Sociology Research Methods: Crash Course Sociology #4
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- Опубліковано 2 кві 2017
- Today we’re talking about how we actually DO sociology. Nicole explains the research method: form a question and a hypothesis, collect data, and analyze that data to contribute to our theories about society.
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This is my favorite "Crash Course" so far. It is not only because the subject is interesting (almost "crash course" series have interesting topics), and not because this is my area (which is not: I majored in physics and am doing a PhD in economics).
What I am loving in this Crash Course is that the presenter doesn't feel the need to "force a joke" every 40s to maintain the viewer's attention (as it is the case in almost all the other courses). Instead she prefers to address complex topics using simple and succinct sentences, and express her own enthusiasm by the topic. Then, what keeps our attention is the material itself.
Congratulations!!
So you like videos that are completely humorless. This is why academy is failing, there is nothing about humor that is unscientific, you can express deep truths about the world while still using humor. The difference is that if you use humor it will be more effective in reaching human beings. Thankfully my professors aren't like you and know when to crack a joke and understand that humor does not invalidate what is being presented.
bucket foot5 "that's why academy is failling". What a sentence to use specifically in this video... What exactly "failling" means? How do you know the reason (if so) is what you said? How can you simplify a topic so complex (as almost all social topics) to that silly phrase? And how can you know that he does like just videos that are humorless?
Be more rigorous in your thought, please.
bucket foot5, I pity those around you if you believe the only alternative to « "force a joke" every 40s » is being completely humorless.
may I ask what prompted you to switch fields?
I switched fields too! I majored in genetics and immunology, and now doing a masters in adult education (not teaching). I grew up thinking I would be a scientist because science and maths used to be my favorite+strongest subjects but it turns out I'm made for social sciences and humanities. Sociology is an important part of my masters and my personal favorite!
i dunno i think ice cream being The Main Instigator is worth consideration
In an analysis of 38 comments on this video, 9 explicitly argued that sociology is not a science. Based on this, I have concluded that 23.7% of Crash Course Sociology viewers are wasting their time for the sake of being annoying (for the purposes of this study, "edgy" is synonymous with "annoying"). Is that "hard" enough science for you?
No, that is still soft science. You don't have a large enough sample size and you aren't trying to disprove your hypothesis (which wasn't identified BEFORE acquiring data).
(a) At the time of posting, the sample size was over half the total comments, which I imagine is way more than most scientific studies that require sampling.
(b) *passes hand over head while making whooshing noise*
Which are you trying to prove: That you don't know how to appropriately test something or that you don't know what "hard science" means? Either way you succeeded.
I bet the data is reproducible. There's actually a growing body of sociological research relating to the 'sociology of the internet'.
Cameron Herbert
With a wide enough sample... yes. A preconceived hypothesis could be disproven or supported. This "test" did not attempt to follow even the most primitive criteria to be considered scientific though
I laughed and then proceeded to high five the screen when you said "That doesn't make you a sociologist. Sorry." - thank you Crash Course team! You're killing it with this subject too.
4:32 That I - vi - ii - V chord progression though!
Yeah, isn't it awesome. I'm taking music theory. I like the idea
Hi CrashCourse,
She is great. She really makes sociology interesting.
She talks too fast tho. 4 videos in and I get a splitting headache just to keep up.
She is great thought. Love this. Please maybe slow down a little.
Btw, Don't forget to be awesome.
you can always slow down the video in the settings
or just pause
Dinesh Sai Menon you can slow her down. UA-cam has a video slow down widget..
Yeah u can click on the right upper corner in those 3 vertical dots and click on playback speed ..i always reduce the speed and listen
I'm really loving the detailed explanation of the underlying method, logic and philosophy in this series. Partly because I can relate it to stuff I already have learned in other fields.
I think its great you guys finally got around to Sociology. I think that most people who went to college in the good ol' days got introductory sociology and psychology courses in the first two years. Everyone needs the basics for the sake of general intelligence.
Watch the video in 0.75x speed
Thank me later
Gracias¡
I watch at 2x speed because I'm busy
Thank you man.
@@killionknight🙄
The research method explanation in this crash course sociology series is much more comprehensive than the one in psychology. I'm majoring in psychology, and I'm surprised that there are lots of stuff I've studied in psychology that have intersection with sociology (especially the research method). So this series actually helps me a lot to comprehend my field of study and to construct a bigger and broader concept of humanity in my head.
Also, I really like the host! I think you're my favorite one so far, beside Hank.
