and Research. Each chapter highlights the career of a researcher—a former student like you—who has used the methods discussed. What better incentive to study hard and master these methods! Research in the News. Timely examples of research affecting today’s social world are highlighted in each chapter. Additional examples are available on my blog, Researching the Social World, http://investigatingthesocialworld.com/2014/09/28/welcome-to-the- investigating-the-social-world-8th-edition-blog-site/. Maybe you’ll be inspired to discuss with other students the ways that research methods help us to understand the social world. It is a privilege to be able to share with so many students the results of excellent social science investigations of the social world. If Understanding the Social World communicates the excitement of social research and the importance of 23 evaluating carefully the methods we use in that research, then I have succeeded in representing fairly what social scientists do. If this book conveys accurately the latest developments in research methods, it demonstrates that social scientists are themselves committed to evaluating and improving their own methods of investigation. I think it is fair to say that we practice what we preach. Now you’re the judge. I hope that you and your instructor enjoy learning how to understand the social world and perhaps do some investigating along the way. And I hope you find that the knowledge and (dare I say it?) enthusiasm you develop for social research in this course will serve you well throughout your education, in your career, and in your community. 24 A Note About Statistical Analysis All you need to carry out the statistical analyses in Chapter 11 and the corresponding exercises is access to the Web. Data sets and interactive programs are available for analyses at the University of California, Berkeley, website (http://sda.berkeley.edu/archive.htm) and at the National Opinion Research Center site (www.norc.uchicago.edu/GSS+Website/). 25 Ancillaries edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw SAGE edge offers a robust online environment featuring an impressive array of tools and resources for review, study, and further exploration, keeping both instructors and students on the cutting edge of teaching and learning. SAGE edge content is open access and available on demand. Learning and teaching has never been easier! SAGE edge for students provides a personalized approach to help students accomplish their coursework goals in an easy-to-use learning environment. Mobile-friendly eFlashcards strengthen understanding of key terms and concepts Mobile-friendly practice quizzes allow for independent assessment by students of their mastery of course material A customized online action plan includes tips and feedback on progress through the course and materials, which allows students to individualize their learning experience Learning objectives reinforce the most important material Video and multimedia links which appeal to students with different leaning styles EXCLUSIVE! Access to full-text SAGE journal articles that have been carefully selected to support and expand on the concepts presented in each chapter SAGE edge for instructors supports teaching by making it easy to integrate quality content and create a rich learning environment for students. Test banks provide a diverse range of pre-written options as well as the opportunity to edit any question and/or insert personalized questions to effectively assess students’ progress and understanding Editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides offer complete flexibility for creating a multimedia presentation for the course EXCLUSIVE! Access to full-text SAGE journal articles that have been carefully selected to support and expand on the concepts presented in each chapter to encourage students to think critically Video and multimedia links includes original SAGE videos and Researcher Interview videos Lecture notes summarize key concepts by chapter to ease preparation for 26  lectures and class discussions Chapter-specific discussion questions to help launch classroom interaction by prompting students to engage with the material and by reinforcing important content In the electronic edition of the book you have purchased, there are several icons that reference links (videos, journal articles) to additional content. Though the electronic edition links are not live, all content referenced may be accessed at edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw. This URL is referenced at several points throughout your electronic edition. 27 Acknowledgments My thanks first to Jerry Westby, publisher and acquisitions editor extraordinaire for Sage Publications. Jerry’s consistent support and exceptional vision have made it possible for this project to flourish, and his good cheer and collegiality have even made it all rather fun. Associate editor Jessica Miller also contributed her outstanding talents to the success of this text and to the quality of the Careers and Research highlights. Book production was managed with great expertise and good cheer by David Felts, while the remarkable Amy Marks proved herself to be one of publishing’s most conscientious and effective copy editors. Nicole Mangona artfully managed development of book ancillaries, and Amy Lammers developed an ambitious marketing strategy. I am grateful to work with such talented staff at what has become the world’s best publisher in social science. My thanks also to Philip Brenner for suggestions for the survey methods chapter and to Ronet Bachman and Chuck Lubbers for helping to secure Careers and Research vignettes. I also am indebted to the first-rate social scientists whom Jerry Westby recruited to critique my proposal and early chapter drafts. Their thoughtful suggestions and cogent insights have helped improve every chapter. They are: Edward E. Ackerley, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University Francisco J. Alatorre, New Mexico State University Jacqueline Bergdahl, Wright State University Tricia C. Bruce, Maryville College Christine C. Fay, Elms College Donna Goyer, California State University San Marcos Eric Grulke, Northern Arizona University Kellie J. Hagewen, College of Southern Nevada Amy Holzgang, Cerritos College Kim Humphrey, Northern Arizona University Fanying Kong, Bellevue University Ashleigh Kysar-Moon, Purdue University Chuck Lubbers, University of South Dakota Allan McBride, University of Southern Mississippi Ashley B. Mikulyuk, University of Portland Mladen Mrdalj, Northeastern University Heather Macpherson Parrott, Long Island University-Post Katelyn J. Rozenbroek, University of Miami Baffour K. Takyi, University of Akron Darcie Vandegrift, Drake University 28 I am also grateful for the expert and timely assistance of Brittne Lunnis, the University of Massachusetts Boston Ph.D. student who served as my SAGE assistant for this book. I could not have completed this work in a timely fashion without her enthusiasm and commitment. Brittne also tailored materials from my other SAGE methods texts for the student study site and the instructors’ resource site. The interactive exercises on the website began with a series of exercises that I developed in a project at the University of Massachusetts Boston. They were expanded for the second edition of Investigating the Social World by Tom Linneman and a team of graduate students he directed at the University of Washington—Mark Edwards, Lorella Palazzo, and Tim Wadsworth—and tested by Gary Hytrek and Gi-Wook Shin at the University of California, Los Angeles. My format changes in the exercises for the third edition were tested by my daughter, Julia Schutt. Diane Bates and Matthew Archibald helped revise material for instructors, and Judith Richlin-Klonsky revised some examples in Chapter 9 for the third edition. Kate Russell developed a new set of exercises and made many other contributions for the seventh edition, as did Whitney Gecker for the eighth edition. Brittne Lunnis has now tailored them for Understanding the Social World. I continue to be indebted to the many students I have had the opportunity to teach and mentor, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In many respects, this book could not have come to fruition without the ongoing teaching experiences we have shared. I also share a profound debt to the many social scientists and service professionals with whom I have collaborated in social science research projects. No scholarly book project can succeed without good library resources, and for these I continue to incur a profound debt to the excellent librarians at the University of Massachusetts Boston and to Harvard University’s library staff and their extraordinary collection. Again, most important, I thank my wife, Elizabeth, for her love and support and our daughter, Julia, for the joy she brings to our lives and the good she has done in the social world. 