Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 105
of their research: cross-sectional studies and
longitudinal studies.
Cross-Sectional Studies
A cross-sectional study involves observations
of a sample, or cross section, of a population
or phenomenon that are made at one point in
time. Exploratory and descriptive studies are
often cross-sectional. A single U.S. Census, for
instance, is a study aimed at describing the U.S.
population at a given time.
Many explanatory studies are also crosssectional.
A researcher conducting a large-scale
national survey to examine the sources of racial
and religious prejudice would, in all likelihood,
be dealing with a single time frame—taking a
snapshot, so to speak, of the sources of prejudice
at a particular point in history.
Explanatory cross-sectional studies have an
inherent problem. Although their conclusions
are based on observations made at only one
time, typically they aim at understanding causal
processes that occur over time. This is akin to
determining the speed of a moving object from a
high-speed, still photograph.
Yanjie Bian, for example, conducted a
survey of workers in Tianjin, China, to study
stratification in contemporary urban Chinese
society. In undertaking the survey in 1988,
however, he was conscious of the important
changes brought about by a series of national
campaigns, such as the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, dating from the Chinese
Revolution in 1949 (which brought the
Chinese Communists into power) and continuing
into the present.
These campaigns altered political atmospheres and
affected people’s work and nonwork activities. Because
of these campaigns, it is difficult to draw conclusions
from a cross-sectional social survey, such
as the one presented in this book, about general
patterns of Chinese workplaces and their effects on
workers. Such conclusions may be limited to one
period of time and are subject to further tests based
on data collected at other times.
(1994: 19)
explain such sacrifice in terms of ideals or warm
feelings between humans. However, genes are
the essential unit in Wilson’s paradigm, producing
his famous dictum that human beings are
“only DNA’s way of making more DNA.”
Reductionism of any type tends to suggest
that particular units of analysis or variables are
more relevant than others. Suppose we ask what
caused the American Revolution. Was it a shared
commitment to the value of individual liberty?
The economic plight of the colonies in relation
to Britain? The megalomania of the founders?
As soon as we inquire about the single cause, we
run the risk of reductionism. If we were to regard
shared values as the cause of the American
Revolution, our unit of analysis would be the
individual colonist. An economist, though, might
choose the thirteen colonies as units of analysis
and examine the economic organizations and
conditions of each. A psychologist might choose
individual leaders as the units of analysis for purposes
of examining their personalities.
Like the ecological fallacy, reductionism can
occur when we use inappropriate units of analysis.
The appropriate unit of analysis for a given
research question, however, is not always clear.
Social researchers, especially across disciplinary
boundaries, often debate this issue.
TheTime Dimension
So far in this chapter, we’ve regarded research
design as a process for deciding what aspects
we’ll observe, of whom, and for what purpose.
Now we must consider a set of time-related options
that cuts across each of these earlier considerations.
We can choose to make observations
more or less at one time or over a long period.
Time plays many roles in the design and execution
of research, quite aside from the time it
takes to do research. Earlier we noted that the
time sequence of events and situations is critical
to determining causation (a point we’ll return
to in Part 4). Time also affects the generalizability
of research findings. Do the descriptions
and explanations resulting from a particular
study accurately represent the situation of ten
years ago, ten years from now, or only the
present? Researchers have two principal options
for dealing with the issue of time in the design
cross-sectional study A study based on observations
representing a single point in time.
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106 ■ Part Two
Nonetheless, they are often the best way to study
changes over time. There are three special types of
longitudinal studies that you should know about:
trend studies, cohort studies, and panel studies.
Trend Studies
A trend study is a type of longitudinal study
that examines changes within a population over
time. A simple example is a comparison of U.S.
Censuses over a period of decades, showing shifts
in the makeup of the national population. A
similar use of archival data was made by Michael
Carpini and Scott Keeter (1991), who wanted to
know whether contemporary U.S. citizens were
better or more poorly informed about politics
than were citizens of an earlier generation. To
find out, they compared the results of several
Gallup polls conducted during the 1940s and
1950s with a 1989 survey that asked several of
the same questions tapping political knowledge.
Overall, the analysis suggested that contemporary
citizens were slightly better informed than
were earlier generations. In 1989, 74 percent
of the sample could name the vice president of
the United States, compared with 67 percent in
1952. Substantially higher percentages could
explain presidential vetoes and congressional
overrides of vetoes than could people in 1947.
On the other hand, more of the 1947 sample
could identify their U.S. representative (38 percent)
than could the 1989 sample (29 percent).
An in-depth analysis, however, indicates
that the slight increase in political knowledge
resulted from the fact that the people in the 1989
sample were more highly educated than were
those from earlier samples. When educational
levels were taken into account, the researchers
concluded that political knowledge has actually
declined within specific educational groups.
Every trend study must begin with a
first stage, and the 2014 Chapman survey of
American Fears is a good example of a trend
study in the making. Day, Bader, and Gordon
(2014) have set out to trace trends in what
Americans are afraid of, timing the annual
surveys to coincide with Halloween. In 2014, the
top personal fears and concerns were:
● Safety in different spaces
● Anxiety about one’s future (illness, job
stability, etc.)
As you’ll see, this textbook repeatedly addresses
the problem of using a “snapshot” to make generalizations
about social life. One solution is
suggested by Bian’s final comment—about data
collected “at other times”: Social research often
involves revisiting phenomena and building on
the results of earlier research.
Longitudinal Studies
In contrast to cross-sectional studies, a longitudinal
study is designed to permit observations of the
same phenomenon over an extended period.
For example, a researcher can participate in and
observe the activities of a UFO cult from its inception
to its demise. Other longitudinal studies use
records or artifacts to study changes over time.
In analyses of newspaper editorials or Supreme
Court decisions over time, for example, the studies
are longitudinal whether the researcher’s actual
observations and analyses were made at one time
or over the course of the actual events under study.
Many field research projects, involving direct
observation and perhaps in-depth interviews, are
naturally longitudinal. Thus, for example, when
Ramona Asher and Gary Fine (1991) studied the
life experiences of the wives of alcoholic men,
these researchers were in a position to examine
the evolution of the wives’ troubled marital relationships
over time, sometimes even including
the reactions of the subjects to the research itself.
In the classic study When Prophecy Fails
(1956), Leon Festinger, Henry Reicker, and
Stanley Schachter set out to learn what
happened to a flying saucer cult when its predictions
of an alien encounter failed to come true.
Would the cult members close down the group,
or would they become all the more committed
to their beliefs? A longitudinal study was
required to provide an answer. (The cult redoubled
their efforts to get new members.)
Longitudinal studies can be more difficult for
quantitative studies such as large-scale surveys.
longitudinal study A study design involving
data collected at different points in time.
trend study A type of longitudinal study in
which a given characteristic of some population is
monitored over time.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 107
Figure 4-5 offers a graphic illustration of a
cohort design. In the example, three studies are
being compared: one was conducted in 1990,
another in 2000, and the third in 2010. Those
who were 20 years old in the 1990 study are
compared with those who were 30 in the 2000
study and those who were 40 in the 2010 study.