I’m going to use this to help me pass my first year of my degree you explain it so easy it’s so vague in my academic course books
Someone I heard once pointed out that sociology isn't rocket science. In rocket science the variables are easy enough to comprehend that most of the time the scientist can understand all of them and get the result exactly right. Sociology is a much more complex field of science than that.
THANK YOU FOR THAT!
Umm pick a different example unless you know what you're discussing. In rocket science variables are constantly changing and calculations are that analogous to stochastic matrices, or stochastic differential equations which routes undetermined behavior. There's nothing "easy" about it, otherwise the job outlook would be a thousand percent. Sociology is not more complex, though it is contemporary which does not necessarily add complexity. Abstraction in rocket science and aerodynamic systems creates a massive list of mathematical, physical, and scientific prerequisites. So, no. Sociology is not more complex than rocket science on a generality.
Johan Winqvist specifically because people are very unpredictable
RSci this is cuuuuute. Please tell me what is predictable or consistent about human behaviour, institutions, etc. No one is saying rocket science isn't difficult. It just isn't anywhere nearly as complex a discipline as sociology.
@@RSciOfficial it is more complex, just to such an insane extent no sociologist bothers to understand the complexity in detail. If you would make sociology rigorous by keeping track of the brains of a large number of people, the stimuli, etc, etc you could predict social behaviour accurately. The amount of computing power required is just completely impractical.
I'm self-taught in studying sociology and this series definitely helps me in understanding more of the subject (even though i'm obligated to be more focused on studying maths and science since i'm currently a high school student majoring in mathematics and sciences)
Really an amazing job that you're doing here with this course ! I finished my bachelor degree in Sociology last year, and it's a real pleasure to watch your videos and get a reminder of all that I've learned :)
But there's one thing that tickled me : what about the bias that comes from your subject knowing that you're observing ?
Plus, there are some fields that you can't get access to, or you won't be able to conduct your study properly if you show yourself as a researcher (take for example the study of work conditions in an Amazon warehouse). Sociology as it intends to unveil how society works, which often means dealing with systemic oppression and concrete agents that benefit from that oppression, sometimes has to work hidden when collecting data.
Bravo, Nicole Sweeney! I'm an economist and I LOVE this series and recommending it to my students. Thanks for your work! Keep it up!
Great work on these videos! looking forward to the next one!
Managed to get here before the "sociology isn't a science" comments.
Only took 6 minutes after you
I'm so tired of seeing it.
If anything, people should be commenting on how little she went in to it all - I get its a crash course but this barely scraped the surface.
You'd think they'd get tired eventually. But no. It's going to be in literally every comment section from here until the end of the series.
Kind of like how you can click on ANY TYT video and I guarantee that you can find a comment about the Armenian Genocide.
If the host wants to insist that sociology is a science, people will insist otherwise until the host actually addresses people's arguments.
sociology isn't a "hard science" and neither is "social psychology", but that doesn't mean that they aren't valuable or can be absolutely dismissed.
love it! keep it going, awesome to know more about this science
Last week I suggested Sociologists should approach observation the way other scientists approach the observation of other animals, such as lions, wolves etc. I had no idea there is an "institutional review board" which forces Sociologists to receive consent from their subjects.
I can only imagine this makes the sociologist's job harder when trying to find objective facts about communities, a culture, or society. Like I've said before, observation without your subject's consent is the best way to figure out what's really going on. If I'm not mistaken, research (I don't remember what field) has been done revealing the difference between human behavior when the human knowns he/she is being watched, and when the human doesn't know he/she is being watched. It turns out, people act differently when they know they have an audience. If other scientists needed a lion's or a shark's informed consent for observation, we'd know nothing about sharks and lions.
This was a good episode, though. I learned some things. I'm glad Crash Course decided to create this course.
it is always good to receive IRB approval for any sociology study you wish to carry out, that way you'll abide by the law and keep everyone happy, so you can continue to do research. Especially in regards to informed consent. If you don't receive informed consent from particpants, it could come back to haunt you later in the form of legal problems, even if you felt you as a researcher did nothing wrong. You never know how your research may affect someone, and it is ALWAYS a good idea, besides being the law, to gain the informed consent of your subjects. That way, you'll avoid liability issues, and protect yourself from bad PR as well as court fines and other punishments later. Especially if it came out that you did not even receive an IRB's apporval to carry out your research. Then, you would be unable to continue your research. As far as I know, IRB approval is needed in some cases but not others. It depends on what it is you are researching. But the basic premises of needing IRB approval and informed consent is that the subject matter in sociology involves human beings, not lions or sharks. Therefore, precautions must be taken to prevent harm, even unintenional harm. Also, in any study involving deception (by you, the researcher, to other people), even for the sake of the study, you may still do it with IRB approval, as long as you provide a "debriefing" of the study afterwards for the participants. For more information, look up the National Research Act of 1974.
