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Chapter 3. Learning the Language of Research Introduction In Chapters 1 and 2, you learned how social research is conducted. These chapters also introduced you to key research terms. This chapter will acquaint you with additional research terms used by researchers in their work. Understanding the terms used by researchers will help you plan and carry out your own research. Conducting research also requires the use of logic or reasoning. Two forms of reasoning, inductive and deductive logic, are used in research. We explain and illustrate each form. Also, we examine the logic used in cause and effect analyses and explain the conditions that have to exist to establish a cause and effect relationship. Two of the most frequently used terms in research are concepts and variables. We start with an explanation of concepts because this term is basic to understanding how scientists communicate and conduct research. Understanding concepts and variables Concepts With the beginning of speech, you started absorbing and using concepts without knowing you were doing so. You learned to describe things as big or small, temperatures as hot or cold, and persons as members of your family, as friends, or as strangers. In social science courses, you have encountered many additional concepts, such as role model, traditionalism, modernity, globalization, personality, bureaucracy, and many more. None of these concepts refers to anything concrete — things that we can see, touch, or otherwise experience directly. They exist only as mental images that we share and use in talking about things. Social scientists also refer to concepts as constructs because they are constructed or created for the purpose of analyzing social behavior and for communicating what we learn. Through use of constructs, we are able to link our mental images of things we observe and agree on what we are referring to. For example, we cannot directly observe bureaucracy, but we can share a mental image or construct that describes what we mean by this concept and then use the concept to describe how organizations differ in this regard. Social scientists use concepts in identifying research problems and in expressing conclusions and generalizations. For example, most social scientists agree that urbanism tends to reduce the cohesion of the extended family. The previous sentence contained three concepts. Like all concepts, each term — urbanism, cohesion, and extended family — is an abstraction. Each has meaning to social scientists and others, but without referring to any specific thing that can be observed. Their meaning is abstracted or derived from the many specific or concrete examples of urban development, varying bonds of cohesion or togetherness among families, and many instances of large family groups. Concepts allow us to communicate easily at a general level without having to specify each and every instance of what we mean. In this way, concepts permit us to communicate effectively in scientific as well as everyday conversation. Concepts also imply variation in what they refer to. Countries and regions of the world, for example, vary in degrees of urbanism. The countries of Western Europe and North America are highly urbanized while countries in Africa and other parts of the world have mainly rural populations. Also, in all countries the bonds of cohesion vary among family groups, from very strong to weak or virtually absent. Researchers look for variations in concepts selected for study. |