doing social research (sociology with quantitative research methods)
in the lecture this week we will look at how to analyse quantitative material, focusing on the relationship between religious faith and social attitudes in the British Social Attitudes report. While we may sometimes be told that ‘the data speaks for itself’ we will examine how numbers on their own are not very useful and the way in which sociologists are interested in patterns to construct generalisations and (sometimes) explanations. Questions to think about are: What is the value of descriptive statistics? What is the difference between correlation and causation? How can links be accepted as evidence of underlying causal processes?
Essential Reading
Bryman textbook chapter 15 (quantitative data analysis)
Marsh, C. and Elliott, J. (2008) ‘Causal Explanations’ in Exploring Data. Second Edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. pp235-253 (ereserve)