29 Section I Foundations for Social Research 30 Chapter 1 Science, Society, and Social Research ©iStockphoto.com/adventtr 31  Learning Objectives ❖ Describe the four common errors in everyday reasoning ❖ Define social science and identify its limitations ❖ Identify the four types of social research ❖ Explain the difference between the orientations in the following two pairs: quantitative/qualitative; positivist/constructivist Online social networking services added a new dimension to the social world in the early years of the 21st century. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 as a service for college students like himself, but by August 2015, Facebook had grown to be a global service with 1.49 billion users—more than one of every six people in the world and four out of every five persons in the United States (Internet World Statistics 2012; Statista 2015; Statistic Brain 2013; U.S. Census Bureau 2013). When we talk about our social world, social media must be part of the conversation. Do social media enhance social relations, or do they diminish our engagement with others? That’s where social researchers begin, with questions about the social world and a desire to find answers to them. Keith N. Hampton, Lauren Sessions Goulet, Lee Rainie, and Kristen Purcell (2011) analyzed the responses received in a survey about social networks and Facebook and reported that 79% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 22 use the Internet and 59% use social networking services, but this usage complements their other social ties, rather than displacing them. This chapter gives special attention to questions about Internet use, social networking services, and social ties, but its goal is to illustrate the value of social research and introduce the methods of social research in relation to a compelling contemporary issue. We cannot avoid asking questions about our complex social world, or our position in it. In fact, the more that you begin to “think like a social scientist,” the more such questions will come to mind—and that’s a good thing! But it is through learning how answers to questions about the social world can be improved with systematic methods of investigation that we can move beyond first impressions and gut reactions. The use of research methods to investigate questions about the social world results in knowledge that can be more important, more trustworthy, and more useful than reliance just on personal opinions and individual experiences. You will also learn about the challenges that researchers confront. By the chapter’s end, you should know what is “scientific” in social science and appreciate how the methods of science can help us understand the problems of society. 32 Get the edge on your studies. edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw Take a quiz to find out what you’ve learned. Review key terms with eFlashcards. Watch videos that enhance chapter content. 33 The Value of Social Research As you begin this book, you might wonder whether learning about social research methods is worth the effort. It is if you would like to do as well as possible in your other social science courses; if you want to maximize your career opportunities; and if you care about the community you live in, the schools your children may attend, and the direction of the nation. In courses ranging from the sociology of gender to the politics of communication, you will read about social research results and so need to know how to assess the quality of the evidence produced. Almost any organization for which you might work, from a government agency or a nonprofit organization to a private employer, conducts or at least uses social research methods to evaluate programs, identify client needs, or assess customer satisfaction. If you plan to work as a program director, social service worker, or in almost any other capacity, your ability to understand social research will help you to evaluate information and make decisions; of course, it is also a necessary foundation for graduate school. And there can be even more direct benefits if you take advantage of one of the many job opportunities in social science research at one of the hundreds of organizations that evaluate and help to advance social policy, such as the RAND Corporation, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the Institute for Social Research (ISR), Mathematica, and ABT Associates (Prewitt, Schwandt, & Straf 2012:28). As you will see in the “Careers and Research” vignettes throughout Understanding the Social World, there are many opportunities to enhance your job prospects if you understand social research methods. Photo 1.1 Researchers are taking a close look at the effect of social media on social relations. What effect do you think they have? 34  ©iStockphoto.com/adventtr AUDIO LINK Social Media The U.S. federal government spent about $1.3 billion on social science research (including psychology and economics) in fiscal year 2011, and federal statistical agencies and programs had a total budget exceeding $6.5 billion in fiscal 2012 (Prewitt et al. 2012:31-32). In the United Kingdom, social science research expenditures from all sources at universities amounted to £851 million ($1.3 billion) in 2010–2011 (Bastow, Dunleavy, & Tinkler 2014:11). Social science research has identified influences on voting, variation in civic engagement, and the role of social factors in physical and mental health (AAU 2013). The results have included programs that have helped to increase voter turnout, reduce violence in communities, lessen smoking and hence rates of lung cancer, improve the health and well-being of infants, and lower rates of domestic violence. From wellness visits by teen mothers to community-based policing, social science research has helped to improve social welfare (Abrams 2007:2-4; NIH n.d.). By learning the methods 35 used in this type of research, you can begin to evaluate its quality and help to shape its impact. Are you ready to proceed? SAGE JOURNAL ARTICLE Social Activity and Older Demographics 36 Avoiding Errors in Reasoning About the Social World How can we improve our reasoning about the social world? How do social research methods help us to avoid errors rooted in personal experiences? First, let’s identify the different processes involved in learning about the social world and the types of errors that can result as we reason about the social world. When we learn about the social world, we engage in one or more of four processes: (1) “observing” through our five senses (seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling); (2) generalizing from what we have observed to other times, places, or people; (3) reasoning about the connections between different things that we have observed; and (4) reevaluating our understanding of the social world on the basis of these processes. It is easy to make mistakes with each of them. My favorite example of the errors in reasoning that occur in the nonscientific, unreflective discourse about the social world that we hear on a daily basis comes from a letter to famous advice columnist Ann Landers. The letter was written by someone who had just moved with her two cats from the city to a house in the country. In the city, she had