WEEK 1: Research and Societal Trends

I think we focus on this a lot as Sociologist. In all my classes we are touching on this, even in religion classes in regards to faith. Every theory requires faith. If its a theory its something that can be proven wrong and faith is something that is required when there i not factually sound answer. When it comes to the family, there are so many factors that aren't able to be applied to the study statistical. Here are some of those factors that we talked about.

Research Bias:
Not all research involves the important outside factors.Most of the time this isn't even intentional. Research bias can be brought into a study through different stems of the research. You could bias a research as easily as not understanding the response to a question or selecting a bad sample of people or a group of people to study that are too similar in lifestyle or background. Also Assumptions being made through research can create a problem outof a coicidence. One of the examples in the reading that stood out to me was the research on heart attacks. This research made the assumption that becasue one country drank more wine, it was the cause of there heart attacks. When in reality, that was only a factor and their might be a bigger cause the triggered that statistic.
Intentionally skewing
Alternate Agenda
Sampling: If your studying the education system and only select students to sample from one school or a public school in a high end neighborhood and not from any others, your only getting research from one class of people and one geological group so your statistics will be very narrow and ineffective.
Representation of Data: A perfect example of this is Al Gore in his "An Inconvenient Truth". The graph below depicts the one of the many errors with the representation of his data. In this graph there is a lack of discernment as to where the current data starts and stops with the whole of the graph.
Definitional Problems: Its important when researching to take into consideration that factual questions can produce factual answers and opinionated questions can produce opinions so when creating statistics those opinionated Q's and A's you'll need to create a definition so that people will not hear a question and perceive it in a way that is contrary to what best benifits the study.

I think its important to recognize that the gathering of information is something that needs to be done accurately because if the amount of false facts out there at would be biased. The way that I think of it is that we collect information so that we can solve problems. That's the reason we do research, we want answers and in order to get those answers we have to be effecting in our researching process. when we sample we need to look for ways that it might be biased or too broad so that it can be fixed before the information is recorded and collected.

I worked for a research company for about 6 months and while it was probably my least favorite job, I gained a great amount of respect for the field of research. We were responsible for conducting surveys over the phone to a random population depending upon what the client was collecting that information for. We were trained to read off the script word for word, the scripts were editted and re-edited to be perfectly explained to the respondent so that as they answered the questions, the likely-hood of them perceiving those answers in the way that was intended is great. We were also trained torespind to thier questions in a way that would not allow bias to enter the question. For example, if a respondent had a question on a scale or question, i would respond by re-reading the question and saying, "I am advised to tell you to answer this questionto the best of your understanding" must of the time they would ask me again, thinking that i would explain the question if they asked again, but that call was being monitored by my supervisor so i would repeat my previous response. I was also repremended by my supervisor if i interjected words like and, um, ok, perfect, thank you, or so. These words were seen to have biased the respondents answers, so in order to perfect the collection of data we would have to stick to the script and know how to advise the respondents how to answer if they have confusion. My point here is we need to be good researcher because the last thing that the sample is thinking of is how to answer the questions most accurately.

To be honest, research, the word, just bugs me, I hate thinking of research because I always have associated research with long reports and Google searches, but I really do understand the importance of it. Now that ive done it, I have agreat appreciation for the effort that goes into creating accurate data.