1.3 Theory and evidence in social science

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From the course by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1

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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1

12 ratings

This course seeks to turn learners into informed consumers of social science research. It introduces concepts, standards, and principles of social science research to the interested non-expert. Learners who complete the course will be able to assess evidence and critically evaluate claims about important social phenomena. It reviews the origins and development of social science, describes the process of discovery in contemporary social science research, and explains how contemporary social science differs from apparently related fields. It describes the goals, basic paradigms, and methodologies of the major social science disciplines. It offers an overview of the major questions that are the focus of much contemporary social science research, overall and for China. Special emphasis is given to explaining the challenges that social scientists face in drawing conclusions about cause and effect from their studies, and offers an overview of the approaches that are used to overcome these challenges. Explanation is non-technical and does not involve mathematics. Statistics and quantitative methods are not covered. Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a critical, informed consumer of social science research. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU After you complete Part 1, enroll in Part 2 to learn how to be a PRODUCER of Social science research. Part 2: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-research-chinese-society

From the lesson

What is social science?

Welcome to Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 1! Part 1 focuses on being a CONSUMER of social science research. Take some time to review the Course Overview video and the assignments for this course. In Week 1, we will explore What is Social Science. By the end of this week, you will be able to understand the differences between social science from humanities, natural and life sciences, outline the origins of social science and have a grasp of key definitions and terms.

1.1 Overview2:21

1.2 Why social science is a science6:01

1.3 Theory and evidence in social science7:27

1.4 The origins of social science4:27

1.5 Social science as a new way to study society3:48

1.6 Differences between social science and other disciplines7:28

1.7 Summary1:54

Meet the Instructors

Cameron Campbell
Professor of Social Science
Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science

[MUSIC]

Hi, in this module, I'm going to talk about theory and

evidence in social science.

Social science theories seek o explain relationships

between what we refer to as concepts.

By concept we refer to a trait of a social entity that we just talked about.

Concepts are abstractions, even though we may think of specific ones

almost as if they were very concrete and real.

Let's look at some examples.

So if we have some social entities, it could be individuals or other entities.

When we talk about concepts at the individual level, we might think of things

like health Income and education.

Now, we take these for granted but in fact they are abstract, so

we call them concepts.

At a broader level, we might talk about prosperity, transparency,

openness as characteristics or traits of countries.

So again, we distinguish between individuals on the one hand, and concepts

that are relevant for them, and countries and larger scale units on the other.

We'll be coming back to the very important distinction between scales

in later lectures.

Again, a theory to count as a theory

should not only describe a relationship between two concepts.

But it also explain that relationship.

For example, we have a theory about the relationship between education and health.

It should not only describe the relationship, and suggest that education

influences health in some consistent way, but it should also suggest a mechanism,

a pathway, by which education influences health.

A statement about a relationship between two concepts that does not

offer an explanation.

Generally, we don't regard it as a theory,

it's mainly a statement of an empirical irregularity or a law.

Let's take a look at an example.

So going back to this issue of the importance of theory offering and

explanation for relationship.

If we're thinking of the example of the relationship between education and

health, somehow a theory must identify a pathway by which

education is proposed to influence health.

So there are many things by which education might influence health.

And theories have been proposed.

So we think that education influences behavior.

Education also influences income.

Now, income might also influence behavior.

Income in turn influences health care and stress, and behavior influences stress,

and then these somehow all combined to shake health.

Specific theories might focus on a specific pathway going from education to

health, and offering a account of why a particular pathway perhaps

the one going from income through stress helps link education to health.

So it's that linkage that explanation that helps make something a theory.

To test our theories, we have to translate our concept into indicators.

And then, from a hypothesis about the relationships between those indicators,

that we expect to see out in the real world.

By indicators, we refer to measures that can be

collected in a systematic fashion in the course of a study.

As opposed to the abstractions that they are based on, that is the concepts.

So if we think about education and

income and health, these things that we're interested in.

If we were wanting to test a theory about their relationship, we would need to

translate each of them into an indicator that we could go out and measure.

So for example, education we might measure as numbers of years of schooling.

There are other ways to measure education but for the purpose of the study,

we must settle on one particular indicator or measure.

So numbers of years of schooling.

Income, there's lots of ways to measure income, might

be typical in at least certain countries to measure income as annual learnings.

In other settings people might ask, monthly earnings.

And finally, health, we have to translate that very abstract concept health

into something we can go out and measure.

It's very common for people assessing health or

trying to measure it to actually use self-rated health where people are simple

asked, how healthy are you on a scale of one to five?

If we collect our information, collect our data on the indicators,

and then the relationship among the indicators is as predicted, or

expected from the hypothesis, then we think of that as confirming our theory.

Now, there's one issue I'd like to introduce, about different ways of

developing theory, to help clarify the distinctions between disciplines.

That is the distinction between Inductive approaches and

deductive approaches in the development of theory.

So in a inductive approach,

theory generally starts in some ways from the outside.

People observe the world around them, they look for patterns and regularities.

This leads to generalizations which then leads to actual specifications

of theory that we go out and try to test.

A deductive approach starts with theory with carefully defined

rules that are used to derive predictions and

the these predictions are the basis for the design of experiments or

possibly observational studies that try to test the original theory.

So social science tends to be heavily, although not exclusively,

inductive, where a lot of social science theory is developed as the result of

people observing the world around them, noticing trends, and patterns that

lead them to make generalizations, which then inspires the development of theory.

If we go to the other extreme, we have disciplines like mathematics and

philosophy which are almost entirely deductive, which don't even conduct

experiments necessarily, they operate entirely within a world of theory.

Then there are some part of the natural sciences and even some parts of the social

sciences, that are also deductive, that start with strong theory.

This is especially the case in economics, to some extent in political science.

So these are the basic elements of theory in the social sciences and

this helps lay the groundwork for our discussions in later

lectures on how we design studies to test theories.

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