[Speaker: Andrew Aleman] Hello friends! This is your instructor Andrew Aleman and today we're going to be going over Chapter Two Sociological Research. First off, we're going to discuss terms that we as researchers use. The first term is population. Population is the people who are the focus of your study The second term is sample. A sample is a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. For example, when I was getting my masters at the University of Chicago, my population was Orange County Republicans. But, there's actually a lot of Republicans that live in Orange County. So knowing that I could not talk to every single Republican that lives in Orange County, I got a sample. So, I talked to a certain number of Republicans that live in Orange County, and this sample represents the larger population. Respondents are people or a person who is a part of the sample. One of my interviewees names was Jocelyn, and Jocelyn would be a respondent. Then we have quantitative data. Quantitative data is numerical data. So when you hear quantitative data think numbers. Qualitative data is data that is non-numerical qualitative data. Specifically, is data that deals with words. The next term is reliability. Reliability is a measure of a study's consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced. Therefore, when you are doing research you must spell out every step of the process of your research. Showing every step of how you go about getting your data, that increases the reliability of your study. The last term is validity. Validity is the degree to which a sociological measure reflects the topic of study. Next we're going to be going over different types of methodologies that we as sociologists use to extract our data. The methodology that we are going to be going over is surveys. Surveys collect data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions often in the form of a questionnaire. As it says on the slide a survey is the easiest way to collect information from a large number of respondents. The benefit of a survey is that a survey is a great way to capture big trends for a specific population. For instance, some research projects get their surveys from over a thousand respondents. After the completion of the survey, it is the researchers responsibility to conduct a statistical analysis and create the results from what the survey produced. Although, surveys are not great for capturing how people behave in social situations, if you need a large number of respondents a survey would be your best option. Next methodology we will be discussing is an interview. An interview is a one-on-one conversation with a researcher and a participant the interview provides a qualitative in depth understanding on the topic of study. Notice how I said qualitative. An interview is supposed to give you information that goes beyond what a survey can provide an interview provides an in-depth why for a person's reason for filling a certain type of way in an interview you want to guide the person to give you as much information as they're willing to give. One important tip if you are giving an interview is if you are the person giving the interview, you want to be talking the least and you want the respondent talking the most and talking very freely. If they are talking a lot, you know the interview is going well. If you're talking more or equal to that of the respondent, the interview is not going well. Qualitative interviews generally have five steps. The first step is creating your questions. You want to create your questions in a simple way, where the respondent understands the question clearly and is able to answer. The second step is finding respondents. You need to find respondents that will serve as your sample for the population that you are studying. The third step is doing the interview. The fourth step is transcribing. Transcribing is typing out every word that is said in that interview. This is a very tedious and time-consuming process, and the last step is called coding. Coding is how you look at the transcription and you make a coded process about certain themes that stick out. Put simply, coding is how you find the major themes that have stuck out in all your interviews. One of the benefits about being a sociologist is that our world when you step outside your house or even inside your house that social interaction can be an example of a study that we Sociologists might conduct. Therefore our world is our laboratory. Specifically, field research refers to the gathering of primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. This means that the researcher immerses themselves in that environment and collects the data from there. One type of field research is participant observation. In participant observation, the researcher joins the people in their environment and participates in their daily activity. This gives you a glance at an insider's perspective. The key with participant observation is that the researcher attempts to fit into that environment to be perceived as normal. If the respondents in that environment perceives the researcher as normal, the interaction in that environment will not be altered. Therefore, the researcher will collect very good data. An example, of participant observation is our Arlee Russell Hochschild, "Book Strangers in their Own Land." In this book, Hochschild attempts to collect data from Republicans that reside in the state of Louisiana and Hochschild participates in various political events that are put on by Republicans and that's how she gets her data. So Hochilds would attend political rallies or she would sit at the table with family with members of a family and talk politics with them and attempt to understand why they perceive their world in their specific lens that is applicable to their political party. The next type of field research is ethnography. Ethnography is an extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Ethnographies involve objective observation of an entire community. The ethnographer commits to spending an ample amount of time with the person or the community to document a detailed aspect of their lives. So here's the key difference between ethnography and participant observation. In participant observation, the researcher is being an active participant in that environment. The researcher is doing what the others do. In ethnography, this is when the researcher is present in that environment but they are moreso sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying the show, and documenting everything that's happening. So in ethnography, the researcher is observing, actively observing, and taking notes on what is going on in that environment. When I was at UCLA, I was in the Honors Sociology Program, and in the Honors Sociology Program you had to conduct your own study and for my study I looked into how people become MDMA users in rave culture. So for me, ethnography was the method that I used to collect my data. Meaning that I would go and attend raves and sit back and relax and watch the show and by being a member of that environment I was able to extract my data. So, I did extended observation at various raves where I was able to observe the cultural values in the specific setting of a rave and I gotta tell you I had a great time doing it. It was so much fun. The last type of method we're gonna talk about here is the case study. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event situation or an individual. In chapter 2 section 3 your book, talks about ethics. Ethics are formal guidelines of principle and ethics that are used in the discipline. So here is my brief summary of how you know you're being ethical as a researcher. It comes down to two rules. Rule number one the human subject is the most important thing. As a researcher, no matter what you have to remember you're dealing with humans and humans have emotions, humans have feelings, and if you mess up at any particular point of your study you can affect that individual. Therefore, as a researcher you must above all care about the human people that are participating in your study. Secondly, the second rule is if you can sleep at night after what you're doing that's ethical. I know that might sound crazy but think about it this way we all operate on a similar moral conscious where we all think very similar on what is good and what is bad. So think about this if you're presented with a situation and you don't know if it's ethical if you can sleep at night knowing what you did then it's ethical. Alright that's all I have for today I appreciate you taking the time to watch this and I hope you learned a little something from watching this lecture Thank you!