D821 Day School presentation

1. D821/D822 Day School, London
November 2009

2.  In this session we will discuss the dominant views
in social research.
 But our first question should be
◦ ‘What is social research for?’
 Any thoughts?

3.  As postgraduate students, many of you have done
degrees.
 However as a Social Science student you will
have some ideas about the way you think the
social sciences should be studied.
 Knowledge and knowing questionnaire
 Where do your biases lie?

4.  Do you think that our view of the world will
influence our research?
 When we look at the philosophy of research two
words emerge amongst the jargon:
 Ontology and epistemology

5.  The theory of being
◦ concerned with what we believe to exist (Hart, 1998:81)
 Arguments about what there is, ‘out there,’ to know about.
 Can be thought of as a spectrum:
realism relativism
There REALLY
is a REAL world
out there!
Yeah, right,
whatever …

6.  Epistemology refers to the theories of knowledge we devise to
help us to understand the real world.
 They are often associated with specific assumptions
 Arguments about what it is possible to know about something.
We really can get reliable,
factual knowledge about the
psycho-social world, if we use
objective methods of
empirical inquiry.
But many aspects of the psycho-social
world aren’t even observable - and
anyway, our ‘objective’ knowledge is
always turning out to be subjective – they
are contingent upon all kinds of social,
cultural and historical contexts. Actually,
its rare to come across a real ‘fact’ in the
social science!
realism relativism

7.  Positivism is an empiricist form of realism
which believes that we can know about the
causes and effects of behaviour.
 [Critical] realism is a cautious form of realism
which believes that we can know about
underlying structures.
 Interactionism is an idealist form of relativism
which believes that we can know about shared
meaning-making.
Three key ‘in between’ positions for
this course

8.  Studies closed systems e.g. tightly controlled
 Knowledge is value-free
 Uses empirical evidence(that which is gained
through the senses)
 Objective; carries out observations using scientific
methods
 Uses quantitative methods
 Aims to establish causal relationships and derive
laws
 Theories must be falsifiable
 Social phenomena should be studied scientifically
by making them observable and breaking them into
small units

10.  Studies open systems e.g. many influences
 Considers a range of factors important to
understanding behaviour
 Values an integral part of research
 Importance of understanding from an insider
viewpoint
 Understanding is constructed via shared
constructs and traditions of thought
 Acknowledges many ways of perceiving the world.
 Uses qualitative methods

11.  Aims to explore the range of factors which
contribute to understanding behaviour downplays
the role of explanation
 Prediction may not be possible; social phenomena
are fragile, contingent and local.
 Social phenomena are processes not entities, and
can only be studied by looking at meaningful
human interaction

12.  Studies open systems and acknowledges the
complexity of reality
 Emancipatory: considers that we have the
potential to change structures.
 Emphasises the importance of unobservable
phenomena, e.g. social structures such as class
 Potential for us to be misled by appearances, but
there is a real world which is independent of this.
 Open to varied range of methods

13.  Argues that empirical regularities are not essential
for causality.
 Predictions are possible but not infallible. Theories
cannot be decisively tested.
 Social science should study the deep structures
that underlie behaviour.

14. Three understandings of reality are invoked
(Burr, 1998):
 Reality as truth – [vs falsehood]
 Reality as materiality – [vs illusion]
 Reality as essence – [vs construction]
[There is a lot of binary, oppositional thinking involved in
these ‘debates’].

15.  Which position do you usually take?
 Epistemologically speaking …

16.  Methodology is the study of methods
 The word "method" has its roots in the ancient Greek
term “methodos”.
 Methodos has been translated to have two meanings.
◦ A technical interpretation as "the path toward
knowledge“
◦ A philosophical interpretation as "reflections on the
quest for knowledge gathered".

17.  Method is often held to follow from epistemology.
 If we feel that individuals hold the key to understanding
social phenomenon whom will we study?
◦ – groups or
◦ - individuals?

18. Validity
 ecological validity, are we testing what we think
we are testing?
◦ do laboratory tests generalise to the real world?
Causality
 Research can establish a link between two factors
e.g. Job status and job satisfaction but that does
not necessarily imply causal relations between the
two.
 Correlation –
◦ A correlation does not imply causation

19.  There are many unobservable factors involved in social
research, as researchers we infer meaning.
 Meanings may change and are bound up with societal
norms etc.

20.  We are all part of a society with it’s own culture,
therefore it is difficult to remain detached whilst
researching the society we are part of.
 Therefore societal values do influence social
scientific knowledge.
 Subject-object problem:
◦ How knowledge is shaped by historical and social norms,
values, constraints and pre-conceptions

21.  Research is reflexive
 Research is an iterative process
 Researchers should be self-critical
◦ We learn as we go along
 What parts of our last experiment worked well or not
 Will we change our methods, procedures, stimuli etc.
 We lay down markers for future researchers
 Research involves a process of learning about
research itself.

22. E.g.
 Observe behaviour, exclude values through
closure: measures outcomes.
 Grant structures a real theoretical status &
explore their explanatory merit; values form part
of these structures.
 Engage with meaning, reveal values through
reflexive practices: understand processes.

23.  People have in-built preferred learning styles (like
visualiser-verbaliser)
 These styles can be objectively measured and/or
categorised
 Learning Material can be “tailored” such that a
match to the individual learning style results in
better learning

24.  There exists a personality trait “learning styles”
 More generally there exist a collection of
personality traits capable of measurement:
Learning Styles is hypothesised to be one of them

25.  Realist and Positivist:
The learning style (personality trait) exists and can
be measured objectively
 The idea of matching teaching to style is an
hypothesis for investigation

26.  Measures of learning styles are notoriously
unreliable
 Matching students to style produces such a small
advantage (it may even be negative) that the effort
of producing tailored material outweighs any
benefit found
 Maybe they don’t exist at all

27. Consider how you would approach some of the
ECA topics with the various positions we have just
discussed in mind.