Professor Pamela Oliver Department of Sociology

SOCIOLOGY 357
METHODS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH

9:30 - 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, Thursday 6101 Social Science
InstructorPamela Oliver 2452 Social Science 262-6829
Office Hours: 11-11:30 Tu, Thur and 1:00 - 2:00 Thurs or by appointment. Additional time will be announced when needed. I will maintain an online appointment scheduling system available at www.ssc.wisc.edu/offhours/signup.html . I am readily available by email: Oliver@ssc.wisc.edu This is an excellent way to get a quick question answered or to tell me about a problem. However, I get dozens of emails daily, and will not be able to engage in lengthy email discussions or debates with you. You are also welcome to call me at home at 829-3692, especially for those "quick questions" that can be answered in 2 minutes or if there is some kind of problem. Home calls are OK 7:00 am to 9 PM. Home life is not always interruptible; please be prepared to leave a name and number if I am not available.

Sociology 357 is a required course for sociology majors which teaches you the logic of research design and the basics of data collection. It is not a statistics course and assumes no background in methods. You will do a small amount of statistics in your projects, which will be easier if you have already had elementary statistics, but you can learn what you need to know for these projects in this course without much difficulty. My goals in teaching you methods are:

1. To spark your interest in sociology; to encourage you to see sociology as a research enterprise, as a process of learning about our social world.
2. To introduce you to the elements of research design, with a special emphasis on measurement (operationalization) and assessing relations between variables.
3. To teach you how to read a research report with a critical eye, so that you can know how to tell how trustworthy its information is.
4. To have you learn first hand about the problems of research by trying out several data collection methods on a small scale.
5. To show you that research is a personal, human activity involving both your brain and your emotions, combining brilliant insights with spectacular failures, and invoking both dramatic visions and inescapable practical limitations.

Books and Supplies

You will need to buy a Workbook packet which will be sold at the Social Science Copy Center on the 6th floor for a few dollars. This includes detailed instructions and examples for all methods projects, additional articles, and other important materials. Announcement will be made in class when the packet is ready for purchase.

The following books have been ordered at University Bookstore.

Royce Singleton, Jr. and others, Approaches to Social Research. Third Edition. A text in research methods. It is relatively sophisticated and explains the logic and significance of many important methodological practices.

Patricia Golden. The Research Experience. A collection of sociological research reports coupled with behind-the-scenes discussions of what really happened in the research. These articles are getting very old and dated, but they are still excellent learning tools, and I hope you will bear with them, because there is so far nothing available to replace them.

Paul C. Stern and Linda Kalof. Evaluating Social Science Research. Second Edition. An excellent self-teaching guide to reading research reports. Also provides another treatment of basic methods concepts.

You will also need paper or cards in the 3x5" size. This is the smallest size note card, and is also a standard size note pad. You will need about 50 of these for a semester. You may also make them yourself, or recycle cards that have been written on one side.

Requirements and Grading

The largest share of your grade is based on three major data collection projects and an article analysis. The data collection projects are a structured field observation, a field experiment, and a simple questionnaire; these are worth 20% each. A detailed analysis of a professional research article is your "final" in this class and is worth 20%. A sampling exercise is worth 4%. There will be frequent homework assignments which will be worth a total of 14%. The last 2% is based on giving daily feedback on the class sessions.

The exercises in this class are not "real" research. As you will learn, real research is much too time consuming to fit into a course. You will be doing scaled-down projects that teach you important lessons about research without taking so much time. Everything you do in this class is solely for your education. You are not part of anybody's research project.

Improving.

This is a skills course, and if you work hard enough you can learn to do something you didn't get right the first time. You may redo any exercise or article analysis in an attempt to improve your work. Redoing an exercise means starting completely over and doing all new work; it is not just correcting the mistakes on the first exercise. You must do better work to get a better grade: this is not extra credit and effort does not count. If you do more than one version of an assignment, your best grade will count. You must allow a week for the grading of any assignment. You must submit the old (graded) exercise and any grade sheets when you submit new work for regrading. I suggest that you speak with me to clarify these instructions before redoing any exercise.

Homework.

Homework is counted but not graded; if you do it you get credit. If you do 90% or more of the homework, you will receive an A; if you do 50% or less, you will receive an F; totals between these extremes will receive intermediate grades. HOMEWORK MUST BE SUBMITTED ON TIME TO RECEIVE FULL CREDIT. Homework submitted by the next class session will be given half credit; after that it will not be accepted at all. Missing class is not an excuse for late homework. The only exception is illness or other circumstances beyond your control (or a religious holiday), which you should explain in writing when you submit the late homework.

The homework has two purposes. First, there are some important topics which are not "tested" in the graded exercises. Since there are no tests, the homework is the only way to expose you to these issues. Secondly, the homework gives you practice on major skills which are directly relevant to the graded exercises, particularly the article analysis. It is very important that you have read the articles we will discuss before you come to class, otherwise you will not be able to follow or benefit from the instruction in class. It is not necessary for you to write a lot: half a page is usually plenty. But you hurt your own ability to learn the course material if you "cheat" on the homework by copying someone else's without doing the reading. It is not necessary that you have studied the reading enough to master it before class. All you need to do is to have read it over so that when I start dissecting the methods in an article, you can follow what I am talking about. The written questions are a "warm up" to get you thinking. If you cannot figure out the answer to a particular question after reading an article, just say so and, if possible, say what your best guess is. You will still get credit.

Although homework is rarely assigned from it, the Singleton text contains a great deal of material which you are required to know for the graded exercises. Notations on the exercises indicate which chapters of the reading are most relevant.

