The Research Process Last week, we learned that sociologists are great at asking “Why?” and then using sociological thinking practices—such as engaging the sociological imagination—to find answers to their questions. We also examined four common theoretical perspectives that sociologists use as models to better understand the social world. The point to remember If sociologists hope to use research to reveal truths about society, then their research needs to be as organized, unbiased, and accurate as possible. This week is all about the how: about sociology as a social science, and how sociologists use the scientific method to conduct research and draw conclusions based on evidence. That evidence can be ethnographic interviews and field research, the kind Tamara Mose used to understand why Caribbean domestic workers formed groups that met together in Brooklyn’s public parks. Evidence can also come from numbers-driven research, using facts and figures to find patterns and interpret meaning. If sociologists hope to use their research to reveal truths about society and make the world a better place—and many do!—then sociological research needs to be as organized, unbiased, and accurate as possible. Let’s look briefly at one real-life study, and how the researchers think it might help improve children’s lives. Some sociologists do research for its own sake. Other sociologists, like Jason Houle, also do research that can benefit society. Tamara Mose, for example, hopes her research will help improve working and living conditions for nannies. Whatever the goals of their research, sociologists follow the scientific method as they gather information that they then analyze. To examine the research process in sociology, we will discuss the following topics in this chapter: • Sociology as a social science. This means that the scientific method is used by sociologists as they try to understand the various aspects of society. • Steps of the sociological research process. From choosing a research topic to analyzing data, each step of the research process will be discussed. • Four sociological research methods. The most common data collection methods will be presented along with the practical and ethical issues sociologists sometimes encounter in using them. What does it mean for sociology to be a social science? Like anthropology, economics, political science, and psychology, sociology is a social science. All these disciplines use research to try to understand various aspects of human thought and behavior. Although this chapter naturally focuses on sociological research methods, much of the discussion is also relevant for research in the other social and behavioral sciences. When we say that sociology is a social science, we mean that it uses the scientific method to try to understand the many aspects of society that sociologists study. An important goal is to yield generalizations—general statements regarding trends among various dimensions of social life. We discussed many such generalizations in Chapter 1, such as that men are more likely than women to commit suicide, or that African Americans were more likely to support Clinton than Trump in 2016. A generalization is just that: a statement of a tendency, rather than a hard-and-fast law. For example, the statement that men are more likely than women to commit suicide does not mean that every man commits suicide and no woman commits suicide. It means only that men have a higher suicide rate, even though most men, of course, do not commit suicide. Similarly, the statement that African Americans were more likely to support Clinton than Trump in 2016 does not mean that all African Americans supported Clinton; it means only that they were more likely than not to do so. Some people will not fit the pattern of such a generalization, because people are shaped but not totally determined by their social environment. That is both the frustration and the fascination of sociology. Sociology is frustrating because people can never be totally explained by their social environment, so sociologists can never completely understand the sources of their behavior, attitudes, and life chances. But sociology is fascinating for the same reason. No matter how well sociologists are able to predict most people’s behavior, attitudes, and life chances, some people will not fit those predictions. And even though perfect predictions are impossible, the patterns sociologists identify still provide enormously valuable insights that lead to improvements in social policies. The point to remember Even though perfect predictions are impossible, the patterns sociologists identify still provide enormously valuable insights that lead to improvements in social policies. In this sense, sociology as a social science is very different from a discipline such as physics, in which known laws exist for which no exceptions are possible. For example, we call the law of gravity a law because it describes a physical force that exists on the earth at all times and in all places and that always has the same result. If you were to drop the computer or other device you’re reading this webtext on, it would definitely fall to the ground. If you did this a second time, it would fall a second time. If you did this a billion times, it would fall a billion times. In fact, if there were even one time out of a billion that your electronic device did not fall down, our understanding of the physical world would be totally revolutionized. For better or worse, people are less predictable than this object that keeps falling down. Sociology can help us understand the social forces that affect our behavior, beliefs, and life chances, but it can only go so far. That limitation conceded, sociological