Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Social Science Methods
A Comparison of Social Science Methodologies
Unlike the physical sciences, social science is intrinsically bound up in the complexities of human nature and interpersonal relationships. Because these can be defined and understood in a variety of different and sometimes conflicting ways, social science is subject to a degree of interpretation and disagreement that is not normally present in the other sciences. As a result of differing assumptions about the nature of human interaction and the purpose of a human science, three main methodologies have developed in social science: positivist, interpretive, and critical. Of these, the critical approach is the most complex, and is best understood in comparison to the other two.
The least complex and most intuitively grasped of the three approaches is positivism. Positivist social science shares fundamental attributes with the physical sciences, and is in line with what most people think of as "science"...
In order to treat human interaction as a system subject to immutable laws, positivists must consider human relations as relatively static and homogenous.
While critical social science agrees that there is a knowable science underlying human behavior, it rejects the positivist attitude that social interaction is essentially consistent and unchanging. This makes the critical approach's search for knowledge considerably more difficult than the positivist's. The critical attitude that human behavior is always evolving and adjusting and that most of the surface information that can be gathered from observation is illusory and misleading means that establishing the underlying system of laws in critical social science is far more complicated than just gathering and analyzing statistics. The critical theorist works to uncover the cultural assumptions and myths that influence human interaction…
8). The questionnaires used in answering the first two questions are examples of these research methods. It is also extremely unlikely that the findings of any such study would ever be replicable, which is one of the hallmarks fo the scientific method in the hard sciences (Perry & Perry 2008). As society is in a constant state of change, the results found in one study (which would take several months
Methods Preferring to use a quantitative approach to provide the business community with numerical data it can use to transform organizational practices and increase employee retention, I will be using a survey as the primary instrument of data collection. Pennsylvania State University (2006) defines a survey as “a research method for collecting information from a selected group of people using standardized questionnaires or interviews,” (p. 1). While the central component of
Social Science Theory & Methods MAIN STUDY QUESTION: What role does digital deception play in the establishment of trust, confidence and authenticity regarding the use of graphics and images in the online media sources we use? The world is getting more and more comfortable with the integration of technology into our lives. While we often pay attention to this in the way that we use certain types of equipment or access portals
Social psychology is a very broad field that takes in the many varieties of group dynamics, perceptions and interactions. Its origins date back to the late-19th Century, but it really became a major field during and after the Second World War, in order to explain phenomena like aggression, obedience, stereotypes, mass propaganda, conformity, and attribution of positive or negative characteristics to other groups. Among the most famous social psychological studies
Social Studies Course Design Title of Lesson: Creation Myths From Around the World Core Subjects: Social Studies Secondary Subjects: Language Arts, Geography Grade Levels: 5,6,7,8 (Varied by content depth and assessment) Course Justification/Theory: One very interesting aspect of the human experience is the manner in which certain themes appear again and again over time, in literature, religion, mythology, and culture -- regardless of the geographic location, the economic status, and the time period. Perhaps it
Social Media Affecting Online Dating Social Media Working thesis statement: Social media is affecting the online dating in a negative manner. Ali, A.I., & Wibowo, K. (2011). Online Dating Services - Chronology and Key Features Comparison with Traditional Dating. Competition Forum, 9(2), 481+. Retrieved from http://www.questia.com/read/1P3-2548633921/online-dating-services-chronology-and-key-features In this article, the authors have given their perspectives on online dating services and have also provided a comparison with the traditional dating services. In the beginning, an