An Introduction
to Inquiry
Chapter Outline
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Looking for Reality
The Foundations of Social Science
Some Dialectics of Social Research
The Ethics of Social Research
How We Know What We
Know
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Direct Experience and Observation
Personal Inquiry
Tradition
Authority
Looking for Reality
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Our attempts to learn about the world are only
partly linked to direct, personal inquiry or
experience.
A larger part comes from agreed-on knowledge
that others give us, things “everyone knows.”
This agreement reality both assists and
hinders our attempts to find out for ourselves.
Sources of Secondhand
Knowledge
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Both provide a starting point for inquiry,
but can lead us to start at the wrong
point and push us in the wrong direction.
1. Tradition
2. Authority
Science and Inquiry
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Epistemology is the science of knowing.
Methodology (a subfield of
epistemology) might be called the science
of finding out.
Ordinary Human Inquiry
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Humans recognize that future circumstances
are caused by present ones.
Humans learn that patterns of cause and effect
are probabilistic in nature.
Humans aim to answer “what” and “why”
questions, and pursue these goals by observing
and figuring out.
Inquiry: Errors and Solutions
1.
2.
Inaccurate observations
•
Measurement devices add
precision.
Overgeneralization
•
Repeat a study to make sure the
same results are produced each
time.
Inquiry: Errors and Solutions
3.
4.
Selective observation
•
Make an effort to find cases that do
not fit the general pattern.
Illogical Reasoning
•
Use systems of logic explicitly.
Foundations of Social
Science
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The foundations of social science are logic
and observation.
A scientific understanding of the world must
make sense and correspond to what we
observe.
Both are essential to science and relate to the
three major aspects of social scientific
enterprise: theory, data collection, and data
analysis.
Foundations of Social
Science
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Theory - Systematic explanation for the
observations that relate to a particular
aspect of life.
Data collection - observation
Data Analysis - the comparison of what
is logically expected with what is actually
observed.
Social Regularities
Examples of Patterns in social life:
 Only people 18 and older can vote.
 Only people with a license can drive.
Aggregates
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The collective actions and situations of
many individuals.
Focus of social science is to explain why
aggregated patterns of behavior are
regular even when individuals change
over time.
A Variable Language
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Variable
Logical groupings of attributes.
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Attribute
Characteristics or qualities that describe
an object.
A Variable Language
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Independent variable
A variable that is presumed to cause or
determine a dependent variable.
Dependent variable
A variable that is assumed to depend on
or is caused by another variable.
Variable Language
Relationship Between Two
Variables
Education and Racial
Prejudice
Level of Education
Less than high
school graduate
High school
graduate
Junior college
Bachelor’s degree
Graduate degree
% saying AfricanAmericans have less
inborn ability to learn
26%
10%
15%
6%
3%
Approaches to Social
Research
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Idiographic -Seeks to fully understand
the causes of what happened in a single
instance.
Nomothetic—Seeks to explain a class of
situations or events rather than a single
one.
Idiographic and Nomothetic
Reasoning in Everyday Life
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Idiographic: “He’s like that because his
father and mother kept giving him mixed
signals.The fact that his family moved
seven times by the time he was 12 years
old didn’t help. Moreover, his older
brother is exactly the same and probably
served as a role model.”
Nomothetic:“Teenage boys are like that.”
Approaches to Social
Research
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Induction – From specific observations to
the discovery of a pattern among all the
given events.
Deduction - From a pattern that might be
logically expected to observations that
test whether the pattern occurs.
The Wheel of Science
Approaches to Social
Research
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Qualitative Data – Nonnumerical data.
Quantitative Data -Numerical data.
Makes observations more explicit and
makes it easier to aggregate, compare,
and summarize data.
Approaches to Social
Research
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Pure Research - Sometimes justified in
terms of gaining “knowledge for
knowledge’s sake.”
Applied Research – Putting research
into practice.
Ethical Guidelines of Social
Research
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Two Basic Guidelines:
 Participation should be voluntary.
 Social research must bring no harm to
research subjects.