Although the subjects being described in each of
the three groups are different, each set of subjects
represents the same cohort: those who were
born in 1970.
In one study, Eric Plutzer and Michael
Berkman (2005) used a cohort design to
reverse a prior conclusion regarding aging and
support for education. Logically, as people grow
well beyond the child-rearing years, we might
expect them to reduce their commitment to
educational funding. Moreover, cross-sectional
data support that expectation. The researchers
present several data sets showing those over
65 voicing less support for education funding
than did those under 65.
Such simplistic analyses, however, leave out
an important variable: increasing support for
educational funding in U.S. society over time in
general. The researchers add to this the concept
● Internet-related fears (identity theft,
government surveillance, etc.)
● Criminal victimization (murder, mugging,
mass shootings, etc.)
● Phobias (clowns, tight spaces, blood, etc.)
In 2018 (Day, Bader, and Gordon 2018) the
leading fears had shifted substantially:
● Corruption of government officials
● Pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes
● Pollution of drinking water
● Not having enough money for the future
● People I love becoming seriously ill
Cohort Studies
In a cohort study, a researcher examines specific
subpopulations, or cohorts, as they change over
time. Typically, a cohort is an age group, such as
people born during the 1950s, but it can also be
some other time grouping, such as people born
during the Vietnam War, people who got married
in 2012, and so forth. An example of a cohort
study would be a series of national surveys,
conducted perhaps every 20 years, to study the
attitudes of the cohort born during World War
II toward U.S. involvement in global affairs. A
sample of people 15 to 20 years of age might be
surveyed in 1960, another sample of those 35
to 40 years of age in 1980, and another sample
of those 55 to 60 years of age in 2000. Although
the specific set of people studied in each survey
would differ, each sample would represent the
cohort born between 1940 and 1945.
40
0
1990 2000 2010
Year
Age
30
20
FiGUre 4-5
a cohort Study Design. Each of the three groups shown here is a sample representing people who were born in 1970.
cohort study A study in which some specific
subpopulation, or cohort, is studied over time,
although data may be collected from different
members in each set of observations.
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108 ■ Part Two
intended to vote. Though such a study would
allow us to analyze overall trends in voter
preferences for different candidates, it would
also show the precise patterns of persistence
and change in intentions. For example, a trend
study that showed that Candidates A and B
each had exactly half of the voters on September
1 and on October 1 as well could indicate
that none of the electorate had changed voting
plans, that all of the voters had changed their
intentions, or something in between. A panel
study would eliminate this confusion by showing
what kinds of voters switched from A to B
and what kinds switched from B to A, as well as
other facts.
Joseph Veroff, Shirley Hatchett, and Elizabeth
Douvan (1992) wanted to learn about marital
adjustment among newlyweds and focused on
differences between white and African American
couples. To get subjects for study, they selected
a sample of couples who applied for marriage
licenses in Wayne County, Michigan, in April
through June 1986.
Concerned about the possible impact their
research might have on the couples’ marital adjustment,
the researchers divided their sample
in half at random: an experimental group and a
control group (concepts we’ll explore further in
Chapter 8). Couples in the former group were
intensively interviewed over a four-year period,
whereas the latter group was contacted only
briefly each year.
By studying the same couples over time, the
researchers could follow the specific problems
that arose and the way the couples dealt with
them. As a by-product of their research, they
found that those studied the most intensely
seemed to achieve a somewhat better marital adjustment.
The researchers felt that the interviews
may have forced couples to discuss matters they
might otherwise have buried.
of “generational replacement,” meaning that the
older respondents in a survey grew up during a
time when there was less support for education
in general, whereas the younger respondents
grew up during a time of greater overall support.
(See Table 4-1.)
A cohort analysis allowed the researchers
to determine what happened to the attitudes of
specific cohorts over time. Here, for example,
are the percentages of Americans born during
the 1940s who felt that educational spending
was too low, when members of that cohort
were interviewed over time (Plutzer and Berkman
2005: 76):
YearInterviewed
PercentWhoSayEducational
FundingIsTooLow
1970s 58
1980s 66
1990s 74
2000s 79
As these data indicate, those who were
born during the 1940s have steadily increased
their support for educational funding
as they have passed through and beyond the
child-rearing years.
Panel Studies
Though similar to trend and cohort studies, a
panel study examines the same set of people
each time. For example, we could interview
the same sample of voters every month during
an election campaign, asking for whom they
taBLe 4-1
Age and Political Liberalism
SurveyDates 1972–1974 1977–1980 1982–1984 1987–1989
Age of cohort 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39
Percent who would let the Communist speak 72 68 73 73
panel study A type of longitudinal study in
which data are collected from the same set of people
(the sample or panel) at several points in time.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 109
of people who were 30 to 40 in 2021, and so
forth throughout their life span. A panel study
could start with a sample of the whole population
or of some special subset and study those
specific individuals over time. Notice that only
the panel study would give a full picture of the
shifts among the various categories of affiliations,
including “none.” Cohort and trend studies
would uncover only net changes.
Longitudinal studies have an obvious advantage
over cross-sectional ones in providing
information describing processes over time. But
this advantage often comes at a heavy cost in
both time and money, especially in a large-scale
survey. Observations may have to be made at the
time events are occurring, and the method of observation
may require many research workers.
Panel studies, which offer the most
comprehensive data on changes over time, face
a special problem: panel mortality, as discussed
above. Some of the respondents studied in the
first wave of the survey may not participate in
later waves. (This is comparable to the problem of
experimental mortality discussed in Chapter 8.)
The danger is that those who drop out of the
study may not be typical, thereby distorting the
results of the study.
Figure 4-6 provides a schematic comparison of
the several study types we have been discussing.
Approximating Longitudinal
Studies
Longitudinal studies do not always provide a
feasible or practical means of studying processes
that take place over time. Fortunately, researchers
often can draw approximate conclusions
about such processes even when only crosssectional
data are available. Here are some ways
to do that.
Sometimes cross-sectional data imply processes
over time on the basis of simple logic.
For example, in the study of student drug use
conducted at the University of Hawaii that I
mentioned in Chapter 2, students were asked
to report whether they had ever tried each of
Panel mortality is a fundamental problem
in panel studies: subjects dropping out of the
study. Over the years, researchers have developed
many techniques for tracking down missing
subjects. Bryan Rhodes and Ellen Marks (2011)
used Facebook as a vehicle for tracking down
members of a longitudinal study who had been
unreachable by telephone or mail. They were
successful in locating a third of the subjects.