not let her cats outside and felt guilty about confining them. When they arrived in the country, she threw her back door open. Her two cats cautiously went to the door and looked outside for a while, then returned to the living room and lay down. Her conclusion was that people shouldn’t feel guilty about keeping their cats indoors. Even when they have the chance, cats don’t really want to play outside, she reasoned. Do you see this person’s errors in her approach to Observing? She observed the cats at the outside door only once. Generalizing? She observed only two cats, both of which previously were confined indoors. Reasoning? She assumed that others feel guilty about keeping their cats indoors and that cats are motivated by feelings about opportunities to play. Reevaluating? She was quick to conclude that she had no need to change her approach to the cats. You don’t have to be a scientist or use sophisticated research techniques to avoid these four errors in reasoning, but the methods of social science are designed to reduce greatly the risk of making them. Science relies on logical and systematic methods to answer questions. Science does this in a way that allows others to inspect and evaluate its methods. In this way, scientific research develops a body of knowledge that is continually refined, as beliefs are rejected or confirmed on the basis of testing empirical evidence. Social science relies on scientific methods to 37 investigate individuals, societies, and social processes. Although the activities involved in social science methods—asking questions, observing social groups, or counting people—are similar to things we do in our everyday lives, social scientists develop, refine, apply, and report their understanding of the social world more systematically, or “scientifically,” than does Joanna Q. Public. Photo 1.2 What could the woman with the cats have done to avoid the four errors in reasoning? ©iStockphoto.com/w-ings 38 Observing One common mistake in learning about the social world is selective observation— choosing to look only at things that are in line with our preferences or beliefs. When we are inclined to criticize individuals or institutions, it is all too easy to notice their every failure. For example, if we are convinced in advance that all heavy Internet users are antisocial, we can find many confirming instances. But what about elderly people who serve as Internet pen pals for grade-school children? Couples who maintain their relationship when working in faraway cities? If we acknowledge only the instances that confirm our predispositions, we are victims of our own selective observation. Our observations can also simply be inaccurate. If, after a quick glance around the computer lab, you think there are 14 students present, when there are actually 17, you have made an inaccurate observation. If you hear a speaker say that “for the oppressed, the flogging never really stops,” when what she said was, “For the obsessed, the blogging never really stops” (Hafner 2004), you have made an inaccurate observation. Such errors occur often in casual conversation and in everyday observation of the world around us. In fact, our perceptions do not provide a direct window onto the world around us, for what we think we have sensed is not necessarily what we have seen (or heard, smelled, felt, or tasted). Even when our senses are functioning fully, our minds have to interpret what we have sensed (Humphrey 1992). The optical illusion in Photo 1.3, which comes from a JCPenney billboard that could be seen as either a teakettle or a saluting Adolf Hitler, should help you realize that perceptions involve interpretations. Different observers may perceive the same situation differently because they interpret it differently (so JCPenney quickly took down the billboard after complaints). ENCYCLOPEDIA LINK Generalizability Theory Social science methods can reduce the risk of selective or inaccurate observation by requiring that we measure and sample phenomena systematically. For example, what role did social media play in the popular uprisings in the Middle East that started after 2008? It’s easy to make up a “story” based on some messages sent by participants, but did this really involve lots of people? A group of researchers from Social Flow, the Web Ecology Project, and Microsoft Research (Lotan et al. 2011) 39  investigated this issue using social research methods. They sampled 168,663 tweets posted January 12–19, 2011, mentioning keywords related to Tunisia, and 230,270 tweets posted January 24–29, 2011, mentioning keywords related to Egypt. They then identified those tweets that were retweeted most often and the distinct Twitter users within these tweets. Exhibit 1.1 shows how one tweet was retweeted frequently and so contributed to the news of popular support for the Egyptian protests. µ! ! Science: A set of logical, systematic, documented methods for investigating nature and natural processes; the knowledge produced by these investigations. Social science: The use of scientific methods to investigate individuals, societies, and social processes; the knowledge produced by these investigations. Selective observation: Choosing to look only at things that are in line with our preferences or beliefs. Inaccurate observation: An observation based on faulty perceptions of empirical reality. Overgeneralization: Concluding unjustifiably that what is true for some cases is true for all cases. 40 Generalizing Overgeneralization occurs when we conclude that what we have observed or what we know to be true for some cases is true for all or most cases (Exhibit 1.2). We are always drawing conclusions about people and society from our own interactions, but sometimes we forget that our experiences are limited. The social world is, after all, a complex place. We can interact with just a small fraction of individuals in the social world, and we may do so in a limited span of time. Thanks to the Internet, social media, and the practice of “blogging,” we can easily find many examples of overgeneralization in people’s thoughts about the social world. Here’s one posted by a frequent blogger who was called for jury duty (http://busblog.tonypierce.com/2005/06/yesterday-i-had-to-go-to-jury-duty-to.html, posted on June 17, 2005): yesterday i had to go to jury duty to perform my civil duty. unlike most people i enjoy jury duty because i find the whole legal process fascinating, especially when its unfolding right in front of you and you get to help decide yay or nay. Do you know what the majority of people think about jury duty? According to a Harris Poll, 75% of Americans consider jury service to be a privilege (Grey 2005), so the blogger’s generalization about “most people” is not correct. Do you ever find yourself making a quick overgeneralization like that? Photo 1.3 An optical illusion: What do you see? 41  FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images Social science research methods can reduce the likelihood of overgeneralization by using systematic procedures to select individuals, groups, events, messages, and the like to study that are representative of the individuals, groups, events, messages, and the like to which we want to generalize. In the study of the role of social media in the Arab Spring events highlighted in Exhibit 1.1, the researchers explain carefully how they selected tweets to study and why they chose to sample only from 10% of the most popular tweets; they also caution that this means their analysis does not represent all the types of tweets sent during this period. Exhibit 1.1 Retweets of Quote in Support of Egypt Protesters by Other Journalists Over Time 42  Source: Lotan et al. 2011:1394. Exhibit 1.2 The Difference Between Selective Observation and Overgeneralization 43 Reasoning When we jump to conclusions or argue on the basis of invalid assumptions, we are using illogical reasoning. It is not always so easy to spot illogical reasoning. For example, more than 74% of American households now use the Internet (File & Ryan 2014). Would it be reasonable to propose that the 26% who don’t participate in the “information revolution” avoid it simply because they don’t want to participate? In fact, many low-income households lack the financial resources to buy a computer or pay for an Internet connection, and so they use the Internet much less frequently; that’s probably not because they don’t want to use it (Rainie & Horrigan 2005:63). Conversely, an unquestioned assumption that everyone wants to connect to the Internet may overlook some important considerations; for example, 17% of nonusers of the Internet said in 2002 that the Internet has made the world a worse place, so they may not use it because they don’t like what they believe to be its effects (UCLA Center for Communication Policy 2003:78). Logic that seems impeccable to one person can seem twisted to another. To avoid illogical reasoning, social researchers use explicit criteria for describing events and identifying causes and for determining whether these criteria are met in a particular instance. 