QUIZ #1 - September 1
AN EXAMPLE OF SOME SIMPLE ONE-SENTENCE ANSWERS FOR THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT THIS
EXCERCISE)
Drawing from our discussions of scientific method, to this:
You have been asked to study why college students "drink to excess."
How would you test it?
Q: 1) Consider some possible explanations, and then formulate these
explanations as a hypothesis.
Answ: College students tend to drink to excess because they are stressed
out, or because of peer pressure, or because they want to be "cool."
Q: 2) Identify your dependent and independent variables
Answ: Independent variables (the factors that ACT ON something else):
Peer pressure, coolness, stree
Dependent variable: Drinking
Q: 3) Operationalize (that is, precisely define) your variables
Answ: --Stress: Level of anxiety that students feel, focusing on
stresses produced by college factors (class, adjusting, etc)
--Coolness: A social status, measured by where they perceive they
fit into the college pecking order
--Peer pressure: Degree of influence of peers on their drinking habits
--Drinking: a) whether they do or not; b) amount they drink
Q: 4) Would you use a quantitative or qualitative method?
Answ: Both quantitative and qualitative
Q: 5) How would you gather your date to test your hypotheses?
Answ: --Quantitative: Surveying students: a) how much they drink;
when; with whom; measure they're perceived stress level;
ask why they think they drink; ask where they perceive themselves
to be on the social ladder; ask about friends' drinking habits
as examples of questions.
--Qualitative: Participant observation - hang out with students
and observe habits, see of actions match responses, interview
them with non-quant questions to get descriptions of their
lives at school to see what's stressful, see how friends react
to others while drinking
(NOTE: This is simplistic, but just a few ways to THINK ABOUT how to
test your claims with sociological research)