Research Methods and Society

Foundations of Social Inquiry

Linda Eberst Dorsten, Lawrence Hotchkiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815366164
• eBook ISBN: 9781351259798
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Research Methods and Society, Third Edition is designed to help undergraduate students acquire basic skills in methods of social science research. These skills provide a foundation for understanding research findings in the social sciences and for conducting social research. Just as important, such skill-sets and principles can be applied to everyday situations to make sense of the endless stream of claims and counterclaims confronted daily in print and electronic forms, including social media.

Key features of this book include:

• Straightforward prose, including key concepts and tools.
• Concrete and everyday examples and "hands-on" practice activities and Applications designed to be interesting and useful to students.
• Organization to accommodate term-length research projects.
• Chapter Summaries and Review Sheets.
• Assignments to meet specific learning goals:

• Evaluation of key excerpts from research reports published in professional journal articles and popular press.
• Analysis of secondary data (e.g., from the General Social Survey).
• Analysis of primary data from mini–research projects.
• Combinations of methods applications using more than one activity (e.g., evaluating published reports and completing secondary data analysis or mini-projects).

• New to Third Edition:

• New chapter, "Ethics and Social Science Research."
• Many new and updated citations, including from international sources.
• References to Internet survey tools and software: how to find data online, what to consider, and how to choose.
• References to noteworthy, informative media from online sources (e.g., Annenberg Learning, universities, weblogs, YouTube).
• Supplemental Instructor Materials: Instructor's Manual, Test Bank, PowerPoint presentations.

Chapter 1

Introducing Social Research

Looking at How the Social World Works

A Most Curious Case of Missing Silver

The setting is a country mansion like those favored by the rich—you know the kind—full of servants, decanters, immaculate decor, and cabinets loaded with historical artifacts. The owner returned home from a trip to find valuable silver items missing from a cabinet in the drawing room. There was no obvious sign of damage to the cabinet.

Figure 1.1 That mansion at dusk …

Source: iStock: stevecoleimages, 2013

The police were called and conducted a full search of the mansion and grounds and interviewed all staff. They did not find the missing silver. They did find several intact fingerprints in and on the silver cabinet that did not match prints from household staff, family, or visitors. The prints, however, did match those of a robber with an extensive prison record; the man had recently been released from prison. Also, a tiny smear of recently fresh blood was found on the cabinet. It matched the ex-convict’s blood type. The fingerprints and blood together provided strong evidence of his guilt—the ex-convict stole the missing silver.

But did he?

An extensive search for the suspect ensued, but the man was nowhere to be found. Shortly after this time two other key events occurred. First, several pieces of the silver turned up in a pawnshop in a nearby state. Police found fingerprints on the items that matched those found in the cabinet—and also matched the prints of the ex-convict. So the ex-convict took the silver? Case closed?

True or False—

1. If fingerprints found in a location match the prints of a known person, then that person must have been in that location. True or False?

2. If fingerprints on an item match the prints of a known person, then that person must have touched that item. True or False?

Second, a body was found in a remote pond some distance from the mansion. There was something very unusual about the body—the right hand was missing, cleanly severed just above the wrist. Extensive searching of the pond produced a right hand that matched the tissue and blood of the retrieved body—and also matched the blood and fingerprints on the silver cabinet and prints on the pawned silver. Through forensic analysis, the body and hand were determined to be those of the suspect, the ex-convict.

Assume a bit of skepticism—a doubting attitude—and suspend judgment about the case while we evaluate the obtained evidence. (1) The owner claims valuable silver is missing from its cabinet in his home. Observations show that the cabinet is empty; the silver was not found elsewhere on the owner’s property. (2a) Comparisons revealed that the blood and fingerprints from the silver cabinet match blood and prints of the ex-convict/suspect, using available data from prison records. (2b) A body and a severed right hand were found. Comparisons show that blood and tissue of the hand matched blood and tissue of the body. Further, comparisons also reveal that the ex-convict’s blood and prints match those of the body and hand. (2c) The prints on the pawned silver match those of the ex-convict’s prints.

So the obtained evidence about the case is substantial. But evidence alone, even if substantial, cannot correctly answer the above statements or likely solve the case “beyond the shadow of a doubt.” Additional information, analysis, and careful thinking are required. To help with these processes, True/False statements are presented that predict cause-and-effect relationships. How should one read and evaluate a cause-and-effect statement?

In each statement, “if” is followed by a description of the presumed cause of an outcome. The word “then” is followed by a description of the expected effect (the outcome produced by the presumed cause). Example: if one drops a pencil, then it will hit the floor. The predicted relationship looks like this:

If (cause), then (effect/outcome).

If (one drops a pencil), then (it will hit the floor).

One requirement of cause-and-effect relationships is time order—a type of logic you use every day in many ways, even if you haven’t given it much thought. Consider the pencil example: the pencil doesn’t hit the floor, then get dropped—it must first be dropped. So the part of the sentence that follows if—describing the cause—must occur prior in time to the part of the sentence describing the effect (outcome that the cause is expected to produce).

