【Week 1.2 March 8(Fri)】——Cheng Yating

 1. Summary

Sociology is a branch of the social sciences, that uses systematic methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis, which can be divided into Micro-sociology and Macro-sociology. In response to the challenge of modernity, sociology was born in the early 19th century and changed its goal from prediction to understanding human behavior. Many famous sociologists such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber have made a great contribution to the foundation and development of this subject. Now the research focuses more on the macro-structures and micro-processes instead of industrial societies.

 

2. Interesting

I have learned that Isaac Newton is important in the change of sociology. Before reading this material, I have never thought about the relation between Newton and sociology. It’s a surprise that Newton, by revolutionizing what was then called natural philosophy, changed the basic framework by which individuals understood what was scientific, which had a great influence on the change of sociology.

 

3. Discussion

Quantitative sociology often uses surveys with large numbers of participants aggregated into data sets to analyze using statistics, when researchers design the survey, they may offer some questions and answers for participants to choose from, but maybe the interviewee never thought about the question, the four choices are the pre-set answers of the researchers. The interviewee chooses one of them, but it does not mean that it is his or her truest thought. I wonder how to treat these subtle but result-biased problems in quantitative research.


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