Roger Tourangeau and Cong Ye (2009) were
also intent on decreasing panel mortality. Specifically,
they considered positive and negative inducements
for subjects to continue. To find out,
they randomly divided their panel survey sample
in half and gave the two groups different pleas
to continue. In one subsample, they stressed the
benefits to be gained if everyone continued with
the study. In the other subsample, they stressed
how the study would be hurt by people dropping
out. The latter, negative, message increased continued
participation by ten percentage points.
As Steven Farrall et al. (2016) point out,
panel mortality can be especially problematic
for qualitative longitudinal studies, since
the relatively small sample sizes rule out the
possibility of weighting as a solution. One
effective technique was to maintain contact
sheets with names, addresses, and phone
numbers of family and friends likely to know
how to reach a missing study participant. They
found family members more reliable than
friends in that regard and found sisters were
the best bet. Other researchers found it useful
to stay in touch with participants with birthday
cards, holiday greetings, and the like.
Comparing the Three Types
of Longitudinal Studies
To reinforce the distinctions among trend,
cohort, and panel studies, let’s contrast the three
study designs in terms of the same variable:
religious affiliation. A trend study might look at
shifts in U.S. religious affiliations over time, as
the Gallup poll does on a regular basis. A cohort
study might follow shifts in religious affiliations
among “the 9/11 generation,” specifically,
say, people who were 10 to 20 years of age on
September 11, 2001. We could study a sample of
people 20 to 30 years old in 2011, a new sample
panel mortality The failure of some panel subjects
to continue participating in the study.
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110 ■ Part Two
in the pattern of worsening health over the
course of the typical life cycle. You might study
the results of annual checkups in a large hospital.
You could group health records according to the
ages of those examined and rate each age group
in terms of several health conditions—sight,
hearing, blood pressure, and so forth. By reading
across the age-group ratings for each health condition,
you would have something approximating
the health history of individuals. Thus, you
might conclude that the average person develops
vision problems before hearing problems. You
would need to be cautious in this assumption,
however, because the differences might reflect
society-wide trends. For instance, improved
hearing examinations instituted in the schools
might have affected only the young people in
your study.
Asking people to recall their pasts is another
common way of approximating observations
over time. Researchers use that method when
they ask people where they were born or when
they graduated from high school or whom they
voted for in 1988. Qualitative researchers often
conduct in-depth “life history” interviews. For
example, C. Lynn Carr (1998) used this technique
in a study of “tomboyism.” Her respondents,
ages 25 to 40, were asked to reconstruct
aspects of their lives from childhood on, including
experiences of identifying themselves as
tomboys.
The danger in this technique is evident.
Sometimes people have faulty memories; sometimes
they lie. When people are asked in postelection
polls whom they voted for, the results
inevitably show more people voting for the
several illegal drugs. The study found that some
students had tried both marijuana and LSD,
some had tried only one, and others had tried
neither. Because these data were collected at one
time, and because some students presumably
would experiment with drugs later on, it would
appear that such a study could not tell whether
students were more likely to try marijuana or
LSD first.
A closer examination of the data showed,
however, that although some students reported
having tried marijuana but not LSD, there were
no students in the study who had tried only LSD.
From this finding it was inferred—as common
sense suggested—that marijuana use preceded
LSD use. If the process of drug experimentation
occurred in the opposite time order, then a study
at a given time should have found some students
who had tried LSD but not marijuana, and it
should have found no students who had tried
only marijuana.
Researchers can also make logical inferences
whenever the time order of variables is clear.
If we discovered in a cross-sectional study of
college students that those educated in private
high schools received better college grades than
did those educated in public high schools, we
would conclude that the type of high school attended
affected college grades, not the other way
around. Thus, even though our observations
were made at only one time, we would feel justified
in drawing conclusions about processes taking
place across time.
Very often, age differences discovered in a
cross-sectional study form the basis for inferring
processes across time. Suppose you’re interested
Snapshot in time
Measurements
across time
Follow age group
across time
Study same people
over time
Cross-Sectional Longitudinal
Trend
X
X X
X
X
X
Cohort Panel
FiGUre 4-6
comparingtypes of Study Design.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 111
the unit of analysis? Is the dimension of time
relevant? If so, how will it be handled?
● This case study of unobtrusive mobilizing by
Southern California Rape Crisis Center uses
archival, observational, and interview data to
explore how a feminist organization worked
to change police, schools, prosecutors, and
some state and national organizations from
1974 to 1994. (Schmitt and Martin 1999: 364)
● Using life-history narratives, the present study
investigates processes of agency and consciousness
among 14 women who identified
themselves as tomboys. (Carr 1998: 528)
● By drawing on interviews with activists in the
former Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, we
specify the conditions by which accommodative
and oppositional subcultures exist and are
successfully transformed into social movements.
(Johnston and Snow 1998: 473)
● This paper presents the results of an ethnographic
study of an AIDS service organization
located in a small city. It is based on a combination
of participant observation, interviews
with participants, and review of organizational
records. (Kilburn 1998: 89)
● Using interviews obtained during fieldwork
in Palestine in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and
employing historical and archival records, I argue
that Palestinian feminist discourses were
shaped and influenced by the sociopolitical
context in which Palestinian women acted
and with which they interacted. (Abdulhadi
1998: 649)
● This article reports on women’s experiences
of breastfeeding in public, as revealed through
in-depth interviews with 51 women. (Stearns
1999: 308)
● Using interview and observational field data,
I demonstrate how a system of temporary
employment in a participative workplace both
exploited and shaped entry-level workers’
aspirations and occupational goals. (V. Smith
1998: 411)
● I collected data [on White Separatist rhetoric]
from several media of public discourse, including
periodicals, books, pamphlets, transcripts
from radio and television talk shows, and
newspaper and magazine accounts. (Berbrier
1998: 435)
● In the analysis that follows, racial and gender
inequality in employment and retirement will
be analyzed, using a national sample of persons
who began receiving Social Security Old
Age benefits in 1980–81. (Hogan and Perrucci
1998: 528)
winner than actually did so on election day. As
part of a series of in-depth interviews, such a
report can be validated in the context of other
reported details; however, we should regard
with caution results based on a single question
in a survey.
Cohorts can also be used to infer processes
over time from cross-sectional data. For example,
when Prem Saxena and colleagues (2004)
wanted to examine whether wartime conditions
would affect the age at which people married,
they used cross-sectional data from a survey of
Lebanese women. During the Lebanese Civil
War, from 1975 to 1990, many young men migrated
to other countries. By noting the year
in which the survey respondents first married,
they could determine that the average age at first
marriage increased with the onset of the war.
For a more in-depth and comprehensive
analysis of longitudinal methodologies, you
might consider the book edited by Peter Lynn
(2009). The several authors cover more aspects
of this subject than would be feasible in this introductory
textbook.
This discussion of the way time figures into
social research suggests several questions you
should confront in your own research projects.