understanding can still go fairly far toward such an understanding, and it can help us comprehend who we are and what we are by helping us first understand the profound yet often subtle influence of our social backgrounds on so many things about us. The point to remember Sociology relies heavily on systematic research that follows the standard rules of the scientific method. Although sociology as a discipline is very different from physics, it is not as different as one might think from this and the other “hard” sciences. Like these disciplines, sociology as a social science relies heavily on systematic research that follows the standard rules of the scientific method. We return to these rules and the nature of sociological research later in this chapter. For now, remember that careful research is essential for a sociological understanding of people, social institutions, and society. At this point a reader might be saying, “I already know a lot about people. I could have told you that young people voted for Obama. I’d already heard that men have a higher suicide rate than women. Maybe our social backgrounds do influence us in ways I hadn’t realized, but what does sociology have to tell me beyond that?” Students often feel this way because sociology deals with matters already familiar to them. Just about everyone has grown up in a family, so we all know something about it. We read a lot in the media about topics like divorce and health care, so we already know something about these issues too. All this leads some students to wonder if they’ll learn anything in their introductory sociology course that they don’t already know. What we think we know about social reality, however, isn’t always reliable. Sociology as a Social Science: Getting to the Truth Where do we get our knowledge and understanding of social reality? Let’s consider this issue for a moment: how do we know what we think we know? Our usual knowledge and understanding of social reality comes from at least five sources: • personal experience • common sense • the media (including the Internet) • “expert authorities,” such as teachers, parents, and government officials • tradition These are all important sources of our understanding of how the world “works,” but at the same time their value can often be very limited. Personal Experience Let’s look at these sources separately by starting with personal experience. Although personal experiences are very important, not everyone has the same personal experience. This fact casts some doubt on the degree to which our personal experiences can help us understand everything about a topic and the degree to which we can draw conclusions from them that necessarily apply to other people. For example, say you grew up in Maine or Vermont, where more than 94% of the population is white. If you relied on your personal experience to calculate how many nonwhite people live in the country, you would conclude that almost everyone in the United States is also white, which certainly is not true. As another example, say you grew up in a family where your parents had the proverbial perfect marriage, as they loved each other deeply and rarely argued. If you relied on your personal experience to understand the typical American marriage, you would conclude that most marriages were as good as your parents’ marriage, which, unfortunately, also is not true. Many other examples could be cited here, but the basic point should be clear: although personal experience is better than nothing, it often offers only a very limited understanding of social reality outside of our own. Common Sense If personal experience doesn’t help that much when it comes to making predictions, what about common sense? Although common sense can be very helpful, it can also contradict itself. For example, which makes more sense, haste makes waste or he or she who hesitates is lost? How about birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract? Or two heads are better than one versus too many cooks spoil the broth? Each of these common sayings makes sense, but if sayings that oppose each other both make sense, where does the truth lie? Can common sense always be counted on to help us understand social life? Slightly more than a century ago, some of the leading physicians in the United States believed that women should not go to college because the stress of higher education would disrupt their menstrual cycles (Ehrenreich & English, 1979). If that bit (or lack) of common sense were still with us, many of the women reading this book would not be in college. Still, perhaps there are some things that make so much sense they just have to be true. Here is an example of such an argument with regard to the issue of abortion. Because pregnancy and childbirth affect women so directly, they should be more likely than men to think that abortion should be legal. The trouble with this seemingly obvious assumption is that the “obvious” turns out not to be true after all. In the 2014 General Social Survey, which was given to a random sample of Americans, respondents were asked if they thought an abortion should be legal if a “woman wants it for any reason.” Almost 44% of women responded “yes” to this question, but men, at 47.1%, were slightly more likely to respond “yes” (see Figure 2.1). As these numbers show, women were, in fact, less likely than men to favor legal abortion! What we all “knew” was obvious, based on common sense, turns out not to have been so obvious after all. The Media Now that we’ve seen that personal experience and common sense can’t be relied on as sources of information about social reality, how about the media? We learn a lot about current events and social and political issues from the