44 Reevaluating Resistance to change, the reluctance to reevaluate our ideas in light of new information, may occur for several reasons: Ego-based and institutional commitments. We all learn to greet with some skepticism the claims by leaders of companies, schools, agencies, and so on, that people in their organization are happy, that revenues are growing, and that services are being delivered in the best possible way. We know how tempting it is to make statements about the social world that conform to our own needs or the needs of our employers, rather than to the observable facts. It can also be difficult to admit that we were wrong, once we have staked out a position on an issue. Barry Wellman recounts a call from a reporter after the death of what he believed were four “cyber addicts” (Boase, Horrigan, Wellman, & Rainie 2006:1). The reporter just wanted a quote from a computer-use expert, such as Wellman, that would affirm his belief. But the interview didn’t last long: The reporter lost interest when Wellman pointed out that other causes might be involved, that “addicts” were a low percentage of users, and that no one worries about “neighboring addicts” who chat daily in their front yards. (Boase et al. 2006:1) Excessive devotion to tradition. Some degree of devotion to tradition is necessary for the predictable functioning of society. Social life can be richer and more meaningful if it is allowed to flow along the paths charted by those who have preceded us. But too much devotion to tradition can stifle adaptation to and understanding of changing circumstances. VIDEO LINK Change Management Uncritical agreement with authority. If we do not have the courage to evaluate critically the ideas of those in positions of authority, we will have little basis for complaint if they exercise their authority over us in ways we don’t like. And, if we do not allow new discoveries to challenge our beliefs, our understanding of the social world will remain limited. Do you see some of the challenges social science faces? 45 AUDIO LINK The Internet Because they require that we base our beliefs on evidence that can be examined and critiqued by others, scientific methods lessen the tendency to develop answers about the social world from ego-based or institutional commitments, excessive devotion to tradition, or unquestioning respect for authority. For example, when Alice Marwick and danah boyd investigated what adults usually refer to as “bullying” on social media, they found that teens themselves often instead used the term drama as a way of distancing themselves from the concept of bullying. According to the researchers, “‘drama’ connotes something immature, petty, and ridiculous,” even though the communications themselves may be quite hurtful. Marwick and boyd did not accept without question either the adult concept of bullying or the teen concept of drama as the appropriate way to think about the gossip, jokes, and arguments on social media. Instead, they examined these communications critically and so were able “to recognize teens’ own defenses against the realities of aggression, gossip, and bullying in networked publics” (Marwick & boyd 2011:23). 46 RESEARCH/SOCIAL IMPACT LINK Social Research in Practice VIDEO LINK Social Science Illogical reasoning: Jumping to conclusions or arguing on the basis of invalid assumptions. Resistance to change: The reluctance to reevaluate our ideas in light of new information. 47 Research In the News 48 Why Doesn’t the Internet Reach Everyone? In a recent survey, social psychologist Ethan Kross found that young people who spent more time on Facebook felt less good about their own lives. He concluded that the problem was that the rosy self- portraits they saw on Facebook made users feel deficient by comparison. So when we investigate the social world, it’s a good idea to inquire about our participants’ online social worlds as well as their face-to-face contacts. We also can use postings to social media sites as another source of data about the social world. 49 For Further Thought? 1. People have always tried to manage their images in the social world. Do social media allow us to take this impression management to a whole new level? 2. What are the consequences for our everyday lives? 3. What does this mean for the research methods we use to study the social world? News source: Burge, Kathleen. 2014. “Overblown Facebook Personas Can Leave Friends Deflated.” Boston Globe, September 30. 50 Types of Social Research Whatever the motives, there are four types of social research projects. This section illustrates each type with examples from the large body of research about various aspects of social ties. 51 Descriptive Research Defining and describing social phenomena of interest is a part of almost any research investigation, but descriptive research is often the primary focus of the first research about some issue. For example, Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith- Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears (2006) designed social research to answer the descriptive question: What is the level of particular types of social ties in America? Measurement (the topic of Chapter 4) and sampling (Chapter 5) are central concerns in descriptive research. Survey research (Chapter 7) is often used for descriptive purposes. Some unobtrusive research also has a descriptive purpose (Chapter 9). JOURNAL LINK Mobile Communities 52 RESEARCH/SOCIAL IMPACT LINK Exploratory Research Exhibit 1.3 The Value of Facebook 53  Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project Omnibus Survey, conducted December 13 to 16, 2012, on landline and cell phones. N for male Facebook users = 233. N for female Facebook users = 292. Example: Comings and goings on Facebook? Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project, and his colleagues Aaron Smith and Maeve Duggan (2013) sought to describe the frequency with which Americans stopped using Facebook and the reasons they did so. To investigate this issue, they surveyed 1,006 American adults by phone and asked them such questions as “Do you ever use Facebook?” and “Have you ever voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more?” They found that two thirds of American adults who use the Internet also use Facebook and that most (61%) say they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook at some time for at least several weeks (Rainie et al. 2013:2). They also asked about the importance of Facebook to users and found that the importance attached to Facebook by women had grown more in the previous year than it had for men (see Exhibit 1.3). Descriptive research: Research in which social phenomena are defined and described. 