In designing any study, be sure to look at both
the explicit and the implicit assumptions you’re
making about time. Are you interested in describing
some process that occurs over time, or
are you simply going to describe what exists
now? If you want to describe a process occurring
over time, will you be able to make observations
at different points in the process, or will you
have to approximate such observations by drawing
logical inferences from what you can observe
now? If you opt for a longitudinal design, which
method best serves your research purposes?
Examples of Research Strategies
As the preceding discussions have implied, social
research follows many paths. The following short
excerpts from a variety of completed studies further
illustrate this point. As you read them, note
both the content of each study and the method
used to study the chosen topic. Does the study
seem to be exploring, describing, or explaining
(or some combination of these)? What are the
sources of data in each study? Can you identify
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112 ■ Part Two
Moving north from New Zealand to India,
Prem Saxena and Dhirendra Kumar examined
the risk of mortality among seniors after retirement,
focusing on the importance of work for
defining social position. In the context of a number
of social psychology studies of problems regarding
retirement, the researchers found a data
source in the Office of the Accountant General
to add to the previous studies, allowing them
to examine overall patterns of mortality after
retirement. Ultimately, they concluded that “In
developing countries few people look forward to
retirement, while the majority dread it. However,
the way pensioners react depends mainly upon
their social liability and their unmet needs at the
time of retirement” (1997: 122).
While social researchers have been using
mixed modes of inquiry for a long time, this approach
has begun attracting more attention and,
more important, more actual use in recent years.
I think you can expect to see more mixed modes
in the future and may utilize this approach
yourself.
How to Design a Research Project
You have now seen some of the options available
to social researchers in designing projects. I know
there are a lot of pieces, and the relationships
among them may not be totally clear, so here’s
a way of pulling the parts together. Let’s assume
you were to undertake research. Where would
you start? Then, where would you go?
Although research design occurs at the
beginning of a research project, it involves all
the steps of the subsequent project. This discussion,
then, provides guidance on how to
start a research project and gives an overview
of the topics that follow in later chapters of
this book.
Figure 4-7 presents a schematic view of
the traditional image of research. I present this
view reluctantly, because it may suggest more
of a step-by-step order to research than actual
practice bears out. Nonetheless, this idealized
overview of the process provides a context for
the specific details of particular components of
social research. Essentially, it is another and
more-detailed picture of the scientific process
presented in Chapter 2.
● Drawing from interviews with female crack
dealers, this paper explores the techniques
they use to avoid arrest. (Jacobs and Miller
1998: 550)
Mixed Modes
In this chapter, I have mentioned a number of
ways to conduct social research: experiments,
survey research (telephone, in person, online),
field research, and so forth. In my observation
over time, researchers have often spoken of the
value of using more than one approach to understanding
a social phenomenon. But, as researchers
find techniques they are comfortable with
and adept at, the support for multiple techniques
has been talked about more than practiced. However,
this may be changing. Partly in response to
the growing problems faced by survey researchers,
perhaps, a review of the literature will produce
increasing numbers of studies actually using
mixed modes.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s
Residential Energy Consumption Survey
(RECS), for example, seeks to get detailed information
on America’s energy use. Household
interviews provide much of the needed information,
but the researchers discovered that household
subjects usually could not provide special
details of their energy consumption. So the
agency collects billing data from the energy suppliers
and matches those data to the households
interviewed (Worthy and Mayclin 2013).
On the other side of the globe, Peggy Koopman-Boyden
and Margaret Richardson used
diaries and focus groups to study the activities
of New Zealand seniors in a three-year study
that aimed “to analyse the experiences and
perceptions of elders and organizational representatives
with whom they interact in everyday
encounters” (2013: 392). Participating seniors
were asked to maintain logs of their interactions,
and they were invited to participate in periodic
discussions of their experiences. In addition
to providing researchers with a greater depth,
breadth, and richness of data, they report that
the participants often indicated that they had
benefited from the combination of methods, as
in the focus-group discussions of the experience
of keeping a research diary.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 113
Reporting results and
assessing their implications
APPLICATION
Analyzing data and
drawing conclusions
ANALYSIS
Transforming the data
collected into a form
appropriate to manipulation
and analysis
DATA PROCESSING
Collecting data for
analysis and interpretation
OBSERVATIONS
Experiments
Survey research
Field research
Content analysis
Existing data research
Comparative research
Evaluation research
CHOICE OF
RESEARCH METHOD
Whom do we want
to be able to draw
conclusions about?
Who will be observed
for that purpose?
POPULATION
AND SAMPLING
Specify the meaning
of the concepts and
variables to be studied
CONCEPTUALIZATION
How will we actually
measure the variables
under study?
OPERATIONALIZATION
THEORYINTEREST IDEA
? Y
Y ?
A BX Y
A B
?
?
XDC Y
FE
FiGUre 4-7
the research process. Here are some of the key elements that we’ll be examining throughout this book: the pieces that make up the whole
of social research.
At the top of the diagram are interests, ideas,
and theories, the possible beginning points for
a line of research. The letters (A, B, X, Y, and so
forth) represent variables or concepts such as
prejudice or alienation. Thus, you might have a
general interest in finding out what causes some
people to be more prejudiced than others, or you
might want to know some of the consequences
of alienation. Alternatively, your inquiry might
begin with a specific idea about the way things
are. For example, you might have the idea that
working on an assembly line causes alienation.
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114 ■ Part Two
processes over time, you might be able to approximate
some longitudinal analyses if you pursued
changes in students’ attitudes over time.
Getting Started
At the outset of your project, your interests
would probably be exploratory. At this point,
you might choose among several possible activities
in exploring student attitudes about abortion
rights. To begin with, you might want to read
something about the issue. If you have a hunch
that attitudes are somehow related to college
major, you might find out what other researchers
have written about that. Appendix A of this
book will help you make use of your college
library. In addition, you would probably talk to
some people who support abortion rights and
some who do not. You might attend meetings of
abortion-related groups. All these activities could
help prepare you to handle the various decisions
of research design we’re about to examine.
Before designing your study, you must define
the purpose of your project. What kind of study
will you undertake—exploratory, descriptive, explanatory?
Do you plan to write a research paper
to satisfy a course or thesis requirement? Is your
purpose to gain information that will support you
in arguing for or against abortion rights? Do you
want to write an article for the campus newspaper
or an academic journal? In reviewing the previous
research literature regarding abortion rights, you
should note the design decisions other researchers
have made, always asking whether the same decisions
would satisfy your purpose.
Usually, your purpose for undertaking research
can be expressed as a report. A good first
step in designing your project is to outline such a
report (see Chapter 15 for more). Although your
final report may not look much like your initial
image of it, this exercise will help you figure out
which research designs are most appropriate.
During this step, clearly describe the kinds of
statements you want to make when the research
is complete. Here are some examples of such
statements: “Students frequently mentioned
abortion rights in the context of discussing social
issues that concerned them personally.” “X percent
of State U. students favor a woman’s right to
choose an abortion.” “Engineers are (more/less)
likely than sociologists to favor abortion rights.”