Internet, television news broadcasts, newspapers and magazines, and other media sources. It is certainly important to keep up with the news, but media coverage may oversimplify complex topics or even distort what the best evidence from systematic research seems to be telling us. A good example here is crime. Many studies show that the media tends to sensationalize crime and suggest there is much more violent crime than there really is. For example, in the early 1990s, the evening newscasts on the major networks increased their coverage of murder and other violent crimes, painting a picture of a nation where crime was growing rapidly. The reality was very different, however, as crime was actually declining. The view that crime was growing was thus a myth generated by the media (Kurtz, 1997). The widespread use of misinformation and “fake news” prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election has brought the issue of critical media consumption to the forefront of public debate. The link below provides an assessment of fake news and social media, with some tips for evaluating sources you find online. • ABOUT RESEARCHSCAPES On Fake News and Research Skills NOVEMBER 21, 2016 / FRED FOLMER / 1 COMMENT In light of the emergence of fake news as one of the key stories following the 2016 presidential election, it’s worth (re-)considering the importance of evaluating information to any research process—whether that process involves writing a paper or gathering information about a candidate for office. Although developing evaluation skills has always been integral to any research process, it’s arguably even more urgently needed now. That’s because libraries are no longer the sole gatekeepers of information, and it’s now possible to simply do a quick search on the web, find something that appears to relate to the topic at hand, and either forward to someone else, or incorporate it into a paper or other piece of research. As has been widely reported, a great deal of the fake news now circulates on social media networks. In this New York Times op-ed written by Zeynep Tufekci, a professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina, the author takes Facebook to task for becoming a platform for misinformation campaigns (the pope endorses Donald Trump! An FBI agent who leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails found dead!). Part of the problem, Tufekci argues, is Facebook’s algorithmic system, which promotes updates based on whether users find them “comforting.” But research isn’t supposed to be comforting; neither, correspondingly, is the moral and ethical work of citizenship. And helping students learn the moral and ethical work of citizenship is—or should be—in large part why we teach research skills on a college campus. There have been signs that Facebook is taking steps to limit the fake news stories that are shared on its servers, but researchers—that is, those doing a paper or those simply gathering information to make an informed choice on an election—need to ask themselves a set of questions about every source they’re using, no matter how much the source may support one’s thesis or existing worldview, and no matter how much that source has been useful in the past. First, who is responsible for the piece? A name isn’t enough; one needs to ask about the author’s credentials or authority to have written something on a particular topic. If it’s a news story, does it come from a reputable service—one that checks its facts, verifies its sources and provides multiple perspectives? Some of the fake Facebook posts came from the “Denver Guardian,” which sounds great until one realizes that no such news source exists. (Go ahead, Google it.) Second, when was the piece written? In this election season, I saw articles forwarded and shared on social media that had been created months and even years earlier, making it seem as though they had just appeared. But facts and situations can change quickly, and in many research or fact-finding situations, it’s important to have current information, or at least to be aware of when an article appeared so that its date of creation can factor into one’s judgment about it. Why was the piece written? To report the news, or to advance knowledge in a particular field? To get someone elected to an office? To spread fear, or to propagandize an issue? To make money? This question is often entangled with who wrote the story, but it’s equally important. (To think about the ways in which who wrote a piece can be bound up with why he or she wrote it, I suggest checking out this self-exculpatory New York Times op-ed written by someone who works for WikiLeaks.) How and where did the author(s) get their information? In scholarly writing, this is precisely why citations must be provided—so that authors cannot simply assert something without some kind of backup. We need to be able to believe what authors are saying; it’s equally important to be able to verify their sources. I’ve been trying to share the above questions with the first-year seminars with whom I’ve worked this past semester. We’ve looked at sources we found on the web and tried to think about evaluating them based on the above questions, rather than applying such abstract, blanket maxims such as “sites that come from a .edu or .org address are okay.” That’s not necessarily true; it’s always necessary to look closer at each article or book. One of the first-year seminars I worked with was entitled “Performing Citizenship.” It was striking to me that the course focus and our work with evaluating sources were in particular alignment—and, similarly, that the task of critically evaluating research information and that of truly becoming an informed, participating citizen are one and the same. Whenever we undertake or assign research—and learn or teach the requisite skills to perform this research—we would do well to keep the responsibilities and imperatives of citizenship in full view. — Fred Folmer The point to remember Since we can’t always trust personal experience, common sense, the media, expert authority, or tradition to help us understand social reality, we need the systematic research gathered by sociologists. Stages of the Research Process Sociological research consists of the several stages listed below. Each step is very important and helps contribute to the overall reliability of the final conclusions reached about the study. 