Wow I totally get all this sociology stuff?! ...and I don't "get" anything!
I love the thought of blowing the top off of social concepts and stigmas. May have found my calling
I appreciate that Nicole is talking slower now. Keep up the good work!
Love this so much - great learning
You are amazing! I'm learning a lot from your course
Wonderful, this video its a must not just for sociology but for everyone who wants to know the basics of reserch methods
I'm in college for a degree in sociology. I am a huge fan of how ethnocentrism effects symbolic interactions. I also love the labeling theory.
>hawthorne effect being the fact that individuals act differently when being watched
>informed consent to let your test subjects be informed of surveillance
The issue of ethics.
I think one of the concepts to remember when defining values for a variable is whether or not those values are on a sliding scale, or if those values are only ways of identifying categories. Assigning numerical values to relationship statuses seems like it makes an assumption of ranking the statuses.
I am a sociologist. I am currently writing a thesis in sociology. And, I can tell you, it is *NOT* a science in the same way biology, physics and chemistry is a science. *HOWEVER*, the hard sciences can not predict things that the sociological research methods can. It can not predict SOCIAL and HUMAN behaviour. For example, I did a research report last year on how a new disability policy in Australia may potentially impact people living with a disability who are from Middle Eastern backgrounds. I conducted interviews and listened to their stories.
The results were telling. Most literature tells us that Middle Eastern migrants with a disability tend to segregate themselves from mainstream society and keep to themselves and not want help from our services. My research discovered that these people actively yearn for help and want it but have no idea how to access it because of language impediments and cultural shocks. Long story short, through sociological research, the organisation changed its disability outreaching policy and ultimately bettered the lives of those people.
This is what sociology is for, ladies and gentlemen. Traditional hard sciences can not tell us how people could potentially be impacted by a new public policy, nor can it tell us how people living with a mental illness personally understand and make sense of their conditions, nor can it tell us when the next revolution or civil war may happen.
Human behaviour is *UNPREDICTABLE*, and we just can not reply on the hard sciences for this. This is why we have *SOCIAL SCIENCES*.
Unfortunately, SJWs have hijacked sociology and completely ruined its reputation. This attack against sociology must stop. I am considering starting a UA-cam channel on it. Would anyone be interested?
Certainly a interesting post you've written. I agree with you that we don't always have good enough data to make hard-scientific claims, especially when dealing with people... doesn't mean there's no value in other means of understanding the ourselves and the world. As for the UA-cam channel, I think you should definitely go for it. Good luck!
Biology is starting to become a soft science.
+o0danishchick0o how can a science go from hard to soft? We can find things out exactly about how the body works.
Matt B do you mean you're considering a channel on the attack against sociology or on sociology? I would be interested in the latter.
Such a channel would be very useful.
perfectly explained! thank you!
You guys are amazing, easiest and interesting method of teaching
Those crash courses make me remember my methodology classes *shiver*
Lo mas complicado de la sociología es el vocabulario especifico, a eso se suma la matemática y los marcos teóricos, pero si se le pierde el miedo a esas cosas, es muy interesante lo que estudia esta ciencia.
once more, very well done. Thanks! :)
she's really good... i love the video. could you please work on a separate course specifically research methods for social sciences.... please think about it
i hope someday you also make a separate crash course about research. crashcourse way to go!!!!!
Professor Flavin, I am the founder of an educational agency called The Excalibur Reading Program, in my area of Glendale, Queens. I am finding that although as you said "Sociology is not a hard science" This class is begining to allow me to understand more, how my own community works, feels and breathes on a daily basis. Thank you, Angela
thanks for making such kind of lectures based on sociology .make more ideo on sociological thinkers mostly contemporary thinkers and their theories
Only scratching the surface of this but loving it,and want to learn more..
Crash course is the best series on UA-cam.... actually, its second only to Spacetime.
Geez, I wish I wish I could've watched this video like 2 years ago- when I started my Health System Research. Although my hypothesis was sound, I didn't exactly made a control group for the data collection
"The arm-chaired sociologist" XD Interesting enough, I learned about the scientific method in my sociology class before I got into it in my other science classes. :'D
This series has the high quality I have come to expect from crash course in terms of content. At least I hope this is a good overview of sociology. I'm a chemical engineer, not a sociologist.
