Sociology 377B: Sociological Inquiry II – Introduction to Quantitative Analysis

Course Description and Objectives

This course introduces the student to the quantitative modeling approach used to study society. The course is organized around the concept of "INFORMATION" about society and how social scientists collect such information, use it model social reality, and test those models by examining data. The lecture and reading material will address the following questions: What information about society, if any, is considered distinctly "sociological" and how can the information be modeled quantitatively? How do social scientists think in scientific language: specifically Conceptual/Variable Hypothetical Language? How do we sample so that the data we collect can be treated as representative of the population we study? How do we organize the information we collect so that hypotheses and theories can be examined and tested?

You will learn several cognitive and technical skills central to sociological inquiry. Foremost among these and the most general are "Conceptual Path Modeling". These skills strengthen our ability to create concise and testable models that describe, explain, and predict aspects of society. "Quantitative reasoning" skills help us apply the scientific paradigm to studying social processes and events that are always probabilistic. You will learn about the major research designs used in sociology to collect information: survey research, naturalistic observation, and experimental/quasi-experimental design.

The class has access to the Sociology Quantitative Research Laboratory (SOCQRL) in DU222 containing networked personal computers. The SOCQRL environment gives you access to several useful applications and you will learn how personal computers are used in all aspects of modern sociological research. MS WORD and EXCEL will be used as word processing and data entry applications. MICROCASE, SAS, and SPSS will be used to describe and analyze data. We will use different databases, such as the General Social Survey and those containing information on the Chicago Collar Counties, to demonstrate how models of social life can be modeled statistically in a computer laboratory setting.

At the completion of this course, you should be able to:

[1] Distinguish a scientifically well-posed sociological research question from those questions or conjectures with less scientific validity;

[2] Critically evaluate substantive arguments and problems amenable to sociological inquiry, and translate them into a conceptual path model;

[3] Specify the appropriate research design and analysis that makes it possible to quantify measurements and explanations;

[4] Understand inference and how it is used to test whether the quantitative estimates of measurement and causal parameters of a Conceptual Path Model could be due to chance observations or are due to social structure;

[5] Use computer based applications for all stages of sociological inquiry.