1. Choose a research topic. As mentioned in Chapter 1, sociologists excel at asking “Why” questions, which is a good way to arrive at a research topic. 2. Review the literature. After choosing a topic, the researcher must then search to see what’s already known about that topic and where there are gaps in understanding that could be investigated. 3. State the hypothesis. Based on the information from the literature review, a specific research question will be developed to guide the design of the study, and typically the researcher will then form a hypothesis that predicts what the outcome of the study will be based on the existing research. 4. Begin research. At this stage, the researcher needs data to answer the research question and test the hypothesis, and so a plan is developed to either use an existing data set or collect new data. 5. Collect data. In this step, the researcher executes the plan formed in the previous step and either gets a data set or collects new data through a survey, experiment, interviews, or observation. 6. Analyze data. Using statistical analysis or other systematic techniques, the researcher reviews the data to determine the results of the study. 7. Draw a conclusion. Based on the results of the data collected and analyzed, the researcher can determine whether the hypothesis was supported or not and draw appropriate conclusions Determining Credibility One of the most important parts of conducting a literature review or doing any kind of research is deciding which sources are trustworthy. In Chapter 1, we discussed the importance of critical thinking, and it plays a key role here, too. For your own research in this course and others, you can determine credibility by considering the following questions, which are based on the five elements of the “CRAAP Test” developed by librarians at California State University, Chico. • Currency: How timely is the information? If you’re writing about recent trends (as sociologists often are), then you need to have up-to-date information. Recent information is more likely to be reliable, but warning flags should go up if the source was published a decade ago or hasn’t been updated in years. Keep an eye out for broken links, too, since that can potentially indicate a site that hasn’t received any TLC in some time. Whenever possible, seek out sources that are recent and up-to-date, especially in relation to your chosen topic. • Relevance: How important is the information to your needs? Not only should the information in your source be up-to-date, but it should also be relevant to the needs of your research. Primarily, the source’s information should relate to your topic or answer your question, but it should also be appropriate for your intended audience. Be aware of the “level” of the language in your source. If it is either too elementary or too advanced for your needs or those of your audience, you should look for another source. • Authority: Who is the source of the information? Be sure to check the source of your information. If you don’t recognize an author’s name, conduct an Internet search to find out what else he or she has written, where it was published, and what other people have had to say about it. If you can, read up on the author’s education, credentials and relevant experience. Anyone can have a blog, but not everyone is qualified to speak with knowledge and authority about your topic. Also be sure to examine the URL; commercial “.com” or nonprofit “.org” websites are often less reliable than educational “.edu” or government-based “.gov” sites. Sites that are missing contact information may also be trouble, but note that if a site is only missing an author name, it may still be credible; just use the other questions to evaluate its credibility. • Accuracy: How reliable, truthful, and correct is the content? To determine how accurate the content itself is, make sure that it is supported by evidence that can be verified. A source is more likely to be credible if it backs up its points with evidence from other sources, and if it cites those sources in a way that lets you find them and evaluate them. If your source doesn’t provide references, check its content against other sources to see if it’s consistent. Also watch for (and avoid) websites with spelling, grammar, or typographical errors. Sloppy writing that clearly has not been proofread is much more likely to contain inaccurate or biased information. • Purpose: Why does the information exist? A source’s purpose and affiliation can tell you a lot about whether the source is trustworthy. When your source is funded by an advocacy organization, a political party, a religious group, or the like, be especially aware of potential biases in the information being presented. Any group that clearly has a distinct stance on an issue or an agenda to promote is unlikely to be objective. Whenever possible, seek out sources that provide factual, accurate data from an unbiased perspective. Remember that the organization funding the source might have some control over its content.

