The Basics of Social Research 2e - IT Division - Website ：社会研究-分-网站基础知识.ppt

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * An Introductionto Inquiry Chapter Outline Looking for Reality The Foundations of Social Science Some Dialectics of Social Research The Ethics of Social Research How We Know What We Know Direct Experience and Observation Personal Inquiry Tradition Authority Looking for Reality Our attempts to learn about the world are only partly linked to direct, personal inquiry or experience. A larger part comes from agreed-on knowledge that others give us, things “everyone knows.” This agreement reality both assists and hinders our attempts to find out for ourselves. Sources of Secondhand Knowledge Both provide a starting point for inquiry, but can lead us to start at the wrong point and push us in the wrong direction. Tradition Authority Science and Inquiry Epistemology is the science of knowing. Methodology (a subfield of epistemology) might be called the science of finding out. Ordinary Human Inquiry Humans recognize that future circumstances are caused by present ones. Humans learn that patterns of cause and effect are probabilistic in nature. Humans aim to answer “what” and “why” questions, and pursue these goals by observing and figuring out. Inquiry: Errors and Solutions Inaccurate observations Measurement devices add precision. Overgeneralization Repeat a study to make sure the same results are produced each time. Inquiry: Errors and Solutions Selective observation Make an effort to find cases that do not fit the general pattern. Illogical Reasoning Use systems of logic explicitly. Foundations of Social Science The foundations of social science are logic and observation. A scientific understanding of the world must make sense and correspond to what we observe. Both are essential to science and relate to the three major aspects of social scientific enterprise: theory, data collection, and data analysis. Foundations of Social Science Theory - Systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of lif