ISSR - Lecture 2

1. Why Precision Searching?

2. Main Concepts
3. Related and Alternative Terms
4. Search Statements
Summary from last week
• There are important distinctions between faith, folkway, casual
knowledge / and scientific knowledge (Last Week)

• Science is concerned with systematic empirical observations and

logical analysis to interpret these facts

• There are 7 main Social Sciences disciplines

Outline for this week
1. Word of the day
2. The 8 steps of scientific research
3. The rules & aims of scientific research
4. Theories
5. Hypothesis/ses
6. Variables
• Independent vs. Dependent
• Quantitative vs. Qualitative
• Operationalization
7. Causality vs. Correlation
8. Deductive, Inductive, Abductive
9. Exploratory vs. Descriptive vs. Explanatory research.
Word of the day: what does
assumption(s) mean?
• An assumption is an underlying principle that guides us.

• Some philosophers’ assumptions are that the world is chaos, and

nothing can be explained.

• In SS research: we assume the world is orderly (has patterns, follow

certain tendencies), and we assume if we study the world following
certain steps (scientific method) we can explain this order.
The Research Process
How to go from a very general idea/topic, to an academic paper?

What does ”peer reviewed paper” mean ?

The scientific method involves following procedures that are

acceptable to other scientists.
 Research Process
1. Choose a topic
2. Review the literature
3. Formulate the problem (Question, Hypothesis, Variables)
4. Develop a Research Design (What questions will you ask? To who?
What will steps 5-6-7-8 look like)
5. Gather the data (Do your interview, handout a survey)
6. Analyze the data
7. Interpret the data
8. Communicate the data (Final paper)
1st step: choose a topic
• How do ideas for research emerge? The beginning is often
complicated. Does it matter where it came from?
• Own background of researcher
• Current social phenomena and social problems
• Other’s research
1st step: choose a topic
• Example: Covid and the workplace. Still very general.

• Ok, you are interested in a topic… but what now?

• You need to narrow your topic, focus your attention. How? With the scientific
method/by conducting scientific research.
2 step:
nd

Review of
literature.

• Read about it more. Pinpoint what you care about.

• Read scientific literature, not just news.
• What has been studied? What has not been studied?
• Learn from past research to develop your own.
• At this step you go from having a general idea of what you want
to study to finding a precise research question.
 3rd Formulate the
problem.
• (formulate a precise research question).
Has to be clear, focused statement that
will guide your search for evidence.
• But how do you test your idea? First,
clear set of definition.
• Beginning of Covid or Now?
• What workplace? What aspect of work?
• Examples:
• Mental Health on the workplace during
covid.
• Workers efficiency during covid
• Impact of Spanish flu on workplace vs.
impact of covid
• This is also when you formulate
Hypotheses
4. Develop the research design
• Develop the research design. Your study. Your rules, your decisions. (But
need to be able to defend them after)
• Interviews or Surveys? How many? Why? How will you record? Will you have a
confidentiality agreement?
• How will you recopy interviews?
• Plan what steps 5-6-7-8 will look like.

Often, hear about results of a study. But are we told about the aims of the
study? What is the research design? Are we told about weaknesses of the
study? Not in Media, but in academic articles yes.
The peer-review process should ensure the methods are OK.
5-6-7
5 Gather the data (as you spelled out in research design)
Do your interview, your surveys…

6 Analyze the data

Recopy interview, organize survey data in graphs.

7 Interpret the data

Take the theory (Literature Review) and explains how this data is
linked to it, what does it teach us?
8 Communicate your findings
How: articles, newspaper op-eds, conferences, etc.
Influence future research: interpretation, communication.

At Dawson: oral presentation, final paper, annotated bibliography, etc.

 The rules of scientific research
• What are they?
What are the rules of scientific
research?
• Objectivity
• Empirical verification (of your ideas) (AKA: based on observations)
• NOT on intuition
• NOT on faith
• NOT personal experience
• A Collective Endeavour
• Transparency in logic and method of research
• = Skepticism: if not proven. If not logically explained. (Critical side of
SS)
• = Order, patterns, processes. (Positive side of SS) (Assumption)
What is the aim of scientific
research?
• Facts are important in empirical research. But research is not just
about accumulating facts. Facts are only meaningful in relation to
questions, ideas.

• The aim: Develop theories: a group of logically connected ideas that

explain a factual discovery
• Theories give meaning to facts
• Theories link cause and effects
• … And eventually allow to make predictions
Theories
• Theories provide a systematic way to understand the social world

• Theories are applicable to a broad variety of situations

• theories in SS are flexible. Unlike faith (which is absolute). Flexible as

in, when you have a theory on cause-effect relationships you can
logically draw hypotheses from theories.
 Two ways to
think / develop
theories
• Abductive: forming a conclusion from the information that is known.
Abduction will lead you to the best explanation, but cannot be
confirmed.
• Difference with two others is amount of information available.