The question marks in the diagram indicate that
you aren’t sure things are the way you suspect
they are—that’s why you’re doing the research.
Notice that a theory is represented as a set of
complex relationships among several variables.
Or you might want to consider this question:
“How is leadership established in a juvenile
gang?” You may wonder the extent to which
age, strength, family and friendship ties, intelligence,
or other variables figure into the determination
of who runs things. We don’t always
begin with a clear theory about the causal relationships
at play.
The double arrows between “interest,”
“idea,” and “theory” suggest that researchers
often move back and forth across these several
possible beginnings. An initial interest may lead
to the formulation of an idea, which may be fit
into a larger theory, and the theory may produce
new ideas and create new interests.
Any or all of these three may suggest the
need for empirical research. The purpose of such
research can be to explore an interest, test a specific
idea, or validate a complex theory. Whatever
the purpose, the researcher needs to make a variety
of decisions, as indicated in the remainder
of the diagram.
To make this discussion more concrete, let’s
take a specific research example. Suppose you’re
concerned with the issue of abortion and want
to learn why some college students support
abortion rights and others oppose them. Let’s
say you’ve gone a step further and formed the
impression that students in the humanities and
social sciences seem generally more inclined to
support the idea of abortion rights than do those
in the natural sciences. (That kind of thinking
often leads people to design and conduct social
research.)
In terms of the options we’ve discussed in this
chapter, you probably have both descriptive and
explanatory interests: What percentage of the
student body supports a woman’s right to an abortion
(description), and what causes some to support
it and others to oppose it (explanation)? The
units of analysis in this case would be individuals:
college students. Let’s assume you would be satisfied
to learn something about the way things are
now. You might then decide that a cross-sectional
study would suit your purposes. Although this
would provide you with no direct evidence of
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 115
study of public opinion. Of course, you could
also make good use of the other methods presented
in Part 3. For example, you might use the
method of content analysis to examine letters
to the editor and analyze the different opinions
letter writers have of abortion. Field research
would provide an avenue to understanding how
people interact with one another regarding the
issue of abortion, how they discuss it, and how
they change their minds. Usually the best study
design uses more than one research method, taking
advantage of their different strengths. If you
look back at the brief examples of actual studies
at the end of the preceding section, you’ll see
several instances in which the researchers used
many methods in a single study.
Operationalization
Once you’ve specified the concepts to be studied
and chosen a research method, the next step is
operationalization, or deciding on your measurement
techniques (discussed further in Chapters
5 and 6). The meaning of variables in a study is
determined in part by how they are measured.
Part of the task here is deciding how the desired
data will be collected: direct observation, review
of official documents, a questionnaire, or some
other technique.
If you decide to use a survey to study
attitudes toward abortion rights, part of
operationalization is determining the wording
of questionnaire items. For example, you might
operationalize your main variable by asking
respondents whether they would approve a
woman’s right to have an abortion under each
of the conditions you’ve conceptualized: in the
case of rape or incest, if her life were threatened
by the pregnancy, and so forth. You would have
designed the questionnaire so that it asked respondents
to express approval or disapproval for
each situation. Similarly, you would have specified
exactly how respondents would indicate
their college major and what choices to provide
those who have not declared a major.
Population and Sampling
In addition to refining concepts and measurements,
you must decide whom or what to study.
The population for a study is that group (usually
of people) about whom we want to draw
Conceptualization
Once you have a well-defined purpose and a
clear description of the kinds of outcomes you
want to achieve, you can proceed to the next
step in the design of your study—conceptualization.
We often talk quite casually about social
science concepts such as prejudice, alienation,
religiosity, and liberalism, but we need to clarify
what we mean by these concepts in order to
draw meaningful conclusions about them. Chapter
5 examines this process of conceptualization
in depth. For now, let’s see what it might involve
in the case of our hypothetical example.
If you’re going to study how college students
feel about abortion and why, the first thing you’ll
have to specify is what you mean by “the right to
an abortion.” Because support for abortion probably
varies according to the circumstances, you’ll
want to pay attention to the different conditions
under which people might approve or disapprove
of abortion: for example, when the woman’s life
is in danger, in the case of rape or incest, or simply
as a matter of personal choice.
Similarly, you’ll need to specify exact meanings
for all the other concepts you plan to study.
If you want to study the relationship of opinion
about abortion to college major, you’ll have to
decide whether you want to consider only officially
declared majors or to include students’
intentions as well. What will you do with those
who have no major?
In surveys and experiments, such concepts
must be specified in advance. In less tightly
structured research, such as open-ended interviews,
an important part of the research may
involve the discovery of different dimensions, aspects,
or nuances of concepts. In such cases, the
research itself may uncover and report aspects of
social life that were not evident at the outset of
the project.
Choice of Research Method
As we’ll discuss in Part 3, each research method
has its strengths and weaknesses, and certain
concepts are more appropriately studied by some
methods than by others. In our study of attitudes
toward abortion rights, a survey might be the
most appropriate method: either interviewing
students or asking them to fill out a questionnaire.
Surveys are particularly well suited to the
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116 ■ Part Two
Alternatively, you could arrange to have a team
of interviewers conduct the survey over the
telephone. The relative advantages and disadvantages
of these and other possibilities are discussed
in Chapter 9.
Data Processing
Depending on the research method chosen,
you’ll have amassed a volume of observations
in a form that probably isn’t immediately interpretable.
If you’ve spent a month observing a
street-corner gang firsthand, you’ll now have
enough field notes to fill a book. In a historical
study of ethnic diversity at your school, you may
have amassed volumes of official documents, interviews
with administrators and others, and so
forth. Chapters 13 and 14 describe some of the
ways social science data are processed for quantitative
or qualitative analysis.
In the case of a survey, the “raw” observations
are typically in the form of questionnaires
with boxes checked, answers written in spaces,
and the like. The data-processing phase for a
survey typically involves the classification (coding)
of written-in answers and the transfer of all
information to a computer.
Analysis
Once the collected data are in a suitable form,
you’re ready to interpret them for the purpose
of drawing conclusions that reflect the interests,
ideas, and theories that initiated the inquiry.
Chapters 13 and 14 describe a few of the many
options available to you in analyzing data. In
Figure 4-7, notice that the results of your analyses
feed back into your initial interests, ideas,
and theories. Often this feedback represents the
beginning of another cycle of inquiry.
In the survey of student attitudes about abortion
rights, the analysis phase would pursue both
descriptive and explanatory aims. You might
begin by calculating the percentages of students
who favored or opposed each of the several different
versions of abortion rights. Taken together,
these several percentages would provide a good
picture of student opinion on the issue.
Moving beyond simple description, you
might describe the opinions of subsets of the
student body, such as different college majors.
