Lecture Notes for Social Science 1

Lecture notes for Introductory Lecture (Historical Development of Social Sciences, first part)

Download the notes here Development of the social sciences

For a more detailed treatment of the topic it is recommended that you read Chapter 1 of

Hunt EF and Colander DC (2002). Social Science: An Introduction to the Study of Society. 11^th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

This and a newer version (2004) is available at the reserve section of the library.

Soc. Sci. 199.1 (Lecture notes)

Please note that, for your proposal write-up, you need to cite sources properly, especially those relating to the data gathering process (sampling formula and so on). You are therefore advised to check the sources provided in the course outline for specifics.

Below are the remaining lecture slides for your reference

 

11. Methods

 

12. Data Gathering

13. Pretest/Pilot Test

Lecture Notes (Soc. Sci. 199.1)

10. Research Design

Lecture Notes (Soc. Sci. 199.1)

9. Concept Mapping

Notes for Formulating the Research Problem

Check the PDF copy of the slides for reference below. Review the slides to improve your outputs but you also need to read the texts listed in the course outline.

6. Formulating the Research Problem

 

Lecture Slides for 199.1

Check the lecture notes for reference below. Review the slides to improve your outputs but you also need to read the texts listed in the course outline.

1. Stages of the Research Process

2. Formulating a Research Question

3. Generating the Hypothesis

4. Identifying the Variables

5. Choosing a Research Topic

Chapter II Outline (Soc. Sci. 199.2)

Below is the outline for your Chapter II submission. Do note that this is simply a review of what we discussed in 199.1. I just posted this to update you. Some submission do not seem to follow this outline.

Generally your chapter II will be composed of three parts, research design, methods, and data analysis.

I. Research Design Stage

• Formulating the research question/overview of the research question/recap/ presentation of hypothesis
• Operationalization, this needs to be very specific, you actual site, respondents, and so on
• Who do we study? Unit of analysis? why this unit of analysis
• Selecting research design, comparative, survey? explain why this design is more likely to help you gather data and answer the question you have set for the study  compared to other possible designs.

II. Data gathering stage

• Overview- what was done, where and how, observation of research ethics
• Primary data collection,
• Secondary data collection
• what will you gather and how this set of data help provide information to answer your question

III. Data analysis

• How will you conclude about the question by interpreting the data.
• explain your formula, if you have any
• how will you say that yes the relationship of the variables is as predicted in your design.

Data Gathering and Research Ethics Soc. Sci. 199.1 Lecture notes

Data Gathering

Primary Data Collection Methods

1. surveys- using standardized questionnaires, can either be self-administered or administered by the interviewers, randon or non-random

2. In-depth interviews with purposely drawn respondents often referred to as key-informants. Interview can either be structured, with the investigator closely adhering to a set of questions, or unstructured wherein an investigator freely follows up points raised by the informant.

3. Focus group discussion- aimed at soliciting the individuals’ views, feelings or opinions about particular topics. Participants must be familiar or interested with the topic.

4. Participant Observation, systematically observes people and their actions while taking part in their activities.- used by anthropologists in studying a community or society. The detailed recording of and description of a community/society is called ethnography

5. Projective methods-respondents are given stimuli with which to respond. Their reaction is considered as a projection of their values, needs and or attitudes.

6. Content/textual analysis- examination of any text or communication (news paper/ magazine items, films, photographs, poems, music, plays, paintings, website) for the purpose of describing its attributes and understanding its meaning.

Secondary Date Collection Methods

1. Analysis of existing statistics- investigator uses and analyzes official statistics from governmental and non-governmental sources

2. review of archival records or documents- historical research. Ex. Personal diaries, books, journals, newspaper accounts, letters and literary pieces

Research Ethics

Ethics and Political research

refers to

1. The conduct of the research
2. use of research result

Ethical question-not what is expedient and efficient but what is right or wrong.

