Sociology and science

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  • Created by: Jessica
  • Created on: 30-05-12 20:56

Popper's scientific method:

  • Forming a hypothesis - ideas/informed guesses
  • Falsification - trying to prove the hypothesis wrong
  • Prediction - of what will happen in the same circumstances
  • Forming a theory
  • Scrutinizing the theory - a theory stands until something proves it is false

hypothesis

falsification

prediction

theory

scrutinizing

Science is objective. It requires:

  • a researcher to be open minded
  • researchers to be value free - keeping all personal opinions and motives out of the scientific process
  • scientific findings should be open to other researchers for scrutiny, checking and criticism

Positivists:

  • We can apply the same process to studying society that we use for the natural sciences - it enables us to have an objective and value free science of sociology
  • Human behaviour is a response to observable social facts - cause and effect
  • quantitative methodology should be used - they are easily observed & recorded. individuals feelings etc. can not be observed & are not valid evidence (social surveys, structured interviews, official stats)
  • interested in recording social facts

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