Provided that your design called for tracking
conclusions. We’re almost never able to study all
the members of the population that interests us,
however, and we can never make every possible
observation of them. In every case, then, we
select a sample from among the data that might
be collected and studied. The sampling of information,
of course, occurs in everyday life and
often produces biased observations. (Recall the
discussion of “selective observation” in Chapter
1.) Social researchers are more deliberate in their
sampling of what will be observed.
Chapter 7 describes methods for selecting
samples that adequately reflect the whole population
that interests us. Notice in Figure 4-7 that
decisions about population and sampling are
related to decisions about the research method
to be used. Whereas probability-sampling techniques
would be relevant to a large-scale survey
or a content analysis, a field researcher might
need to select only those informants who will
yield a balanced picture of the situation under
study, and an experimenter might assign subjects
to experimental and control groups in a manner
that creates comparability.
In your hypothetical study of abortion attitudes,
the relevant population would be the
student population of your college. As you’ll discover
in Chapter 7, however, selecting a sample
will require you to get more specific than that.
Will you include part-time as well as full-time
students? Only degree candidates or everyone?
International students as well as U.S. citizens?
Undergraduates, graduate students, or both?
There are many such questions—each of which
must be answered in terms of your research purpose.
If your purpose is to predict how students
would vote in a local referendum on abortion,
you might want to limit your population to those
eligible and likely to vote.
Observations
Having decided what to study among whom
by what method, you’re now ready to make
observations—to collect empirical data. The
chapters of Part 3, which describe the various
research methods, give the different observation
techniques appropriate to each.
To conduct a survey on abortion, you might
want to print questionnaires and mail them
to a sample selected from the student body.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 117
Although you’ll want to consider many ways
of studying a subject—and use your imagination
as well as your knowledge of a variety
of methods—research design is the process of
focusing your perspective for the purposes of a
particular study.
If you’re doing a research project for one of
your courses, many aspects of research design
may be specified for you in advance, including
the method (such as an experiment) or the
topic (as in a course on a particular subject). The
following summary assumes that you’re free
to choose both your topic and your research
strategy.
In designing a research project, you’ll find it
useful to begin by assessing three things: your interests,
your abilities, and the available resources.
Each of these considerations will suggest a large
number of possible studies.
Simulate the beginning of a somewhat conventional
research project: Ask yourself what
you’re interested in understanding. Surely you
have several questions about social behavior and
attitudes. Why are some people politically liberal
and others politically conservative? Why are
some people more religious than others? Why
do people join white supremacist groups? Do
colleges and universities still discriminate against
minority faculty members? Why would a woman
stay in an abusive relationship? Spend some time
thinking about the kinds of questions that interest
and concern you.
Once you have a few questions you’d be
interested in answering for yourself, think
about the kind of information needed to answer
them. What research units of analysis would
provide the most relevant information: college
students, corporations, voters, cities, or unions?
This question will probably be inseparable from
the question of research topics. Then ask which
aspects of the units of analysis would provide the
information you need in order to answer your
research question.
Once you have some ideas about the kind
of information relevant to your purpose, ask
yourself how you might go about getting that
information. Are the relevant data likely to be
available somewhere already (say, in a government
publication), or would you have to collect
them yourself? If you think you would have to
collect them, how would you go about doing it?
other information about respondents, you could
also look at men versus women; freshmen,
sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students;
or other categories that you’ve included.
The description of subgroups could then lead
you into an explanatory analysis.
Application
The final stage of the research process involves
the uses made of the research you’ve conducted
and the conclusions you’ve reached. To start,
you’ll probably want to communicate your
findings so that others will know what you’ve
learned. You may want to prepare—and even
publish—a written report. Perhaps you’ll make
oral presentations, such as papers delivered
to professional and scientific meetings. Other
students would also be interested in hearing
what you’ve learned about them.
You may want to go beyond simply reporting
what you’ve learned to discussing the implications
of your findings. Do your findings say
anything about actions that might be taken in
support of policy goals? Both the proponents
and the opponents of abortion rights would be
interested.
Karen Akerlof and Chris Kennedy (2013)
have provided an omnibus analysis of ways in
which social research can be used to design and
evaluate programs to combat environmental degradation.
They identify five major areas:
1. Promote favorable attitudes.
2. Increase personal agency.
3. Facilitate emotional motivation.
4. Communicate supportive social norms.
5. Alter the environmental context; design the
choice.
Finally, be sure to consider what your work
suggests in regard to further research on your
subject. What mistakes should be corrected in
future studies? What avenues that were opened
up only slightly in your study should be pursued
further?
Research Design in Review
As this overview shows, research design involves
a set of decisions regarding what topic
is to be studied, among what population, with
what research methods, for what purpose.
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118 ■ Part Two
The Research Proposal
Quite often, in the design of a research project,
you’ll have to lay out the details of your plan for
someone else’s review or approval. For a course
project, for example, your instructor might very
well want to see a “proposal” before you set off
to work. Later in your career, if you wanted to
undertake a major project, you might need to
obtain funding from a foundation or government
agency, who would definitely want a detailed
proposal that describes how you would spend
their money. You might respond to a request for
proposals (RFP), which both public and private
agencies often circulate in search of someone to
do research for them.
We now turn to a brief discussion of how you
might prepare a research proposal. This will give
you one more overview of the whole research
process that the rest of this book details.
Elements of a Research Proposal
Although some funding agencies (or your
instructor, for that matter) may have specific requirements
for the elements or structure of a research
proposal, here are some basic components
you should include. I’ve posed some questions
that should help you establish some key elements
of your proposal.
Problem or Objective
What exactly do you want to study? Why is it
worth studying? Does the proposed study have
practical significance? Does it contribute to the
construction of social theories?
Literature Review
What have others said about this topic? What
theories address it, and what do they say? What
previous research exists? Are there consistent
findings, or do past studies disagree? Does the
body of existing research have flaws that you
think you can remedy?
You’ll find that reading social science research
reports requires special skills. If you need
to undertake a review of the literature at this
point in your course, you may want to skip
ahead to Chapter 15. It will familiarize you with
the different types of research literature, how to
Would you need to survey a large number of
people, or interview a few people in depth?
Could you learn what you need to know by
attending meetings of certain groups? Could
you glean the data you need from books in the
library?
As you answer these questions, you’ll find
yourself well into the process of research design.
Keep in mind your own research abilities and the
resources available to you. There is little point
in designing a perfect study that you can’t actually
carry out. You may want to try a research
method you have not used before so you can
learn from it, but be careful not to put yourself at
too great a disadvantage.
Once you have a general idea of what you
want to study and how, carefully review previous
research in journals and books to see how
other researchers have addressed the topic and
what they have learned about it. Your review
of the literature may lead you to revise your
research design: Perhaps you’ll decide to use a
previous researcher’s method or even replicate
an earlier study. The independent replication
of research projects is a standard procedure in
the physical sciences, and it is just as important
in the social sciences, although social researchers
tend to overlook that. Or, you might want
to go beyond replication and study some aspect
of the topic that you feel previous researchers
overlooked.
