Chapter 2 - Sociological Investigation

Androcentricity

Drawing conclusions about all of humanity based on research using only males as subjects is the problem called..

Replication

Imagine that you are repeating research done by someone else in order to assess its accuracy. You are doing what?

Consistency in measurement

In the process of measurement, reliability refers to..

Interviewed mostly men, middle aged, grew up in predominantly black community

Lois Benjamin's investigation of racism may be criticized because ...

Human behavior is too complex

Sociologists cannot precisely predict any person's behavior because..

Hawthorne effect

What term refers to any change in a subject's behavior caused by the awareness of being studied?

Verstehen

Which German word meaning "understanding" was used by Max Weber in describing his approach to sociological research?

Survey

Which research method asks subjects to respond to a series of items in a questionnaire or an interview?

Deductive Logical Thought

Which sociological research method saves the time and expense of data gathering, but the researcher has no control over possible data bias?

Science

a logical system that bases knowledge on direct, systematic observation

Concept

a mental construct that represents some part of the world in a somewhat simplified form

Empirical Evidence

information we can verify with our senses

Disadvantage of conducting interviews...

interviewer could influence a subject

Validity

measuring exactly what one intends to measure

Sociological Perspective

scientific evidence proves many of North America's assumptions are wrong

Objectivity

state of personal neutrality in conducting research

Mode

term for the value that occurs most often in a series of numbers

Mean

term that refers to the arithmetic average of a series of numbers

Median

term that refers to the value that occurs midway in a series of numbers

Max Weber

the sociologist who called on his colleagues to be value free

The problem with measuring "social class" is...

there are many variables that help to define social class

Sample

A smaller number of people used to represent an entire population is called a...