54 Exploratory Research Exploratory research seeks to find out how people get along in the setting under question, what meanings they give to their actions, and what issues concern them. The goal is to learn “What is going on here?” and to investigate social phenomena without explicit expectations. Exploratory research frequently involves qualitative methods, which are the focus of Chapters 8 and 12. Example: How does cyberbullying occur and how do victims cope? University of Washington social researchers Katie Davis, David P. Randall, Anthony Ambrose, and Mania Orand (2015) were concerned by the prevalence of bullying among adolescents and wondered how youth responded when they were victimized by online harassment. They identified an opportunity to explore this issue through an analysis of 1,096 comments made in response to a blog post by singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer about the suicide of 15-year-old Amanda Todd after a topless picture of her that circulated online led to years of cyberbullying. Davis and her colleagues found that the primary reasons given for having been bullied were physical appearance, sexual orientation, and pursuing nonmainstream interests. Popular coping strategies included seeking social support, finding a creative outlet, ignoring or blocking the bully, as well as self-talk and taking the perspective of the bully in order to understand his or her motivations. Exploratory research: Seeks to find out how people get along in the setting under question, what meanings they give to their actions, and what issues concern them. Explanatory research: Seeks to identify causes and effects of social phenomena and to predict how one phenomenon will change or vary in response to variation in some other phenomenon. 55 Explanatory Research Explanatory research seeks to identify the causes and effects of social phenomena and to predict how one phenomenon will change or vary in response to variation in some other phenomenon. Internet researchers adopted explanation as a goal when they began to ask such questions as “Does the Internet increase, decrease, or supplement social capital?” (Wellman, Haase, Witte, & Hampton 2001). Chapter 6 focuses on the meaning of causation and how to identify causal effects with experimental methods; Chapter 7 addresses this issue in relation to survey methods. Example: What effect does Internet use have on social relations? Jeffrey Boase, John B. Horrigan, Barry Wellman, and Lee Rainie (2006), sociologists at the University of Toronto at the time (Boase and Wellman) and researchers at the Pew Internet Project (Horrigan and Rainie), sought to understand how the Internet is affecting community life in general and the maintenance of social ties in particular. For this purpose, they analyzed data from two phone surveys, conducted in 2004 and 2005, of 4,401 Americans. Boase and his coauthors (2006) found that the Internet and e-mail help people maintain dispersed social networks and do not conflict with the maintenance of social ties in the local community involving personal or phone contact. Photo 1.4 Upstream Healthy Living Centre 56 http://www.upstream-uk.com/ 57 Careers and Research 58 Jessica LeBlanc, Research Assistant Jessica LeBlanc majored in sociology at the University of New Hampshire, but she didn’t really know what kind of career it would lead to. Then she took an undergraduate statistics course and found she really enjoyed it. She took additional methods courses—survey research and an individual research project course—and really liked those also. By the time she graduated, LeBlanc knew she wanted a job in social research. She looked online for research positions in marketing, health care, and other areas. She noticed an opening at a university- based research center and thought their work sounded fascinating. As a research assistant, LeBlanc designed survey questions, transcribed focus group audiotapes, programmed web surveys, and managed incoming data. She also conducted interviews, programmed computer-assisted telephone surveys, and helped conduct focus groups. The knowledge that LeBlanc gained in her methods courses about research designs, statistics, question construction, and survey procedures prepared her well for her position. Her advice to aspiring researchers: Pay attention in your first methods class! 59 Evaluation Research Evaluation research examines programs, policies, or other efforts to affect social patterns, whether by government agencies, private nonprofits, or for-profit businesses. Evaluation can include elements of descriptive, exploratory, and explanatory research. The focus of evaluation research on programs, policies, and other conscious efforts to create change raises some issues that are not relevant in other types of research (Lewis-Beck, Bryman, & Liao 2004:337). Chapter 10 reviews the basics of evaluation research. JOURNAL LINK Wi-Fi Use Example: Does a socially oriented intervention improve health and well-being among older people? Colin Greaves and Lou Farbus (2006) evaluated the impact on depression, social isolation, and physical health of a community-based intervention by the Upstream Healthy Living Centre in Devon, England. Upstream provides trained mentors who visit elderly people in their homes frequently to work on creative, exercise, and/or cultural activities ranging from computer activities, painting, and creative writing to Tai Chi, group walks, and book clubs. Activities emphasize social interaction in groups and creative stimulation. Greaves and Farbus conducted qualitative interviews with diverse program participants and some program mentors and administered a quantitative survey to most participants at program entry and then after 6 and 12 months of participation. Both the qualitative and quantitative data provided evidence of improvements in health status and social engagement as a result of program participation. Depression scores improved and perceived social support increased after 12 months, with mixed results on some other measures but many positive comments about program benefits. 60 Quantitative and/or Qualitative Methods Did you notice the difference between the types of data used in the studies about the Internet? The primary data used in the descriptive survey about Facebook use were counts of the number of people who had particular numbers of social ties and particular kinds of social ties, as well as their age, education, and other characteristics (Rainie et al. 2013). These data were numerical, so we say that this study used quantitative methods. In contrast, Keith Hampton and Neeti Gupta (2008) observed Wi-Fi users in public spaces. Because the researchers recorded their actual observations and did not attempt to quantify what they were studying, we say that Hampton and Gupta (2008) used qualitative methods. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods involves more than just the type of data collected. Quantitative methods are most often used when the motives for research are explanation, description, or evaluation. Quantitative researchers are often guided by a positivist philosophy. Positivism asserts that a well-designed test of a specific prediction—for example, the prediction that social ties decrease among those who use the Internet more—can move us closer to understanding actual social processes. Research guided by positivism presumes that our perceptions and understanding of the social world can be distorted by errors like those discussed in this chapter, but scientific methods can help us to see and understand reality more clearly. Exploration is more often the motive for using qualitative methods, although researchers also use these methods for descriptive, explanatory, and evaluative purposes. Qualitative research is often guided by the philosophy of constructivism. Constructivist social scientists believe that social reality is socially constructed and that the goal of social scientists is to understand what meanings people give to reality, not to determine how reality works apart from these constructions. This philosophy rejects the positivist belief that there is a concrete, objective reality that scientific methods help us understand (Lynch & Bogen 1997); instead, constructivists believe that people construct an image of reality based on their own preferences and prejudices and their interactions with others and that this is as true of scientists as it is of everyone else in the social world. Chapters 2 and 3 highlight several other differences between