The Research Process

Last week, we learned that sociologists are great at asking “Why?” and then using sociological thinking practices—such as engaging the sociological imagination—to find answers to their questions. We also examined four common theoretical perspectives that sociologists use as models to better understand the social world.

The point to remember

If sociologists hope to use research to reveal truths about society, then their research needs to be as organized, unbiased, and accurate as possible.

This week is all about the how: about sociology as a social science, and how sociologists use the scientific method to conduct research and draw conclusions based on evidence. That evidence can be ethnographic interviews and field research, the kind Tamara Mose used to understand why Caribbean domestic workers formed groups that met together in Brooklyn’s public parks. Evidence can also come from numbers-driven research, using facts and figures to find patterns and interpret meaning. If sociologists hope to use their research to reveal truths about society and make the world a better place—and many do!—then sociological research needs to be as organized, unbiased, and accurate as possible. Let’s look briefly at one real-life study, and how the researchers think it might help improve children’s lives.

Some sociologists do research for its own sake. Other sociologists, like Jason Houle, also do research that can benefit society. Tamara Mose, for example, hopes her research will help improve working and living conditions for nannies. Whatever the goals of their research, sociologists follow the scientific method as they gather information that they then analyze. To examine the research process in sociology, we will discuss the following topics in this chapter:

• Sociology as a social science. This means that the scientific method is used by sociologists as they try to understand the various aspects of society.
• Steps of the sociological research process. From choosing a research topic to analyzing data, each step of the research process will be discussed.
• Four sociological research methods. The most common data collection methods will be presented along with the practical and ethical issues sociologists sometimes encounter in using them.

 

 

What does it mean for sociology to be a social science?

Like anthropology, economics, political science, and psychology, sociology is a social science. All these disciplines use research to try to understand various aspects of human thought and behavior. Although this chapter naturally focuses on sociological research methods, much of the discussion is also relevant for research in the other social and behavioral sciences.

When we say that sociology is a social science, we mean that it uses the scientific method to try to understand the many aspects of society that sociologists study. An important goal is to yield generalizations—general statements regarding trends among various dimensions of social life. We discussed many such generalizations in Chapter 1, such as that men are more likely than women to commit suicide, or that African Americans were more likely to support Clinton than Trump in 2016. A generalization is just that: a statement of a tendency, rather than a hard-and-fast law. For example, the statement that men are more likely than women to commit suicide does not mean that every man commits suicide and no woman commits suicide. It means only that men have a higher suicide rate, even though most men, of course, do not commit suicide. Similarly, the statement that African Americans were more likely to support Clinton than Trump in 2016 does not mean that all African Americans supported Clinton; it means only that they were more likely than not to do so.

Some people will not fit the pattern of such a generalization, because people are shaped but not totally determined by their social environment. That is both the frustration and the fascination of sociology. Sociology is frustrating because people can never be totally explained by their social environment, so sociologists can never completely understand the sources of their behavior, attitudes, and life chances. But sociology is fascinating for the same reason. No matter how well sociologists are able to predict most people’s behavior, attitudes, and life chances, some people will not fit those predictions. And even though perfect predictions are impossible, the patterns sociologists identify still provide enormously valuable insights that lead to improvements in social policies.

The point to remember

Even though perfect predictions are impossible, the patterns sociologists identify still provide enormously valuable insights that lead to improvements in social policies.

In this sense, sociology as a social science is very different from a discipline such as physics, in which known laws exist for which no exceptions are possible. For example, we call the law of gravity a law because it describes a physical force that exists on the earth at all times and in all places and that always has the same result. If you were to drop the computer or other device you’re reading this webtext on, it would definitely fall to the ground. If you did this a second time, it would fall a second time. If you did this a billion times, it would fall a billion times. In fact, if there were even one time out of a billion that your electronic device did not fall down, our understanding of the physical world would be totally revolutionized.

For better or worse, people are less predictable than this object that keeps falling down. Sociology can help us understand the social forces that affect our behavior, beliefs, and life chances, but it can only go so far. That limitation conceded, sociological understanding can still go fairly far toward such an understanding, and it can help us comprehend who we are and what we are by helping us first understand the profound yet often subtle influence of our social backgrounds on so many things about us.

