IBCOM year 1
ISSR Notes
Chapter 1
The basis of knowledge is agreement.
Science offers an approach to both agreement reality and experiential reality.
An assertion must have both logical and empirical support.
Agreement reality - Those things we "know" as part and parcel of the culture we share with those
around us.
Epistemology - The science of knowing, systems of knowledge.
Methodology - The science of finding out, procedures for scientific investigation.
A subfield of epistemology
Ordinary human inquiry
Future circumstances are somehow caused or conditioned by present ones.
o Patterns of cause and effect are probabilistic in nature.
o Effects occur more often when the causes occur than when the causes
are absent, but not always.
We make predictions without understanding.
Our attempts to learn about the world are only partly linked to direct, personal inquiry
and experience.
o A much larger part comes from the agreed-on knowledge that others
give us.
Tradition
Each individuals inherits a culture made up of firmly accepted knowledge about the
values and workings of the world that guide our participation.
o Offers clear advantages to human inquiry.
Authority
New knowledge appears everyday, acceptance of these new acquisitions depends on
the status of the discoverer.
Both tradition and authority are double-edged swords, they provide us with a starting point for our
own inquiry, but they can lead us to start at the wrong point and push us off in the wrong direction.
Common errors we make in our casual inquiries:
Inaccurate observations
o We often disagree on what really happened, as most of our daily
observations are casual and semiconscious.
Overgeneralization
o We often assume that a few similar events are evidence of a general
pattern.
Selective observation
, o Once you conclude a particular pattern exists, you tend to focus on
future events and situations that fit the pattern.
Illogical reasoning
o Gambler's fallacy - A consistent run of either good or bad luck is
presumed to foreshadow its opposite.
Replication - Repeating an experiment to expose or reduce error.
A scientific understanding of the world must make sense and correspond with what we observe.
Both elements are essential to science and relate to the three major aspects of
scientific enterprise: Theory, data collection, and data analysis.
o Theory deals with logic
o Data collection deals with observation
o Data analysis deals with patterns with what is observed, and the
comparison with what is logically expected.
Social science theory has to do with what is, not with what should be.
Scientific theory cannot settle debates on value
Theory - A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life.
Social regularities
Social science theory aims to find patterns in social life.
The vast number of formal norms in society create a considerable degree of regularity.
Objections:
The charge of triviality
o Reference group theory - People judge their lot in life less by objective
conditions than by comparing themselves with others around them.
Apparent triviality is not a legitimate objection to scientific
endeavor.
People could interfere
o The objection that the conscious will of the actors could upset observed
social regularities.
Aggregate - Collective actions and situations of many individuals.
Attributes - A characteristic of a person or a thing.
Categories that make up a variable.
Variables - A logical set of attributes.
The variable sex is made up of the attributes male and female.
Independent variable - A variable with values that are not problematical in an analysis but are taken
as simply given. An independent variable is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.
The cause
Dependent variable - A variable assumed to depend on or be caused by another (called the
independent variable).
The effect
, Idiographic - An approach to explanation in which we seek to exhaust the idiosyncratic causes of a
particular condition or event.
When completing an idiographic explanation, we feel that we fully understand the
causes of what happened in this particular instance.
Nomothetic - An approach to explanation in which we seek to identify a few causal factors that
generally impact a class of conditions or events.
Explains using just a few explanatory factors. Settles for a partial rather than a full
explanation.
Induction - The logical model in which general principles are developed from specific observations.
Moves from particular to general
Discovery does not necessarily tell you why the pattern exists, just that it does.
Deduction - The logical model in which specific expectations of hypotheses are developed on the
basis of general principles.
Moves from general to particular
Moves from a pattern that might logically or theoretically expected to be true, to
observations that test whether the expected pattern actually occurs.
Determinism versus Agency
Each of us possess considerable free choice or agency, but we readily allow ourselves
to be controlled by environmental forces and factors.
Tolerance for ambiguity - The ability to hold conflicting ideas in your mind
simultaneously, without denying or dismissing any of them.
Qualitative and Quantitative
Quantification often makes our observations more explicit. It can also make
aggregating and summarizing our data easier.
o Works better with nomothetic explanations.
Qualitative data are richer in meaning and detail.
o Works better with idiographic explanations.
Chapter 2 (43-60)
Three main elements in the traditional model of science: Theory, operationalization, and
observation.
Theory
Scientists begin with a theory, from which they derive a hypothesis that they can test.
Hypothesis - A specified testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from
a more general proposition, more generally an expectation about the nature of things
derived from a theory. It is a statement of something that ought to be observed in the
real world if the theory is correct.
Operationalization
To test a hypothesis, we must specify the meanings of all the variables involved. Next,
we need to specify how we will measure the variables we have defined.
Operationalization - One step beyond conceptualization. The process of developing
operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a
variable.