Here’s another approach you might take.
Suppose a topic has been studied previously
using field research methods. Can you design an
experiment that would test the findings those
earlier researchers produced? Or can you think
of existing statistics that could be used to test
their conclusions? Did a mass survey yield results
that you would like to explore in greater
detail through on-the-spot observations and
in-depth interviews? The use of several different
research methods to test the same finding is
sometimes called triangulation, and you should
always keep it in mind as a valuable research
strategy. Because each research method has particular
strengths and weaknesses, there is always
a danger that research findings will reflect, at
least in part, the method of inquiry. In the best
of all worlds, your own research design should
bring more than one research method to bear on
the topic.
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 119
discusses sampling techniques for both qualitative
and quantitative studies.
Measurement
What are the key variables in your study? How
will you define and measure them? Do your
definitions and measurement methods duplicate
or differ from those of previous research on this
topic? If you have already developed your measurement
device (a questionnaire, for example)
or will be using something previously developed
by others, it might be appropriate to include a
copy of it in an appendix to your proposal.
Data-Collection Methods
How will you actually collect the data for your
study? Will you conduct an experiment or a
survey? Will you undertake field research or will
you focus on the reanalysis of statistics already
created by others? Perhaps you’ll use more than
one method.
Analysis
Indicate the kind of analysis you plan to conduct.
Spell out the purpose and logic of your analysis.
Are you interested in precise description? Do
you intend to explain why things are the way
they are? Do you plan to account for variations
in some quality, such as why some students are
more liberal than others? What possible explanatory
variables will your analysis consider, and
how will you know if you’ve explained variations
adequately?
Schedule
Providing a schedule for the various stages
of research is often appropriate. Even if you
don’t do this for the proposal, do it for yourself.
Without a timeline for accomplishing the several
stages of research and keeping track of how
you’re doing, you may end up in trouble.
Budget
When you ask someone to cover the costs of
your research, you need to provide a budget
that specifies where the money will go. Large,
expensive projects include budgetary categories
such as personnel, computers, supplies, telephones,
and postage. Even if you’ll be paying
find what you want, and how to read it. There is
a special discussion of how to use electronic resources
online and how to avoid being misled by
information on the Internet.
In part, the data-collection method(s) you
intend to use in your study will shape your
review of the literature. Reviewing the designs
of previous studies using that same technique
can give you a head start in planning your own
study. At the same time, you should focus your
search on your research topic, regardless of
the methods other researchers have used. So,
if you’re planning field research on, say, interracial
marriages, you might gain some useful
insights from the findings of surveys on the
topic; further, past field research on interracial
marriages could be invaluable while you design
a survey on the topic.
Because the literature review will appear
early in your research proposal, you should write
it with an eye toward introducing the reader
to the topic you’ll address, laying out in a logical
manner what has already been learned on
the topic by past researchers, then leading up to
the holes or loose ends in our knowledge of the
topic, which you propose to remedy. Or, a little
differently, your review of the literature may
point to inconsistencies or disagreements among
existing findings. In that case, your proposed
research will aim to resolve the ambiguities that
plague us. I don’t know about you, but I’m already
excited about the research you’re proposing
to undertake.
Subjects for Study
Whom or what will you study in order to collect
data? Identify the subjects in general, theoretical
terms, and in specific, more concrete terms,
identify who is available for study and how
you’ll reach them. Will it be appropriate to select
a sample? If so, how will you do that? If there
is any possibility that your research will affect
those you study, how will you ensure that the
research does not harm them?
Beyond these general questions, the specific
research method you’ll use will further specify
the matter. If you’re planning to undertake an
experiment, a survey, or field research, for example,
the techniques for subject selection will vary
quite a bit. Lucky for you, Chapter 7 of this book
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120 ■ Part Two
exactly how to design and execute each
specific step. If you’ve found a research topic
that really interests you, you’ll want to keep
it in mind as you see how you might go about
studying it.
The Ethics of Research Design
Designing a research project needs to include
serious considerations of the ethical dimension.
To begin, if your study requires the participation
of human subjects, you must determine
that the likely benefits of the research will do
justice to the time and effort you’ll ask them to
contribute.
You’ll also want to design the study in concurrence
with the ethical guidelines discussed
in Chapter 3. For example, you should ensure
that the subjects’ privacy and well-being are
protected. As I indicated earlier, having your
research design reviewed by an institutional
review board may be appropriate.
for your project yourself, you should spend
some time anticipating expenses: office supplies,
photocopying, computer software, transportation,
and so on.
Institutional Review Board
Depending on the nature of your research
design, you may need to submit your proposal
to the campus institutional review
board for approval to ensure the protection
of human subjects. Your instructor can advise
you on this.
As you can see, if you’re interested in conducting
a social research project, it’s a good idea
to prepare a research proposal for your own
purposes, even if you aren’t required to do so
by your instructor or a funding agency. If you’re
going to invest your time and energy in such a
project, you should do what you can to ensure a
return on that investment.
Now that you’ve had a broad overview
of social research, you can move on to the
remaining chapters in this book and learn
When the Provost and the student newspaper seemed to disagree
over the extent of part-time faculty teaching, they used different
units of analysis. The newspaper said 52 percent of the faculty
were part-time; the Provost said about 70 percent of the credits
were taught by full-time faculty. The table here demonstrates
how they could both be right, given that the typical full-time faculty
member teaches three courses, or nine credits, whereas the
typical part-time faculty member teaches one course, or three
credits. For simplicity, I’ve assumed that there are 100 faculty
members.
FacultyStatus Number
CreditsTaught
byEach
TotalCredits
Taught
Full-time 48 9 432
Part-time 52 3 156
Total 588
In this hypothetical illustration, full-time faculty taught 432 of
the 588 credits, or 73 percent. As you can see, being clear about what
the unit of analysis matters a great deal.
What do you think?...Revisited
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Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 121
● A necessary cause is one that must be present
for the effect to occur.
● A sufficient cause is one will always produce the
effect in question.
Units of Analysis
● Units of analysis are the people or things
whose characteristics social researchers observe,
describe, and explain. Typically, the unit
of analysis in social research is the individual
person, but it may also be a social group, a formal
organization, a social interaction, a social artifact,
or another phenomenon such as lifestyles.
● The ecological fallacy involves applying
conclusions drawn from the analysis of groups
(election precincts) to individuals (voters).
● Reductionism is the attempt to understand a
complex phenomenon in terms of a narrow
set of concepts, such as attempting to explain
the American Revolution solely in terms of
economics (or political idealism or psychology)
when there were many causes.
The Time Dimension
● The research of social processes that occur over time
presents challenges that can be addressed through
cross-sectional studies or longitudinal studies.
● Cross-sectional studies are based on observations
made at one time. Although conclusions
drawn from such studies are limited by this
characteristic, researchers can sometimes use
such studies to make inferences about processes
that occur over time.
