YouTube Transcript:
Scientific Method

believe it or not we live and breathe
sociology every day we interact in
groups on a daily basis and we depend on
each other for socialization because of
this we might take sociology for granted
we might not even know that we create
and recreate our social World daily
isn't sociology just common sense well
not really Common Sense depends on our
own observations and life experiences
but those observations and experien Es
are often very different from someone
say who lives in a different part of the
country or world not everyone's
experiences are the same people don't
behave the way they are just because
that's who they are we are heavily
influenced by Society sociology applies
the scientific method and aims to
understand how groups of people may
experience life and be affected by
values beliefs behaviors and even events
and the way Society is struct Ed
applying a scientific analysis helps us
begin to understand a large socially
complex picture so what is the
scientific method let's break it down
into six steps that will give us a
greater understanding of how the
discipline of sociology is different
than Common Sense the first step in the
scientific method is to ask a question
really you can either ask a question
Define a problem or Define an area of
Interest being very specific and narrow
is important in this step asking a
question such as what makes a culture
rich is too vague because the word Rich
can be defined in a number of different
ways do we mean rich as in monetary
wealth or do we mean rich as in living
fulfilling lives or maybe we mean the
material products a culture produces and
their value to society the more specific
you are the better chance there is to
have a valid study or a study that
measures what it is meant to
measure next you need to research
existing sources
this step is otherwise known as a
literature review researching existing
studies helps a researcher understand
their own topic better and to build a
study that would add to the research
already conducted one thing you want to
make sure that you absolutely do not do
is to create a study that has already
been done or to plagiarize previous work
after this step you formulate a
hypothesis you may have already heard a
hypothesis defined as an educated guess
while this is true there's a bit more to
a hypothesis a hypothesis makes a
correlation between two variables one
variable tends to predict how another
variable will change these two variables
are referred to as the independent and
dependent variables the independent
variable is the cause of the change the
dependent variable is the effect or the
thing that is changed in other words the
dependent variable depends on the
independent variable for its results if
we are studying gender and want to know
know about how people in the workplace
are treated based on identifying as male
or female identifying as male or female
is the independent variable and how they
are treated is the dependent
variable the fourth step is to design
and conduct a study there are many
different types of studies you can
conduct including surveys field research
engaging in participant observation or
in ethnography you can conduct an
analysis of a single event or a person
through a case study does design an
experiment or review existing research
each of these methods are a distinct
approach serve a specific purpose and
are discussed in depth in our text the
type of information you yield from each
study is very different for example
surveys are great for Gathering
demographic information on a particular
culture such as how many in that
population identify as male or female
but would not be good for understanding
the ways that people are treated
differently in the workplace BAS Bas on
identifying as male or
female after you design and conduct a
study you draw conclusions the type of
hypothesis you create and the type of
study you conduct will determine the
study's conclusions it is important to
note that in this step and throughout
the study remaining objective is an
important role of any
researcher a researcher must let the
study speak for itself and not
manipulate the findings to say what he
or she thought the conclusions would be
or what they want them to be
last you report results reporting
results adds to the body of research and
creates an informed Society if the study
was funded by outside sources those
sources need to be included in the
information once again ethics and
objectivity are important as conclusions
should not be biased by the group or
organization that funded the study by
reporting results researchers are held
responsible for the methodology and
findings so now that you know about the
scientific research process what is one
current social topic or issue that can
be better understood by applying the
scientific
method discuss one topic and two
different research designs that could be
applied to that topic how would the
findings be different based on the
design and other than objectivity what
are other ethical issues that
researchers face