True or False—

3. If the suspect drowned himself and also cut off his own hand, then he cut off his hand first. True or False?

If the suspect drowned himself, then he cannot later cut off his hand—an example of an event clearly prior in time. We know this from prior knowledge that dead people cannot perform any act, let alone cut off their own hand. Thus the correct answer to #3 obviously is “True.” So either he cut off his own hand then drowned himself or someone else cut it off. Similarly, the silver wasn’t removed and then the thief appeared. And the police didn’t arrive and then the owner called them to the mansion.

Still, given the information obtained so far, we would have difficulty correctly answering statements #1 and #2 above. So we need to look further at the cause-and-effect process.

Another requirement of cause-and-effect predictions is that no other explanations can exist other than the presumed cause. In our “curious case,” the presumed cause of the silver’s disappearance is theft by the ex-convict, based on the obtained evidence. But might there be other possible explanations? Perhaps the owner arranged for the silver’s removal to obtain an insurance settlement, and called the police to file a report for the insurance company. Perhaps one of the household staff, or perhaps several staff working together, took the silver. Of course, if any of these possibilities is correct, how did the ex-convict’s intact fingerprints appear on the cabinet and pawnshop silver? Such possibilities—other potential explanations about the missing silver (and there could be many)—must be tested before firm conclusions can be drawn about the identity of the culprit.

The alternative explanation in this example is similar to the concept of control in scientific investigations. The purpose of control is to avoid mistaking a spurious relationship for a cause-and-effect relationship. A spurious relationship is one that is generated by the dependence of two variables on another variable. For example, the forecasted temperature is highly correlated with the observed temperature it forecasted. But the forecast did not cause the observed temperature. They both were caused by particular configuration of atmospheric variables.

Our “curious case” brought a well-known forensics criminologist to examine the evidence. Her goal was to test for as many alternative explanations (causes) for the missing silver as possible. She added new information and checked details using several data collection methods—she held interviews with many people, completed observations of activities in and around the mansion and its neighborhood, and examined available data from police and court records, pathology reports, information about other criminals, etc.

But before the criminologist could complete her analysis, someone confessed to the theft and eventually, to the murder. Perhaps the ongoing research pushed the person into confessing, possibly to appeal for leniency by “fessing up” before being caught.

Who was this person? It was not the butler. It was … the mansion owner’s chauffeur! Why? He said he had his reasons, but we’re interested in how—how he took the silver and arranged for the ex-convict to be implicated. Here’s a summary of what he confessed.

The chauffeur said he had known the ex-convict years earlier and had heard that he had been released from prison, with no job or money. Once he had his plan in place and his boss was out of town, it was fairly easy for the chauffeur to befriend the man over a relatively short period of time and then lure him to a remote location where he had a small cabin in the woods.

After they ate a picnic supper and drank some alcohol the man fell asleep. The chauffer quickly bound and gagged him, severed the man’s right hand with an axe from his cabin, then dragged him, only partly conscious due to blood loss, into the nearby pond. He held him underwater until the man stopped struggling, then moved him to a spot in the pond where the water was deepest and weighed the body down with rocks and several boulders.

The chauffeur knew where the keys were kept and retrieved the silver cabinet key without incident that night. Wearing gloves, he used the ex-con’s hand to place fingerprints on the silver cabinet and on each piece of silver. He did not, however, notice the tiny smear of blood from the severed hand that he left on the side of the cabinet. Then he placed the silver in a large rolling bag he often used for equipment transfer and placed it in his van. Early the next morning he buried the hand under large rocks, just as he had done with the body.

Now, choose the correct answer for the remaining two if … then statements.

1. If fingerprints found in a location match those of a known person, then that person must have been in that location. True or False?

2. If fingerprints on an item match those of a known person, then that person must have touched that item. True or False?

As you now know, the answer to both statements is false, and you also know why. As scholar Jonathan Finn points out, “Fingerprints can be collected independent of the presence and knowledge of the body to which they attest and independent of traditional spatial and temporal constraints” (Finn, 2017). Thus, there is something to be said about the value of skepticism and reserving judgment, even in the face of what seems to be strong evidence. Unfortunately, the ex-convict was not able to benefit from either.

This is a highly unusual case. In most instances, the initial evidence would be sufficient to convict the robber if he had been located. It’s not uncommon for crimes to be left unsolved because the accused cannot be located. There is a lot of uncertainty in the world.

Goals of This Chapter

This chapter has introduced basic goals and concepts in social research by studying a crime that perhaps you won’t soon forget: the “curious case” of missing silver and the role of the hapless hand.

Let’s look briefly at several other examples, using the terms (concepts) from the “curious case” discussion. The first example comes from everyday experience; the next two are from published research. All examples share a now-familiar unifying theme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introducing Social Research
• 2 Ethics and Social Science Research
• 3 Scientific Method and Basic Concepts
• 4 Variables and Their Measurement
• 5 Designing Social Experiments
• 6 Ethnography and Observation
• 7 Indirect Methods
• 8 Surveys
• 9 Population, Samples, and Sampling
• 10 Data Preparation and Basic Analysis
• 11 Data Analysis 2: Describing, Explaining, Evaluating
• 12 Preparing the Report
• 13 Applying Principles of “Science Learning” to Everyday Learning
• Appendix 1 Chapter Supplements
• Appendix 2 Codes of Ethics
• Appendix 3 Random Numbers Table
• Appendix 4 Statistical Formulas
• Appendix 5 Introduction to the General Social Survey (GSS) Dataset
• Glossary
• References
• Index