ISSR Notes
Chapter 1
The basis of knowledge is agreement.
Science offers an approach to both agreement reality and experiential reality.
An assertion must have both logical and empirical support.
Agreement reality - Those things we "know" as part and parcel of the culture we share with those
around us.
Epistemology - The science of knowing, systems of knowledge.
Methodology - The science of finding out, procedures for scientific investigation.
A subfield of epistemology
Ordinary human inquiry
Future circumstances are somehow caused or conditioned by present ones.
o Patterns of cause and effect are probabilistic in nature.
o Effects occur more often when the causes occur than when the causes
are absent, but not always.
We make predictions without understanding.
Our attempts to learn about the world are only partly linked to direct, personal inquiry
and experience.
o A much larger part comes from the agreed-on knowledge that others
give us.
Tradition
Each individuals inherits a culture made up of firmly accepted knowledge about the
values and workings of the world that guide our participation.
o Offers clear advantages to human inquiry.
Authority
New knowledge appears everyday, acceptance of these new acquisitions depends on
the status of the discoverer.
Both tradition and authority are double-edged swords, they provide us with a starting point for our
own inquiry, but they can lead us to start at the wrong point and push us off in the wrong direction.
Common errors we make in our casual inquiries:
Inaccurate observations
o We often disagree on what really happened, as most of our daily
observations are casual and semiconscious.
Overgeneralization
o We often assume that a few similar events are evidence of a general
pattern.
Selective observation
, o Once you conclude a particular pattern exists, you tend to focus on
future events and situations that fit the pattern.
Illogical reasoning
o Gambler's fallacy - A consistent run of either good or bad luck is
presumed to foreshadow its opposite.
Replication - Repeating an experiment to expose or reduce error.
A scientific understanding of the world must make sense and correspond with what we observe.
Both elements are essential to science and relate to the three major aspects of
scientific enterprise: Theory, data collection, and data analysis.
o Theory deals with logic
o Data collection deals with observation
o Data analysis deals with patterns with what is observed, and the
comparison with what is logically expected.
Social science theory has to do with what is, not with what should be.
Scientific theory cannot settle debates on value
Theory - A systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of life.
Social regularities
Social science theory aims to find patterns in social life.
The vast number of formal norms in society create a considerable degree of regularity.
Objections:
The charge of triviality
o Reference group theory - People judge their lot in life less by objective
conditions than by comparing themselves with others around them.
Apparent triviality is not a legitimate objection to scientific
endeavor.
People could interfere
o The objection that the conscious will of the actors could upset observed
social regularities.
Aggregate - Collective actions and situations of many individuals.
Attributes - A characteristic of a person or a thing.
Categories that make up a variable.
Variables - A logical set of attributes.
The variable sex is made up of the attributes male and female.
Independent variable - A variable with values that are not problematical in an analysis but are taken
as simply given. An independent variable is presumed to cause or determine a dependent variable.
The cause
Dependent variable - A variable assumed to depend on or be caused by another (called the
independent variable).
The effect
, Idiographic - An approach to explanation in which we seek to exhaust the idiosyncratic causes of a
particular condition or event.
When completing an idiographic explanation, we feel that we fully understand the
causes of what happened in this particular instance.
Nomothetic - An approach to explanation in which we seek to identify a few causal factors that
generally impact a class of conditions or events.
Explains using just a few explanatory factors. Settles for a partial rather than a full
explanation.
Induction - The logical model in which general principles are developed from specific observations.
Moves from particular to general
Discovery does not necessarily tell you why the pattern exists, just that it does.
Deduction - The logical model in which specific expectations of hypotheses are developed on the
basis of general principles.
Moves from general to particular
Moves from a pattern that might logically or theoretically expected to be true, to
observations that test whether the expected pattern actually occurs.
Determinism versus Agency
Each of us possess considerable free choice or agency, but we readily allow ourselves
to be controlled by environmental forces and factors.
Tolerance for ambiguity - The ability to hold conflicting ideas in your mind
simultaneously, without denying or dismissing any of them.
Qualitative and Quantitative
Quantification often makes our observations more explicit. It can also make
aggregating and summarizing our data easier.
o Works better with nomothetic explanations.
Qualitative data are richer in meaning and detail.
o Works better with idiographic explanations.
Chapter 2 (43-60)
Three main elements in the traditional model of science: Theory, operationalization, and
observation.
Theory
Scientists begin with a theory, from which they derive a hypothesis that they can test.
Hypothesis - A specified testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from
a more general proposition, more generally an expectation about the nature of things
derived from a theory. It is a statement of something that ought to be observed in the
real world if the theory is correct.
Operationalization
To test a hypothesis, we must specify the meanings of all the variables involved. Next,
we need to specify how we will measure the variables we have defined.
Operationalization - One step beyond conceptualization. The process of developing
operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a
variable.