The point to remember

Sociology relies heavily on systematic research that follows the standard rules of the scientific method.

Although sociology as a discipline is very different from physics, it is not as different as one might think from this and the other “hard” sciences. Like these disciplines, sociology as a social science relies heavily on systematic research that follows the standard rules of the scientific method. We return to these rules and the nature of sociological research later in this chapter. For now, remember that careful research is essential for a sociological understanding of people, social institutions, and society.

At this point a reader might be saying, “I already know a lot about people. I could have told you that young people voted for Obama. I’d already heard that men have a higher suicide rate than women. Maybe our social backgrounds do influence us in ways I hadn’t realized, but what does sociology have to tell me beyond that?”

Students often feel this way because sociology deals with matters already familiar to them. Just about everyone has grown up in a family, so we all know something about it. We read a lot in the media about topics like divorce and health care, so we already know something about these issues too. All this leads some students to wonder if they’ll learn anything in their introductory sociology course that they don’t already know. What we think we know about social reality, however, isn’t always reliable.

Sociology as a Social Science: Getting to the Truth

Where do we get our knowledge and understanding of social reality?

Let’s consider this issue for a moment: how do we know what we think we know? Our usual knowledge and understanding of social reality comes from at least five sources:

• personal experience
• common sense
• the media (including the Internet)
• “expert authorities,” such as teachers, parents, and government officials
• tradition

These are all important sources of our understanding of how the world “works,” but at the same time their value can often be very limited.

Personal Experience

Let’s look at these sources separately by starting with personal experience. Although personal experiences are very important, not everyone has the same personal experience. This fact casts some doubt on the degree to which our personal experiences can help us understand everything about a topic and the degree to which we can draw conclusions from them that necessarily apply to other people. For example, say you grew up in Maine or Vermont, where more than 94% of the population is white. If you relied on your personal experience to calculate how many nonwhite people live in the country, you would conclude that almost everyone in the United States is also white, which certainly is not true. As another example, say you grew up in a family where your parents had the proverbial perfect marriage, as they loved each other deeply and rarely argued. If you relied on your personal experience to understand the typical American marriage, you would conclude that most marriages were as good as your parents’ marriage, which, unfortunately, also is not true. Many other examples could be cited here, but the basic point should be clear: although personal experience is better than nothing, it often offers only a very limited understanding of social reality outside of our own.

Common Sense

If personal experience doesn’t help that much when it comes to making predictions, what about common sense? Although common sense can be very helpful, it can also contradict itself. For example, which makes more sense, haste makes waste or he or she who hesitates is lost? How about birds of a feather flock together versus opposites attract? Or two heads are better than one versus too many cooks spoil the broth? Each of these common sayings makes sense, but if sayings that oppose each other both make sense, where does the truth lie? Can common sense always be counted on to help us understand social life? Slightly more than a century ago, some of the leading physicians in the United States believed that women should not go to college because the stress of higher education would disrupt their menstrual cycles (Ehrenreich & English, 1979). If that bit (or lack) of common sense were still with us, many of the women reading this book would not be in college.

 

Still, perhaps there are some things that make so much sense they just have to be true. Here is an example of such an argument with regard to the issue of abortion. Because pregnancy and childbirth affect women so directly, they should be more likely than men to think that abortion should be legal.

The trouble with this seemingly obvious assumption is that the “obvious” turns out not to be true after all. In the 2014 General Social Survey, which was given to a random sample of Americans, respondents were asked if they thought an abortion should be legal if a “woman wants it for any reason.” Almost 44% of women responded “yes” to this question, but men, at 47.1%, were slightly more likely to respond “yes” (see Figure 2.1). As these numbers show, women were, in fact, less likely than men to favor legal abortion! What we all “knew” was obvious, based on common sense, turns out not to have been so obvious after all.