quantitative and qualitative methods, and Chapters 8 and 12 present qualitative methods in much more detail. Important as it is, the distinction between quantitative and qualitative orientations or methods shouldn’t be overemphasized. Social scientists often combine these 61 methods to enrich their research. For example, Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman (2000) used surveys to generate counts of community network usage and other behaviors in Netville, but they also observed social interaction and recorded spoken comments. In this way, qualitative data about social settings can be used to understand patterns in quantitative data better (Campbell & Russo 1999:141). The use of multiple methods to study one research question is called triangulation. The term suggests that a researcher can get a clearer picture of the social reality being studied by viewing it from several different perspectives. Each will have some liabilities in a specific research application, and all can benefit from a combination of one or more other methods (Brewer & Hunter 1989; Sechrest & Sidani 1995). The distinction between quantitative and qualitative data is not always sharp. Qualitative data can be converted to quantitative data, for example, when we count the frequency of particular words or phrases in a text or measure the time elapsed between different observed behaviors. Surveys that collect primarily quantitative data may also include questions asking for written responses, and these responses may be used in a qualitative, textual analysis. Qualitative researchers may test explicit explanations of social phenomena using textual or observational data. We consider a mixed-methods strategy in more detail in Chapter 10. Evaluation research: Research that describes or identifies the impact of social policies and programs. Quantitative methods: Methods such as surveys and experiments that record variation in terms of amounts. Data that are treated as quantitative are either numbers or attributes that can be ordered by magnitude. Qualitative methods: Methods such as participant observation, intensive interviewing, and focus groups that are designed to capture social life as participants experience it rather than in categories predetermined by the researcher. These methods rely on written or spoken words or observations that do not often have a direct numerical interpretation and typically involve exploratory research questions, an orientation to social context and human subjectivity, and the meanings attached by participants to events and to their lives. Positivism: The belief, shared by most scientists, that there is a reality that exists quite apart from our own perception of it, that it can be understood through observation, and that it follows general laws. 62 Conclusions I hope this first chapter has given you an idea of what to expect from the rest of the book. The aim is to introduce you to social research methods by describing what social scientists have learned about the social world as well as how they have learned it. The substance of social science is inevitably more interesting than its methods, but the methods become more interesting when they’re linked to examples from substantive investigations. Understanding the Social World is organized into four sections. The first section on Foundations for Social Research includes the introduction in Chapter 1, and then an overview of the research process in Chapter 2 and an introduction to issues in research ethics and an overview of research proposals in Chapter 3. The second section, Fundamentals of Social Research, presents methods for conceptualization and measurement (Chapter 4), sampling (Chapter 5), and causation (Chapter 6) that must be considered in any social research project. The third section, Social Research Designs, introduces the major methods of data collection used by sociologists: survey research (Chapter 7), qualitative methods (Chapter 8), unobtrusive methods ranging from historical and comparative methods to secondary data analysis (Chapter 9), and evaluation and mixed-methods research (Chapter 10). The last section, Analyzing and Reporting, introduces techniques for analyzing quantitative data with statistics (Chapter 11) and analyzing qualitative data with a variety of techniques (Chapter 12), as well as guidelines for evaluating research reports (Chapter 13). Each chapter ends with several helpful learning tools. Lists of key terms and chapter highlights will help you review the ideas that have been discussed. Chapter questions and practice exercises will help you apply and deepen your knowledge. A “Careers and Research” example may help you envision future job possibilities, and a “Research in the News” vignette in each chapter will tie research methods to current events. The study site for this book on the SAGE website provides interactive exercises and quizzes for reviewing key concepts, as well as research articles to review, websites to visit, data to analyze, and short lectures to hear. Check it out at edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw. Constructivism: Methodology based on questioning belief in an external reality; emphasizes the importance of exploring the way in which different stakeholders in a social setting construct their beliefs. Triangulation: The use of multiple methods to study one research question; also used to mean the 63 use of two or more different measures of the same variable. 64 Key Terms Review key terms with eFlashcards. Constructivism 10 Descriptive research 7 Evaluation research 9 Explanatory research 8 Exploratory research 8 Illogical reasoning 6 Inaccurate observation 4 Overgeneralization 4 Positivism 9 Qualitative methods 9 Quantitative methods 9 Resistance to change 6 Science 4 Selective observation 4 Social science 4 Triangulation 10 65 Highlights Social research differs from the ordinary process of thinking about our experiences by focusing on broader questions that involve people outside our immediate experience and issues about why things happen, and by using systematic research methods to answer those questions. Four common errors in reasoning are (1) selective or inaccurate observation, (2) overgeneralization, (3) illogical reasoning, and (4) resistance to change. These errors result from the complexity of the social world, subjective processes that affect the reasoning of researchers and those they study, researchers’ self-interestedness, and unquestioning acceptance of tradition or of those in positions of authority. Social science is the use of logical, systematic, documented methods to investigate individuals, societies, and social processes, as well as the knowledge produced by these investigations. Social research can be descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, or evaluative—or some combination of these. Quantitative and qualitative methods structure research in different ways and are differentially appropriate for diverse research situations. They may be combined in research projects. Positivism is a research philosophy that emphasizes the goal of understanding the real world; this philosophy guides most quantitative researchers. Constructivism is a research philosophy that emphasizes the importance of exploring and representing the ways in which different stakeholders in a social setting construct their beliefs. Constructivists interact with research subjects to develop a shared perspective on the issue being studied. 66 Chapter Questions Test your understanding of chapter content. Take the practice quiz. The ethical challenges that arise in social research are discussed throughout the book. At the end of each chapter, one of the questions you are asked to consider may be about ethical issues related to that chapter’s focus. This critical topic is introduced formally in Chapter 3, but let’s begin here with a first question for you to ponder: 1. The chapter refers to research on social isolation. What would you do if you were interviewing elderly persons in the community and found that one was very isolated and depressed or even suicidal, apparently as a result of his or her isolation? Do you believe that social researchers have an obligation to take action in a situation like this? What if you discovered a similar problem with a child? What guidelines would you suggest for researchers? 