Deck 2: E: Sociological Investigation

Question 1

Your friend has just given you an article to read that claims that AIDS was brought to Earth by aliens from another planet.Using the knowledge gained in Chapter 2 of the text on sociological investigation,how might you go about beginning the process of critiquing this article? Explain in as much detail as possible.

Answer 1

no answer

Question 2

None of the major methods of sociological research-experiment,survey,participant observation,and secondary research-is better than any other in an absolute sense,but each is suitable for addressing a certain type of question or situation.Explain why this is true,and provide illustrations along with your arguments.

Answer 2

no answer

Question 3

Outline the ten steps in the process of carrying out sociological investigation.You may use the format presented in the text;that is,what specific questions must be answered as a researcher moves along?

Answer 3

no answer

Question 4

What makes science a special "way of knowing"? What are important traits of scientific sociology? How does interpretive sociology differ from scientific sociology?

Question 5

How and why is gender important in research? What are some of the problems in research that involve gender? How about race and ethnicity? How should a research take account of race and ethnicity when planning research?

Question 6

How does critical sociology differ from scientific sociology? What are the differences in terms of the basic image of society as well as the goals of research?

Question 7

Why is it necessary for researchers to understand a good deal about the way of life of the people they are studying? What problems could arise if,say,a researcher started research on the Amish,Aboriginal Peoples,or some distinctive other category of people and had no understanding of their way of life?

Question 8

How does inductive logical thought differ from deductive logical thought? How can a researcher benefit from using both kinds of thinking?