 

 

 

The Media

Now that we’ve seen that personal experience and common sense can’t be relied on as sources of information about social reality, how about the media? We learn a lot about current events and social and political issues from the Internet, television news broadcasts, newspapers and magazines, and other media sources. It is certainly important to keep up with the news, but media coverage may oversimplify complex topics or even distort what the best evidence from systematic research seems to be telling us. A good example here is crime. Many studies show that the media tends to sensationalize crime and suggest there is much more violent crime than there really is. For example, in the early 1990s, the evening newscasts on the major networks increased their coverage of murder and other violent crimes, painting a picture of a nation where crime was growing rapidly. The reality was very different, however, as crime was actually declining. The view that crime was growing was thus a myth generated by the media (Kurtz, 1997).

The widespread use of misinformation and “fake news” prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election has brought the issue of critical media consumption to the forefront of public debate. The link below provides an assessment of fake news and social media, with some tips for evaluating sources you find online.

• About ResearchScapes

• About ResearchScapes

On Fake News and Research Skills

November 21, 2016 / Fred Folmer / 1 Comment

In light of the emergence of fake news as one of the key stories following the 2016 presidential election, it’s worth (re-)considering the importance of evaluating information to any research process—whether that process involves writing a paper or gathering information about a candidate for office.

Although developing evaluation skills has always been integral to any research process, it’s arguably even more urgently needed now. That’s because libraries are no longer the sole gatekeepers of information, and it’s now possible to simply do a quick search on the web, find something that appears to relate to the topic at hand, and either forward  to someone else, or incorporate it into a paper or other piece of research.

As has been widely reported, a great deal of the fake news now circulates on social media networks. In this New York Times op-ed written by Zeynep Tufekci, a professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina, the author takes Facebook to task for becoming a platform for misinformation campaigns (the pope endorses Donald Trump! An FBI agent who leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails found dead!).

Part of the problem, Tufekci argues, is Facebook’s algorithmic system, which promotes updates based on whether users find them “comforting.” But research isn’t supposed to be comforting; neither, correspondingly, is the moral and ethical work of citizenship. And helping students learn the moral and ethical work of citizenship is—or should be—in large part why we teach research skills on a college campus.

There have been signs that Facebook is taking steps to limit the fake news stories that are shared on its servers, but researchers—that is, those doing a paper or those simply gathering information to make an informed choice on an election—need to ask themselves a set of questions about every source they’re using, no matter how much the source may support one’s thesis or existing worldview, and no matter how much that source has been useful in the past.

First, who is responsible for the piece? A name isn’t enough; one needs to ask about the author’s credentials or authority to have written something on a particular topic. If it’s a news story, does it come from a reputable service—one that checks its facts, verifies its sources and provides multiple perspectives? Some of the fake Facebook posts came from the “Denver Guardian,” which sounds great until one realizes that no such news source exists. (Go ahead, Google it.)

Second, when was the piece written? In this election season, I saw articles forwarded and shared on social media that had been created months and even years earlier, making it seem as though they had just appeared. But facts and situations can change quickly, and in many research or fact-finding situations, it’s important to have current information, or at least to be aware of when an article appeared so that its date of creation can factor into one’s judgment about it.

Why was the piece written? To report the news, or to advance knowledge in a particular field? To get someone elected to an office? To spread fear, or to propagandize an issue? To make money? This question is often entangled with who wrote the story, but it’s equally important. (To think about the ways in which who wrote a piece can be bound up with why he or she wrote it, I suggest checking out this self-exculpatory New York Times op-ed written by someone who works for WikiLeaks.)

How and where did the author(s) get their information? In scholarly writing, this is precisely why citations must be provided—so that authors cannot simply assert something without some kind of backup. We need to be able to believe what authors are saying; it’s equally important to be able to verify their sources.

I’ve been trying to share the above questions with the first-year seminars with whom I’ve worked this past semester. We’ve looked at sources we found on the web and tried to think about evaluating them based on the above questions, rather than applying such abstract, blanket maxims such as “sites that come from a .edu or .org address are okay.” That’s not necessarily true; it’s always necessary to look closer at each article or book.

One of the first-year seminars I worked with was entitled “Performing Citizenship.” It was striking to me that the course focus and our work with evaluating sources were in particular alignment—and, similarly, that the task of critically evaluating research information and that of truly becoming an informed, participating citizen are one and the same. Whenever we undertake or assign research—and learn or teach the requisite skills to perform this research—we would do well to keep the responsibilities and imperatives of citizenship in full view.