Loved the presumed spaceballs reference "I am your father's nephews cousin's former roommate"
this all reminds me of my ap statistics class last year
M falling in love with this amazing teacher.
Excellent video. I'm in love 😍
Nicole, This is a awesome series! Nature seems to be the common denominator and the best example of a perfectly balanced and functional social system. So, why isn’t this used as the starting point to build the sociologist assumption or assumptions?
that's great 👍
I just wanted to say thank you for the info
What a great video!!
Excelent video!!
Hey there, first of all: as a sociology student I appreciate a lot your work and nice presentation of something that is still quite unknown by a lot of people! Furthermore, I have a question for Nicole and everyone who might have some ideas about this : How can you consider nowadays the Internet as a field of research and how could you possibly do some observation online (e.g.: participative or incognito)? And in addition to that: in France they don't consider experiments as a valid sociological research method because you never know in which way you influenced or are influencing the population in question! This is more considered as a research method of social psychology. Thanks for the attention and have a nice day y'all :)
Please (in the future) talk about Immanuel Wallerstein and World Systems Analysis!
would you guys ever consider writing books off of the crash course series? I would totally buy them cause these videos help a lot towards my studies, just wish they went a bit more in depth.
I may be risking it with this, but the series look almost as good as Phil Plait's CCAstronomy
So pretty good!
I like how this episode makes it sound like a programming language
The MTO (similar to the objective of HUD studies) study found a weak correlation to job success during the Clinton Administration when allowing someone to move from a poverty stricken area to more affluent areas. A null hypothesis was accepted when no positivist difference was examined between groups. Years later, economist Raj Chetty re-examined the data and when controlling for age, discovered a statistical significance with respect to age 9 when they moved. Another example of quant methodology in big data
Love this series so far!
First, researchers start with a question/ an unproven theory which consists of the concepts on which both the researchers and audience accept its definitions. Then, researchers make a hypothesis, which they try to suggest correlation or causation of some variable (factors). Most often, they keep an independent variable to test the other factors ( which are called dependent variables). Note that correlation and causation should be carefully examined, in case of ingnoring other factors.
There are 4 ways of collecting data. First, the researchers devide a group of people who hold the same status into a control group which they do nothing on, and an experiment group that they try to change a factor, which is related the their hypothesis. If the change they predict happens on the exp group, the hypothesis is supported.The second is survey. The third one is participant observation. In this case, the researcher play both role of participant and observer, which can ebable him to gain some insights of the group's behaviors. The last method is using data from other research.
They can analyze data through 2 ways, deductive or inductive. Deductive method mean researcher start from data collected to form a theory and inductive method is otherwise, go from a theory to seek the data to support or object it.
( ignore this comment, i was just trying to summerise the video on my own words)
I love Crash Course, but something I observed both in the Physics lectures and this one was the speed with which the presenters speak. Could you please try and slow it down just a wee bit? Thank you :)
Is there a reason the Flintstones are being used for the control group? Or Bert and Ernie for experimental group 2?
She has a beautiful consistent smile all through the video
i think the people who inexplicably "hate" sociology as a field of study are only claiming that because they're afraid that if people learn themselves and their minds better, they'll learn to better mitigate their emotional reactions to things, and then all the people who make money off of exploiting human psychology and passing it off as "popular culture" or "political discourse" will have to go get real jobs.
hey, maybe they could go back to college and get degrees in sociology and do something of value for humanity instead of just ripping all our cultures and governments apart with their lucrative, lucrative "hate".
zEropoint68 Although I do consider it a science it seems that the conclusions that it draws can change depending on external factors, such as pollution these days (carbon monoxide in the blood) or historically using lead plates for food dishes, and this made me look askance at the results. Part of my aversion also is that I dislike having my actions/thoughts predicted. However, I can see having a baseline of how the social human operates could be valuable not only as you say 'to better mitigate their emotional reactions to things', which I take to mean less influenced by advertising, but to establish an ethical line in the sand that religion and philosophy seem to have lost. Do you think i'm asking too much for sociology to do this?
Sociology does not make people "learn to better mitigate their emotional reactions to things". I don't know were that claim comes from but it has nothing to do with sociology. Most people with sociology degrees go on to work at grocery stores, you cannot get a good job with a sociology degree unless you have a PHD and become a professor. I don't know what you mean by "hate" but it sounds to me like you do not understand what you are talking about.
zEropoint68 I agree.Being able to interpret social phenomena is lifetime valuable skill.
