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Sociologists often conduct research using the scientific method. Please, explain how they do it. Give definite example from your hand-outs.

Sociologists often conduct research using the scientific method. Please, explain how they do it. Give definite example from your hand-outs.

Sociologists often conduct research using the scientific method. There are five basic steps in scientific method that sociologists and other researchers follow. These are (1) defining the problem, (2) reviewing the literature, (3) formulating the hypothesis, (4) selecting the research design and then collect­ing and analyzing data, and (5) developing the conclusion. The first step in any sociological research project is to state as clearly as possible what you hope to investigate. By conducting a review of the literature, re­searchers refine the problem under study, clarify possible techniques to be used in collecting data, and may avoid making unnecessary mistakes. After reviewing they may develop an intuitive guess about their data. Such a specula­tive statement about the relationship between two or more factors is called a hypothesis. A hypothesis essentially tells us what we are looking for in our research. In order to be mean­ingful, a hypothesis must be testable; that is, it must be capable of being evaluated. In order to test a hypothesis and determine if it is supported or refuted, researchers need to collect information. To do so, they must employ one of the research designs described later in the chap­ter. The research design guides them in collect­ing and analyzing data. Scientific studies, including those conducted by sociologists, do not aim to answer all the questions that can be raised about a particular subject. Therefore, the conclusion of a research study represents both an end and a beginning. It termi­nates a specific phase of the investigation, but it should also generate ideas for future study.

43 Max Weber suggested that the best way to understand human behavior is by a direct ″sympathetic understanding″. Please, explain what Weber meant.

Max Weber suggested that the best way to understand human behavior is by a direct ″sympathetic understanding″. Cooley's own use of the method of sympathetic understanding was some-what marred, as George H. Mead, among others, has pointed out, by his ex- cessively mentalistic and introspective emphasis, and by his failure to make needed distinctions between the imputation of meaning all men must make in the course of interaction and the disciplined and controlled imputations of the social scientist. He must nevertheless be reckoned among the pioneers in socio-logical method. Like Max Weber and his co-thinkers in Germany, Cooley emphasized that the study of the human social world must be centered upon attempts to probe the subjective meanings human actors attribute to their actions, and that such meanings must be studied in part through "understanding" rather than through exclusive reliance on the reporting of behavior.