2. Pick a contemporary social issue of interest to you. Describe different approaches to research on this issue that would involve descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, and evaluative approaches. 3. Review the description of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Which approach do you prefer and what is the basis of your preference? Would you prefer to take a mixed-methods approach? Why or why not? 67 Practice Exercises 1. Review the “Letters to the Editor” section of a local newspaper. Which errors in reasoning do you find? What evidence would be needed to correct these errors? 2. Review “Types of Research” from the Interactive Exercises link on the book’s study site. To use these lessons, choose one of the four “Types of Research” exercises from the opening menu. About 10 questions are presented in each version of the lesson. After reading each question, choose one answer from the list presented. The program will evaluate your answers. If an answer is correct, the program will explain why you were right and go on to the next question. If you have made an error, the program will explain the error to you and give you another chance to respond. 3. Scan the articles on the book’s study site for this chapter. Classify the research represented in each article as primarily descriptive, exploratory, explanatory, or evaluative. Describe the evidence for your classification (even if the abstract mentions the type of research, look for other evidence). If more than one type of research is represented in an article, also mention that type. 4. Now read one of the articles in detail and decide whether the approach was quantitative or qualitative (or mixed) and whether the authors were guided primarily by a positivist or a constructivist philosophy. Explain your answer. Researcher Interview Link Online Interviews 68 Student Study Site The Student Study Site, available at edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw, includes useful study materials including eFlashcards, videos, audio resources, journal articles, and encyclopedia articles, many of which are represented by the media links throughout the text. 69 Chapter 2 The Process and Problems of Social Research ©iStockphoto.com/Artist’s TommL 70  Learning Objectives ❖ Name the three characteristics of a good research question ❖ Discuss the role of theory in social research ❖ Demonstrate how to search and review the research literature ❖ Describe three key social research strategies and when they are best used ❖ Name and illustrate the three different longitudinal designs ❖ Define the standards of measurement validity, generalizability, causal validity, and authenticity About 30% of women worldwide who have ever had an intimate partner have experienced intimate partner violence, as have about 23% of those in the United States and other high-income countries (Garcia-Moreno et al. 2013:16-17). As advocates and public officials began to recognize the scope of this problem in the past century, some turned to social researchers for help in identifying effective response strategies. A key concern was whether police should usually arrest men accused of partner abuse when they were called in after an incident, rather than simply issuing a warning, as many police officers were accustomed to doing. In 1981, the Police Foundation and the Minneapolis Police Department began an experiment to determine whether arresting accused spouse abusers on the spot would deter repeat incidents. The study’s results, which were publicized widely, indicated that arrests did have a deterrent effect. Partly as a result, the percentage of urban police departments that made arrest the preferred response to complaints of domestic violence rose from 10% in 1984 to 90% in 1988 (Sherman 1992:14). Researchers in six other cities then conducted similar experiments to determine whether changing the location or other research procedures would result in different outcomes (Sherman 1992; Sherman & Berk 1984). The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, the additional research inspired by it, and the controversies arising from it provide examples for our systematic overview of the social research process. Although the original Minneapolis experiment occurred decades ago, that in itself makes an important point about social research: No single study can be considered to provide the definitive answer to a research question, and every study generates additional questions that require more research. Social research is an ongoing process of testing propositions, refining knowledge, exploring new ideas, adapting to changes, and all the while enriching our understanding of the social world. This chapter shifts from examining why social research is conducted to how it is carried out—the focus of the rest of the book. The chapter considers how questions for social research are developed, how the existing literature about research 71 questions can be located, and how it should be reviewed. It also looks at how research questions can be connected to social theory and then expressed as testable hypotheses (Exhibit 2.1). Finally, the chapter discusses different social research strategies and standards for social research as a prelude to subsequent chapters. Appendices A and B contain more details related to reviewing the literature. SAGE JOURNAL ARTICLE Culture and Theory Exhibit 2.1 Launching a Research Project Get the edge on your studies. edge.sagepub.com/schuttusw Take a quiz to find out what you’ve learned. Review key terms with eFlashcards. Watch videos that enhance chapter content. 72 Social Research Questions Social research begins with a question about the social world that a researcher seeks to answer through the collection and analysis of firsthand, verifiable, empirical data. It is not a question about who did what to whom, but a question about people in groups, about general social processes, or about tendencies in community change such as the following: What distinguishes Internet users from other persons? How has the level of social inequality changed over time? What influences the likelihood of spouse abuse? Researchers may decide to focus on a particular social research question as a result of reading a research article, because of their personal experiences with the issue, or for any of several reasons. Most research projects focus on questions that arose in previous research. For example, Richard A. Berk, Alec Campbell, Ruth Klap, and Bruce Western (1992) concluded an article on four studies of police responses to spouse abuse by suggesting, “Deterrence may be effective for a substantial segment of the offender population.... However, the underlying mechanisms remain obscure” (p. 706). A new study could focus on these mechanisms: What happens to offenders after their arrest that deters some from future abusive acts? Other social research questions may reflect a researcher’s personal experiences—“personal troubles”—as C. Wright Mills (1959) put it. Social researchers may also want to help figure out how to lessen the harmful impact of a social problem. Social research questions should be feasible, socially important, and scientifically relevant (King, Keohane, & Verba 1994). Any study must be possible within the time and resources available, so questions that involve long-term change, a large population, or secretive groups may not be feasible unless substantial funds or special access has been obtained. For research undertakings that are more than a class exercise, the research question should be important to other people and society. A research question meets the criterion of scientific relevance if it focuses on issues that have not been resolved by research already reported in the social science literature. SAGE JOURNAL ARTICLE Domestic Violence Social research question: A question about the social