• Real life example: messy atrium before class last week? There was an
event during the day. But if no posters or people there to confirm, its
only the best explanation.
Hypothesis / Hypotheses
Hypotheses are statements that express cause-and-effect relationships
in a language indicating that they are not yet supported by data
• Theories are already supported by data. Hypotheses are not.
• Hypotheses are testable statements of causes and effects.
• They are put forward to be tested.
• Hypotheses use variables to bring the theory into testable grounds. (More
on variables in a bit)
To build a good hypothesis you need to NARROW
DOWN
• 1) To narrow down/specify the theory.
• Theory: Income inequality shapes major element of social life
• --» Income inequality shapes the lifestyle of individuals (consumption
patterns, cultural expressions, etc.)
• 2) Then narrow down Hypothesis
• Economic inequality determines consumption patterns
• --» As income increases, the level of spending on entertainment increases.

This went from general theory to testable statement: a hypothesis.

Variables
• Hypotheses are not statements of causes and effects. They are put
forward to be tested. Hypotheses use variables to bring the theory
into testable grounds.

• Variables: aspects of reality that can vary: age, gender, income,

nationality, sexism, social class, etc.

• Hypotheses usually takes the form IF variable X… THEN outcome Y

Independent vs. Dependent
variables
Independent: not what we study. They are identified as changing, and
what we study is how this change impact other variables.

Dependent: changes are linked to independent variables changes. They

depend on the other.
• Ex: As income increases (independent), the level of spending on
entertainment (dependent) increases.
• Spending depends on income.
• Income is the independent variable.

• Ex: Smoking depends on age, sex, country, etc. A male from France is
more likely to smoke than a female from Canada. The dependent
variable (what we try to learn about) is smoking.

• Does caffeine affects your appetite?

Exercise – The Research Process
Ok. But then how can we tell if there is a change in
variables?

• By setting up ways to measure this. We call this operationalizing.

• This means clearly laying out the rules for establishing changes in
variables.
• Operationalising is a way to determine if the hypothesis is true or not

• Ex: Hypothesis: kids that eat more broccolis are more intelligent.
• Broccoli, easy to count how much you eat. But how about intelligence?
• Operationalize: record how much broccoli kids eat over a month
systematically, then have them do a QI test. Intelligence is
operationalized with this QI test.
Operationalization
• Hypothesis: income spending on culture
• Operationalization: Define Income. Define Spending on culture. Need
to be consistent during all research.
• Income = direct revenues measured per week over a period (must be
stable definition/measurement over period) Spending = definition of
what is culture (movies? Museums, etc. must be consistent)
Two family of variables
• Variables: Quantitative vs. Qualitative (both can be dependent or
independent)
• QI score is quantitative.
• Work satisfaction of 7 on 10. Quantitative.
• Qualitative variables: cannot be quantified.

• Ex: Immigrants who learn French will be 30% richer after 10 years.
Immigrants who learn French will have a greater sense of belonging to
Quebec after 10 years.
• 30% richer = quantitative
• “Sense of belonging” is kind of vague, not precise number = qualitative variable.
Causality vs. Correlation
• The broccoli example. Is it BECAUSE kids eat broccoli that they are more
intelligent? The two things are true… but is one the cause of the other?

• Correlation: when two things come together.

• In Canada, the more a grocery store sells ice cream during a week, the more
robberies there are in the neighborhood. These two facts correlate. But is one the
cause of the other? No.
• In Canada, adverse weather conditions in the winter limit robberies in winter months.
Warmer temperatures cause more robberies (and more ice cream to be sold).

• Causality: when one variable causes another to change.

How to establish causality?
1. Temporal order. One comes before the other.
2. Establish the correlation between the independent and dependent variable
is consistent.
The more a student works outside of school (ind.) the
more his/her grades drops (dep).
3. Eliminate other explanations.
4. Theoretical consistency: flesh out the logic behind this explanation.
• Explain exceptions, etc. Ex: only work 4 hours a week in a paper writing help center
which helps you write better helps your grades. Very different than a 40h a week job.
• 8-12 hours might make you more organized, actually help, but after that it is
detrimental.
Exploratory vs. Descriptive vs. explanatory
research.

*Before anything, note there are overlaps in most research.

Exploratory: when there is limited information, design research to help

prepare for future research, to find out how things are like.
Ex: Is it true that students’ mental health is declining because of
COVID, or is it a Media myth?
Descriptive: Once you figure out it is not a myth, then next step is to
describe it clearly, in all variations. Male vs. Female. Age, etc.
Explanatory: go beyond description. Collect data to show why.
**Different type of research = different methods. Exploratory more
qualitative. Explanatory more quantitative.