Daily Reactions

At the end of each class, submit on a 3x5 card your name, the date, and at least one sentence of reaction to that day's class, indicating what you learned, or something you liked or did not like, found interesting or controversial, found clear or too simplistic, or found confusing and in need of further (or better) explanation; you may also submit comments on the course in general. You can submit a "reaction" only if you were actually in class. You cannot "make up" a reaction, but tell me (in writing) if you are forced to miss several classes due to illness or other problem, and I will make an appropriate adjustment. Grading system will be the same as for homework. I read these after each class, but do not normally return them or comment on them.

Procedural Matters

PLEASE BRING YOUR BOOK TO CLASS. Especially bring the workbook when an exercise is on the agenda, and the Golden reader when discussion of an article is on the agenda. It is also helpful to bring the methods text when it is the assigned reading of the day.
I will record attendance. You are responsible for obtaining information you miss if you are absent. We believe it is inappropriate to use office hours (or telephone calls) to compensate for instruction you missed more or less by choice, such as napping, staying warm, studying for other classes, or vacationing. But if you are attending regularly and making the effort to learn (or if your absence is for reasons beyond your control), we will do all that we can to help you.
YOUR FINAL ARTICLE ANALYSIS IS DUE AT SUMMARY PERIOD, i.e. by Wednesday, December 20 at 2 p.m. This is also the last time for submitting any re-done exercises. EARLY PAPERS WILL BE GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED AND HOPEFULLY GRADED EARLY. Please note: Instructors MUST turn in grade sheets within 96 hours after the summary period. No matter how justified your reasons, I cannot hold up a whole class's grade sheet for one person. The deadline is really the deadline. If you wish to have your article analysis returned to you via a box outside my door, please put a readily visible note to this effect on your paper.

Methods: Schedule of Topics and Readings

HOMEWORK DUE DATES GIVEN IN THE SYLLABUS ARE CORRECT, even if I do not remind you in class, unless a WRITTEN note on the blackboard or a WRITTEN schedule change sheet alters them.
S refers to readings in the methods text by Singleton et al. For example, S 7 refers to all of chapter 7; S, pp 100-105 means pages 100-105 only. Stern 1 means all of chapter 1 of Stern.
G refers to readings in the Golden reader. G, pp 130-136 refers to pages 130-136; G 251 refers to the article beginning on page 251. Always read both the research report on the personal journal which follows it. There is a lot of helpful material in the personal journals for your exercises; do not neglect them.
NOTE: A * MEANS THERE IS SOMETHING DUE THAT DAY.

Please remember that nothing is perfect, even after proofreading, and if something does not make sense, it is most likely an error. Errors may lead to *'s in the wrong places, to garbled dates, or to wrong page or chapter numbers. Look at the surrounding text if something seems wrong, or ask if you cannot figure it out.

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING QUALITATIVE ARTICLES

1. Lightly skim to see generally what the article is about.
2. Read methods sections or appendices first, to see what the author actually did. (In the Golden reader, read the personal journals.) Where and how did the author observe? For how long? What role did s/he play in the setting? To whom did s/he talk?
3. Identify the important findings (things that you or the author think are significant) and the nature of the evidence supporting them. For each, read what the author says and think carefully about what you know about how the research was done, so you can answer the question: exactly what is the evidence for this finding?
   
1. Sometimes the evidence is the author's own direct observation. In this case, here are questions to help you evaluate the observation: Was the author actually in a position to see this behavior? Is there evidence that this observation was a usual or normal part of the situation, rather than an oddity the author just happened to see (or perhaps caused by her or his own presence?) How many times was this observed? Repeatedly, or just once? Were the circumstances of the different times this was seen different enough to support the idea that this is a general or common phenomenon? (Or is the author's point that this rare event illuminated some pattern or relationship that usually remained hidden?)
   
2. Sometimes the evidence is an informant's report (i.e. somebody told the author this). Here are questions to help you evaluate informant reports. Was this from a formal interview, one or more extended informal conversations, or just a casual remark? How many different people were informants on this point? Are the informants different enough from each other that they should be able to provide different perspectives that would help the author evaluate the truth of the finding? Are informants talking about themselves, about somebody else, or about events which have happened? What is the source of the informants' information? Could the informants be expected to have accurate information about this? Would the informants have any reason to distort the report, either through overt lying or through their own selective perception and misunderstanding?
   
3. Keep in mind that many qualitative studies combine interviews and observation, or may also use other kinds of evidence.
4. Once you know the factual basis for a finding, ask whether the author's interpretation of the finding's larger theoretical or substantive meaning seems correct. Sometimes qualitative researchers report the "facts" correctly but misunderstand what they mean in their social context. Usually (but not always), the better the evidence for a finding, the more likely it is that the author also understands how to interpret it. Evaluating an interpretation is often more subjective, because the issue partly is what your criterion is: are you concerned about a correct understanding of people's subjective understanding of their experiences, or about showing how their experiences are similar at a more abstract level to others' experiences? One way to check interpretations of subjective experiences is to ask informants if one's interpretations are correct. The ideal response is, "I never thought of it that way, but you are right." As a reader, you bring your own experiences and knowledge to bear to ask yourself whether you agree with the author's intepretations. Of course, the more foreign the subjects of the research are to your own experience, the harder it is for you to use your experiences as a basis of evaluation and the more you have to trust the author. If you have to trust the author, the best thing to look for is usually evidence that the author likes and respects the subjects. To evaluate a more abstract theoretical interpretation, you ask whether all the behavioral facts in the report are consistent with that interpretation, and whether it fits with what has been learned about other people in other circumstances.
   

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Questions or Comments? Email Oliver -at- ssc -dot- wisc -dot- edu. Last updated December 25, 2004 © University of Wisconsin.