Five basic principles

1. Beneficence or the avoidance of harm; researchers ought to seek to do good rather than cause harm

2. Veracity or the avoidance of deception; they ought to tell the truth and keep promises
-report results fully and truthfully.

3. Privacy or autonomy; individuals have the right to limit access to information about themselves
-they may feel that they are treated as objects of measurement without respect to their individual values and sense of privacy

4. Confidentiality; closely related to the notion of privacy, the right to control the use of information about oneself.

5. Consent: the notion of informed consent, often recommended as an operational principle for the conduct of research.

Comparative Study Soc. Sci. 199.1 Lecture Notes

Comparative Study

Overview

Why compare? Virtually all subfields in political science uses comparative approach, to a certain extent a. to contextualise knowledge b. to improve classification c. to formulate and test hypothesis d. make predictions

The goal is to reason out without the use of proper names, in short instead of comparing Philippines and Malaysia, you compare presidential and parliamentary systems, instead of Ramos vs. Mahathir you have executive comparison, or power of the president vs. prime minister

You are a comparativist if 1. You study foreign countries 2. You study two or more cases 3. You use comparative research design

Entail linking several case studies together in an attempt to test our assumptions of how various political phenomena relate to each other.

Can be accomplished with or without statistical analysis; data from several case studies become the bank from which one can generate conclusion

Types of comparative approaches

most similar approach

-DV what we want to explain; IV- what we suspect to be the influence towards DB; spurious or intervening variables (others, can also be IV or DV but they compete rather than are part of the theory we use)

a. ignore the DV for a while in designing your research. Focus on IV and spurious variables
b. most similar comparative design focus on cases that are as different as possible in IV but as similar as possible in spurious variables (executive performance and the economy –compare industrial democracies but some are presidential others are parliamentary)

-the logic here is an variance in the DV cannot be explained by the many similarities in terms of the spurious variables therefore the focus of explanation should be on the IV.

Most different approach

most different research design focus on cases that are as similar as possible in terms of IV but as different as possible in terms of spurious variables (economic policy-making power of the president-compare industrial with developing country)

How many cases to compare?
Depend on the research question
Depend on your resources
There are small N and Large N comparison ex. Comparing Iloilo and Negroes Oriental; Iloilo City-Bacolod City, or all provinces and all cities in the country.

Limits of Comparative approach

Small N comparison has limited explanatory power
Traveling variable issue “variables are not consistent,” changes from one place to another.

Check list for using Comparative Approach

1. what is you research question? (IV, DV and spurious variables)
2. Case Selection (list all/several cases; should not be selected based on DV; typical or not typical cases?)
3. What is appropriate based on your selection of cases? Most similar or most different approach?

Longitudinal Study Soc. Sci. 199.1

Longitudinal Study

Overview
-to understand political phenomena over a period of time
-certain political phenomenon can only be observed is seen in a longer period of time, for example the relationship between rise and fall of defense spending and economic growth
-also employed to look into associational are causal relationships
-collect data on the variables of interests over time to note evidence of possible co-variation or causal linkages between x and y variables in the hypothesis
-data is collected from the respondents in more than one occasion

Types of Longitudinal Designs

-trend-

observe the characteristic of the same population over time
-the same sample but can be different persons,
for example survey on trust rating of political institutions, popularity of the president and so on, start of term, middle of term, immediately before the end of term

-cohort study

- draw samples from the same population each time even though different members may be included
-for example a college educated population are asked about their political affiliation and then you want to know if it changes (increase/decrease) so you sample college educated member of the population right after graduation in 2009, then you return to them (2009 grads) three to five years in their job and so on

panel studies-

use the same sample at different times
-So you observe then when they are still on first year, then before graduation, then after few years of working and still single, then married life. Some study can last up to the time of the death of participants. (ex. Harvard Happiness Study)

Problems
-very costly
-repeated interviews may condition their responses
-representativeness may be affected by virtue of making them members of the study
-attrition can affect validity