● In longitudinal studies, observations are made at
many times. Such observations may be made
of samples drawn from general populations
(trend studies), samples drawn from morespecific
subpopulations (cohort studies), or the
same sample of people each time (panel studies).
Mixed Modes
● Most studies use a single method for collecting
data (e.g., survey, experiment, field research), but
using more than one method in a given study
can yield a more comprehensive understanding.
How to Design a Research Project
● Research design starts with an initial interest,
idea, or theoretical expectation and proceeds
through a series of interrelated steps that narrow
the focus of the study so that concepts, methods,
and procedures are well defined. A good research
plan accounts for all these steps in advance.
● At the outset, a researcher specifies the meaning
of the concepts or variables to be studied (conceptualization),
chooses a research method or
methods (such as experiments versus surveys),
and specifies the population to be studied and, if
applicable, how it will be sampled.
MaiN poiNtS
Introduction
● Any research design requires researchers to
specify as clearly as possible what they want to
find out and then determine the best way to
do it.
Three Purposes of Research
● The principal purposes of social research include
exploration, description, and explanation. Research
studies often combine more than one
purpose.
● Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial,
rough understanding of some phenomenon.
● Description is the precise measurement and reporting
of the characteristics of some population
or phenomenon under study.
● Explanation is the discovery and reporting of
relationships among different aspects of the
phenomenon under study. Descriptive studies
answer the question “What’s so?”; explanatory
ones tend to answer the question “Why?”
Idiographic Explanation
● Idiographic explanation seeks an exhaustive understanding
of the causes producing events and
situations in a single or limited number of cases.
● Pay attention to the explanations offered by
the people living the social processes you are
studying.
● Comparisons with similar situations, either in
different places or at different times in the same
place, can be insightful.
The Logic of Nomothetic Explanation
● Both idiographic and nomothetic models of
explanation rest on the idea of causation. The
idiographic model aims at a complete understanding
of a particular phenomenon, using all
relevant causal factors. The nomothetic model
aims at a general understanding—not necessarily
complete—of a class of phenomena, using a
small number of relevant causal factors.
● There are three basic criteria for establishing
causation in nomothetic analyses: (1) The
variables must be empirically associated, or
correlated; (2) the causal variable must occur
earlier in time than the variable it is said to
affect; and (3) the observed effect cannot be
explained as the effect of a different variable.
Necessary and Sufficient Causes
● Mere association, or correlation, does not in
itself establish causation. A spurious causal relationship
is an association that in reality is caused
by one or more other variables. We will examine
this at length in Chapter 15 on the logic of
multivariate analysis.
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122 ■ Part Two
argument that the time order is just the opposite
of what was assumed?
2. Here are some examples of real research topics.
For each excerpt, can you name the unit of
analysis? (The answers are at the end of this
chapter.)
a. Women watch TV more than men because
they are likely to work fewer hours outside
the home than men....Black people watch
an average of approximately three-quarters
of an hour more television per day than
white people. (Hughes 1980: 290)
b. Of the 130 incorporated U.S. cities with
more than 100,000 inhabitants in 1960,
there were 126 that had at least two shortterm
nonproprietary general hospitals
accredited by the American Hospital
Association. (Turk 1980: 317)
c. The early TM [transcendental meditation]
organizations were small and informal. The
Los Angeles group, begun in June 1959,
met at a member’s house where, incidentally,
Maharishi was living. (Johnston 1980:
337)
d. However, it appears that the nursing staffs
exercise strong influence over . . . a decision
to change the nursing care system. . . .
Conversely, among those decisions dominated
by the administration and the medical
staffs....(Comstock 1980: 77)
e. Though 667,000 out of 2 million farmers
in the United States are women, women
historically have not been viewed as
farmers, but rather, as the farmer’s wife.
(Votaw 1979: 8)
f. The analysis of community opposition
to group homes for the mentally handicapped...indicates
that deteriorating
neighborhoods are most likely to organize
in opposition, but that upper-middle class
neighborhoods are most likely to enjoy
private access to local officials. (Graham and
Hogan 1990: 513)
g. Some analysts during the 1960s predicted
that the rise of economic ambition and
political militancy among blacks would
foster discontent with the “otherworldly”
black mainline churches. (Ellison and
Sherkat 1990: 551)
h. This analysis explores whether propositions
and empirical findings of contemporary
theories of organizations directly
apply to both private product producing
organizations (PPOs) and public human
service organizations (PSOs). (Schiflett
and Zey 1990: 569)
● The researcher operationalizes the proposed
concepts by stating precisely how the variables
in the study will be measured. Research
then proceeds through observation, processing
the data, analysis, and application, such
as reporting the results and assessing their
implications.
The Research Proposal
● A research proposal provides a preview of why
a study will be undertaken and how it will be
conducted. Researchers must often get permission
or necessary resources in order to proceed
with a project. Even when not required, a
proposal is a useful device for planning.
The Ethics of Research Design
● Your research design should indicate how your
study will abide by the ethical strictures of
social research.
● It may be appropriate for an institutional review
board to review your research proposal.
Key terMS
cohort study
correlation
cross-sectional study
ecological fallacy
longitudinal study
panel mortality
panel study
reductionism
social artifact
sociobiology
spurious relationship
trend study
units of analysis
propoSiNG SociaL reSearch:
DeSiGN
This chapter has laid out many different ways social
research can be structured. In designing your research
project, you’ll need to specify which of these
ways you’ll use. Is your purpose that of exploring a
topic, providing a detailed description, or explaining
the social differences and processes you may
observe? If you’re planning a causal analysis, for example,
you should say something about how you’ll
organize and pursue that goal.
Will your project collect data at one point in time
or compare data across time? What data-collection
technique(s) will you employ?
review QUeStioNS
1. One example in this chapter suggested that
political orientations cause attitudes toward
legalizing marijuana. Can you make an
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Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
Chapter 4: Research Design ■ 123
aNSwerS to UNitS oF aNaLySiS
QUiz, review QUeStioN 2
a. Men and women, black and white people
(individuals)
b. Incorporated U.S. cities (groups)
c. Transcendental meditation organizations
(groups)
d. Nursing staffs (groups)
e. Farmers (individuals)
f. Neighborhoods (groups)
g. Blacks (individuals)
h. Service and production organizations (formal
organizations)
i. Job titles (artifacts)
i. This paper examines variations in
job title structures across work roles.
Analyzing 3,173 job titles in the
California civil service system in 1985,
we investigate how and why lines of
work vary in the proliferation of job categories
that differentiate ranks, functions,
or particular organizational locations.
(Strang and Baron 1990: 479)
3. Review the logic of spuriousness. Can you
think up an example in which an observed
relationship between two variables could
actually be explained away by a third variable?
4. Make up a research example—different from
those discussed in the text—that illustrates a
researcher committing the ecological fallacy.
How would you modify the example to avoid
this trap?
Copyright 2021 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.