Posing the Questions KEY TERMS
Deductive reasoning: The process of reasoning from general principles to particular examples. Contrast: Inductive reasoning.
Empirical evidence: Evidence derived from direct observation and sense experience. Contrasts: Intuitive insight, metaphysical speculation, and pure logic.
Hypothesis: A tentative statement suggesting a relationship between two or more variables. A hypothesis is intended to be tested empirically or at least to be testable.
Ideology: A set of beliefs and ideas that justify certain interests. An ideological position reflects and rationalizes particular political, economic, institutional, and/or social interests.
Inductive reasoning: The process of reasoning from particular examples to general principles. Contrast. Deductive reasoning.
Model: A tentative and limited tool that represents some aspect of the world in words, mathematical symbols, graphs, or other symbols. Models attempt to duplicate or illustrate by analogy a pattern of relationships found in the empirical world. They are used to guide research and build theory in the sciences.
Participant-observation: A research method commonly used by sociologists, anthropologists, and journalistic feature writers. The investigator becomes or poses as a member of a group under study in an attempt to gain an intimate, firsthand acquaintance with the group and understand how group members interpret the world.
Positivistic science or positivism: The philosophical stance claiming that all true knowledge can be derived from sense experience (empirically based knowledge). It rejects intuitive insight, subjective understanding, and metaphysical speculation as bases of knowledge.
Scientific method: A method for doing science based on the assumption that all true knowledge is verifiable using empirical evidence. Well-ordered, successive stages--defining a research problem, constructing hypotheses, data gathering and analysis, and prediction of facts--are outlined.
Theory: A comprehensive explanation of something. Its functions are to summarize and order information meaningfully, to permit prediction, and to suggest new lines of scientific inquiry. A theory is a generalization that is intermediate in degree of verification between a scientific law and a hypothesis.
Unobtrusive measure: A research method that seeks to remove the observer from the event under study and thereby to eliminate possible reactive effects. Examples are content analysis of television programs and archival research.
Variable: A trait or factor that can vary among a population or from case to case (e.g., sex, size of firm, cost per square foot, social class). Opposite. constant.
[Source: City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society, Second Edition, E. Barbara Phillips. Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, pg. 74-75.]