Week 3 Overview

Hi everyone.

So last week the main topic of discussion for us

was social science and its disciplines.

This week we begin a new topic, a new unit

of studies and what we're going to be focusing on

next is social science research in practice.

And in this video I'll go over a few of

the key uh topics in terms that you are going

to be learning.

So yeah.

What does social science research look like in real life

or in other words, how is it done?

I mean it can look like a lot of different

things that can look like this um or for someone

else, it could maybe look like this.

Although a lot of the time it actually looks more

like this with quite a bit of confusion and going

back and uh back and forth from theory to the

actual research.

And I'll explain why that mini joke is funny in

in a moment.

So there's a few terms um that are going to

help you understand what social science research um looks like

in real life.

And the first one to know is methods.

So I'll give you a quick definition that hopefully is

going to help you understand this better.

So methods are the techniques and procedures that are used

to gather and analyze data, right?

So data can come in different shapes and forms.

That's why I'm showing you these three little videos.

You can get information from existing research in books.

You can go out and look for it in real

life uh and then uh in whichever way you've gathered

that you then have to analyze it.

Okay, so these are the these are going to be

the main stages of research that you will um, you

will become familiar with this week.

Okay, so that's the first term that you have to

remember. The second one is methodology and notice that methodology

and methods are not the same two different things.

So methodology is your strategy or your plan of action,

and it it determines and explains how you're choosing the

methods and how you're carrying out your research.

So basically, it's your research plan, it tells you what

you're gonna be doing where and when, and also gives

some justification for those choices.

There's also gonna be a room for discussion on theoretical

perspectives, because it isn't always just about the data and

the information that you can gather in the in the

real world, so to speak, you will also need to

have some theory to support your hypothesis.

And that's another term that we're going to be coming

back too.

So what is a theoretical perspective?

It is a philosophical status that informs your methodology.

Okay, so you don't just big methodology, uh, you know,

randomly or or by luck or, you know, you don't

block it up out of thin air.

You root it in existing literature theories and the the

research that has been done before you.

So once you have your theoretical perspective clearly defined.

Once you've thought about your research plan.

Once you've selected your methods, how do you then gather

the data?

Well, there are three main categories of methods that you

should be familiar with.

The first one is qualitative methods and you will learn

more about what that entails this week.

But in short qualitative methods focused mostly on uh narratives,

uh subjective experiences of people.

Um and often it's described as something that you can

put into words.

And the often uh the approach that has put us

an opposite to qualitative methods is quantitative methods.

And here the focus is more on uh data numbers,

statistical analysis.

So you say the qualitative methods are expressed through words

than quantitative methods.

We're focusing more on numbers.

Of course this is a very general description and you

will get more detail on this this week.

But that's the that's the very core description of what

these methods entails.

And then you also have something that's called mixed methods.

And in this kind of research you could have elements

of both in different combinations.

So you could be focused on numbers, but also in

the narratives and stories and uh a subjective lived experiences

people. So very briefly, these were the main main topics

and main terms that you will be looking at this

week and your readings.

Um it may sound complicated and like it's a lot,

but we will be going through them one by one

and discussing them in our classes.

So, uh please make sure you read your your readings

for the week carefully, take notes, not anything that might

be difficult or unclear.

And we will be discussing it with you in classes.

That's all for me today.

And I will speak to you soon for now.

Week 3 Overview

Chapters

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