Damn, dude. relax. You seem to be full of that "hate" that you seem to denounce.
Sociology is just the study of society. If you understand how society affects you, that awareness will cause you to change your behaviors even by a little bit.
If you knew that sticking a metal fork in a socket would electrocute you, would you do it?
It's the same concept.
Princess Jello I for one am looking forward to the series...bring on the sh#tstorm! What you said about ''awareness (of how society affects you) will cause you to change your behavior' isn't that a little like Schrodinger's cat? How can we get meaningful results in sociology if the subject changes when you observe it or like the point I tried to make (badly) in my previous comment about pollution affecting peoples baseline awareness, a fairly new phenomenon. Is sociology flexible enough to change with the times or will it be always one step behind?
Well, I have an exam in research methods tomorrow so let’s see how this helps me😂😂🙏🏻🙏🏻
great video
I did my thesis using existing sources- I used real estate advertising from the local paper.
This is great
Nicole is such a good host. Im genuinely disappointed when she said "youre done"
I love you Nicole
When sociologists live with groups to study them, doesn't the Hawthorne effect take place? Can the results of these tests be accurate?
You guys should make a psychology video about hoarding.
Wow, when she mentioned the ice cream and murder I immediately thought "yeah they're not related but they're both caused by heat" and then voila, that was right.
Just in time for my sociology test today
really comprehensive
It was kind of odd that the video touches on ethics, and doesn't connect to Alice Goffman's research. Her work is kind of controversial (ethics wise at least). Was that a time constraint thing or is ethics of researcher a later video? Love the series either way!
I don't know if a variable with 0 or 1 category can be valid. They aren't really variables in those cases. Probably just poorly written script rhetoric? Or can you provide a 0 or 1 category variable example that can be helpful? Or would a 0 category variable be more like an open ended essay type answer?
I honestly don't understand why I have to take sociology for an associate's degree in dental hygiene 🙄 but i'm going to try my best to pass this class
SUB ESPANISH PLEASE, THESE VIDEOS ARE GREAT!
I'm sure I'm not the only Latino with difficulties to see this in English.
At what time stamp did they address Experiment?
Here we are again.
Next week, y'all! 😎
Married in Skyrim!
Good watch.
I'm a student of sociology
So why do we have to inform the people that theyre being observed? Doesn't that ensure that the Hawthorne effect affects the experiment?
Why are there so many people who think that you can discredit an entire field of study simply by saying, "it's not a science." It's like saying, "tomatoes aren't mushrooms" and expecting everyone to immediately stop eating tomatoes because of your "brilliant" observation.
Yay! Alice Goffman! Woot!
"Married in Skyrim"That's me
West Philly, two residents, I can only hope it was Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff
Idea for crash course T-shirt: one that jovialy demonizes ice cream by blaming it for murder, drownings, Friday the 13th movies, and anything else that correlates with warm weather.
Thanks maam
7:45 "innnnnnnnnn WEST PHILLY BORN AND RAISED"
Great . Thanku 😊
Thank you so much, the content is great, I just wished you talked slowly, So i could grab all you say easily
As a septuagenarian, whose areas of study are Psychology and Sociology, I recall clearly the words of my professor at Sydney University. He stated, at the beginning of his lecture on this topic of research, that " 99% of research in this area is not worth the paper it's written on." How true. How very true.
The definitions you gave for deductive and inductive reasoning are rather the definitions of top-down and bottom-up reasoning.
heat + ice cream = more violence
Thanks
When are we gonna get to sociology vids?
Many people who argue that if sociology is a science or not has literally never taken a sociology course, because sociology depending on your definition and objectives can be both.
It's a topic studied in sociology where even among sociologists argue if sociology is scientific or not, or should it even try to be scientific as the conventional scientific methodologies could be counterproductive to the understanding of human nature as many argue that human nature could not be put objectively, as it requires understanding or verstehen.
In my opinion, like philosophy, sociology shouldn't even bother as it is rather unnecessary to be scientific but should rather supplement our knowledge and understanding of society.
The problem is with our own cultural stigma that puts science on a pedestal over the humanities and i think both could coexist in harmony. That one is not superior or inferior to the other.
Simply placing statistics does not make it any more scientific but rather simply to provide proof or verification of a certain claim. Sociology does not have any mathematical laws or models like Economics' law of supply and demand etc.
This CC has the subjectively best rendition of the CC theme.
7:26 In West Philadelphia born and raised...