world that is answered through the collection and analysis of firsthand, verifiable, empirical data. 73 Social Research Foundations Once they have formulated a research question, and sometimes even before that question has been settled, social researchers search the literature to find other research focused on the same or related research questions and to determine what can be learned from the methods and findings of these previous studies. Conducting a thorough search of the related research literature is also an essential foundation for evaluating the contribution made by a particular research article or research project. Photo 2.1 Social research questions often arise from the observance of social problems. What social problems have you observed that you would like to know more about? ©iStockphoto.com/ronniechua 74 Searching the Literature The primary goal in searching the literature is to find reports of prior research investigations about the research question of interest. Focus on reports in scholarly journals—refereed journals that publish peer-reviewed articles—because they have been screened for quality through critique by other social scientists before publication. Most often, editors of refereed journals send articles that authors submit to three or more other social scientists for anonymous review. Based on the reviewers’ comments, the journal editor then decides whether to accept or reject the article, or to invite the author to “revise and resubmit.” This process results in the rejection of articles with major flaws and many improvements in most of the rest. You still have to make your own judgment about article quality, since journals vary in the rigor of their review standards, and, of course, different reviewers may be impressed by different types of articles. VIDEO LINK Advice for Researchers Most articles published in academic journals will be available to you online only if you go through the website of your college or university library. The library pays a fee to companies that provide online journals so that you can retrieve this information without paying anything extra yourself. Since no library can afford to pay for every journal, you may still have to order some of the articles you need through interlibrary loan. Of course the web offers much useful material, including research reports from government and other sources, sites that describe social programs, and even indexes of the published research literature. Such material may be very useful in preparing, reviewing, and reporting research, but it is not a substitute for searching academic journals for relevant articles. It can also help to locate reviews of already-published research. Some journals publish articles that review prior research about specific research questions. Such reviews are unlikely to focus on all the specific issues raised by a particular research question, but they can provide a framework for a more focused search of the literature. If you are not familiar with the major concepts, scholars, or research findings pertaining to your research question, you should also consider reading background information in one of the Annual Review volumes available for most disciplines (e.g., the Annual Review of Sociology) and even the relevant entries in 75 an encyclopedia for the discipline, such as the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology or the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. These resources may be available online from your college or university library. Newspaper and magazine articles may raise important issues or summarize social research investigations, but they are not an adequate source for understanding the research literature. A search of the academic journal literature should include the following steps: 1. Specify your research question. Your research question should be neither so broad that hundreds of articles are judged relevant nor so narrow that you miss important literature. “Is informal social control effective?” is probably too broad. “Does informal social control reduce rates of burglary in my town?” is probably too narrow. “Is informal social control more effective than policing in reducing crime rates?” provides about the right level of specificity. 2. Identify appropriate bibliographic databases to search. Sociological Abstracts or SocINDEX may meet many of your needs, but if you are studying a question about social factors in illness, you should also search in Medline, the database for searching the medical literature. You may also want to include a search in the online Psychological Abstracts database, PsycINFO, or the version that also contains the full text of articles, PsycARTICLES. Search Criminal Justice Abstracts if your topic is in the area of criminology or criminal justice, or EconLit, if your topic might be addressed in the economic literature. Some combined indexes like Academic Search Complete may be most useful for searches that should span multiple disciplines. To find articles that refer to a previous publication, such as Sherman and Berk’s study of the police response to domestic violence, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) will be helpful. SSCI has a unique “citation searching” feature that allows you to look up articles or books and find other articles that have cited these sources. 3. Create a tentative list of search terms. List the parts and subparts of your research question and any related issues that you think are important: “informal social control,” “policing,” “influences on crime rates,” and perhaps “community cohesion and crime.” List the authors of relevant studies. Specify the most important journals that deal with your topic. 4. Narrow your search. The sheer number of references you find can be a problem. For example, searching for “social capital” in May 2015 resulted in 6,754 citations in SocINDEX (with Full Text). Depending on the database you are working with and the purposes of your search, you may want to limit your 76  search to English-language publications, to journal articles rather than conference papers or dissertations (both of which are more difficult to acquire), and to materials published in recent years. If your search yields too many citations, try specifying the search terms more precisely (e.g., “neighborhood social capital”). If you have not found much literature, try using more general or multiple terms (e.g., “social relations” OR “social ties”). Whatever terms you search first, don’t consider your search complete until you have tried several different approaches and have seen how many articles you find. Photo 2.2 shows what Sherman and Harris might have entered on their computer if they searched SocINDEX to find research on “domestic violence” and “police response.” 5. Check the results. Read the titles and abstracts you have found and identify the articles that appear to be most relevant. If possible, click on these article titles and generate a list of their references. See if you find more articles that are relevant to your research question but that you have missed so far. You will be surprised (I always am) at how many important articles your initial online search missed. 6. Locate the articles. Whatever database you use, the next step after finding your references is to obtain the articles themselves. You will probably find the full text of many articles available online, but this will be determined by what journals your library subscribes to and the period for which it pays for online access. The most recent issues of some journals may not be available online. If an article that appears to be important for your topic isn’t available from your own library, or online, you may be able to request a copy online through your library site or by asking a member of the library staff. Your library may also have the print version. Photo 2.2 When starting a search in sociological abstracts, multiple key words can be used to narrow search results. Thinking back to the social problem you identified at the beginning of the chapter, what key words could you use to find more information? Ebs