— Fred Folmer

The point to remember

Since we can’t always trust personal experience, common sense, the media, expert authority, or tradition to help us understand social reality, we need the systematic research gathered by sociologists.

 

Stages of the Research Process

Sociological research consists of the several stages listed below. Each step is very important and helps contribute to the overall reliability of the final conclusions reached about the study.

1. Choose a research topic. As mentioned in Chapter 1, sociologists excel at asking “Why” questions, which is a good way to arrive at a research topic.
2. Review the literature. After choosing a topic, the researcher must then search to see what’s already known about that topic and where there are gaps in understanding that could be investigated.
3. State the hypothesis. Based on the information from the literature review, a specific research question will be developed to guide the design of the study, and typically the researcher will then form a hypothesis that predicts what the outcome of the study will be based on the existing research.
4. Begin research. At this stage, the researcher needs data to answer the research question and test the hypothesis, and so a plan is developed to either use an existing data set or collect new data.
5. Collect data. In this step, the researcher executes the plan formed in the previous step and either gets a data set or collects new data through a survey, experiment, interviews, or observation.
6. Analyze data. Using statistical analysis or other systematic techniques, the researcher reviews the data to determine the results of the study.
7. Draw a conclusion. Based on the results of the data collected and analyzed, the researcher can determine whether the hypothesis was supported or not and draw appropriate conclusions

Determining Credibility

One of the most important parts of conducting a literature review or doing any kind of research is deciding which sources are trustworthy. In Chapter 1, we discussed the importance of critical thinking, and it plays a key role here, too. For your own research in this course and others, you can determine credibility by considering the following questions, which are based on the five elements of the “CRAAP Test” developed by librarians at California State University, Chico.

• Currency: How timely is the information? If you’re writing about recent trends (as sociologists often are), then you need to have up-to-date information. Recent information is more likely to be reliable, but warning flags should go up if the source was published a decade ago or hasn’t been updated in years. Keep an eye out for broken links, too, since that can potentially indicate a site that hasn’t received any TLC in some time. Whenever possible, seek out sources that are recent and up-to-date, especially in relation to your chosen topic.
• Relevance: How important is the information to your needs? Not only should the information in your source be up-to-date, but it should also be relevant to the needs of your research. Primarily, the source’s information should relate to your topic or answer your question, but it should also be appropriate for your intended audience. Be aware of the “level” of the language in your source. If it is either too elementary or too advanced for your needs or those of your audience, you should look for another source.
• Authority: Who is the source of the information? Be sure to check the source of your information. If you don’t recognize an author’s name, conduct an Internet search to find out what else he or she has written, where it was published, and what other people have had to say about it. If you can, read up on the author’s education, credentials and relevant experience. Anyone can have a blog, but not everyone is qualified to speak with knowledge and authority about your topic. Also be sure to examine the URL; commercial “.com” or nonprofit “.org” websites are often less reliable than educational “.edu” or government-based “.gov” sites. Sites that are missing contact information may also be trouble, but note that if a site is only missing an author name, it may still be credible; just use the other questions to evaluate its credibility.
• Accuracy: How reliable, truthful, and correct is the content? To determine how accurate the content itself is, make sure that it is supported by evidence that can be verified. A source is more likely to be credible if it backs up its points with evidence from other sources, and if it cites those sources in a way that lets you find them and evaluate them. If your source doesn’t provide references, check its content against other sources to see if it’s consistent. Also watch for (and avoid) websites with spelling, grammar, or typographical errors. Sloppy writing that clearly has not been proofread is much more likely to contain inaccurate or biased information.
• Purpose: Why does the information exist? A source’s purpose and affiliation can tell you a lot about whether the source is trustworthy. When your source is funded by an advocacy organization, a political party, a religious group, or the like, be especially aware of potential biases in the information being presented. Any group that clearly has a distinct stance on an issue or an agenda to promote is unlikely to be objective. Whenever possible, seek out sources that provide factual, accurate data from an unbiased perspective. Remember that the organization funding the source might have some control over its content.

 

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