(Y1) Activities

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The Nature of Science - 29/09/2020

Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices, Anol Bhattacherjee (2012)

Take notes from pages 1 to 3

Science and Scientific Research

different definitions of research

scientific research = "(1) it contributes to a body of science, and (2) it follows the scientific method."

Science

science - "systematic and organised body of knowledge in any area of inquiry that is acquired using "the scientific method.""

natural science - study of naturally occurring things like light, stars, the human body

split into physical sciences, earth sciences, life sciences, and others

physical - physics, chemistry, astronomy

earth - geology

life - biology, botany

social science - study of people or collections of people and their behaviour as individuals or as a collective

disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics

differences between natural sciences and social sciences

natural: precise, accurate, deterministic, independent

social: less accurate, deterministic or unambiguous. high degree of measurement error. much more disagreements (i.e. solving problems such as rescuing the economy from a recession)

basic sciences - explain basic objects and forces, relationships between them, and the laws governing them

applied sciences - apply scientific knowledge from basic sciences in a physical environment

applied relies on basic to progress

Scientific Knowledge

sciences purpose is to create scientific knowledge - by discovering laws and creating theories that can explain natural or social phenomena

scientific knowledge - "generalized body of laws and theories to explain a phenomenon or behavior of interest that are acquired using the scientific method"

laws - observed patterns of phenomena or behaviour

theories - explanations of the underlying phenomenon or behaviour (based on evidence)

scientific knowledge may be wrong and can be far from the truth, sometimes there is more than one truth

theories are based upon scientists assumptions and therefore have the ability to be wrong, either by a small amount or by a large

scientific knowledge is based upon logic (theory) and evidence (observations), they cannot exist without each other

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Science vs. Common Sense - 29/09/2020

Read and consider the accuracy of this article about its discussion of science and common sense, i.e. is the information in it reliable, accurate, etc..

Make notes about your considerations.

Communicating Science: The Difference Between Science and Common Sense, Kyle Hill (2011)

The article is posted on a blog which means that it has been written by one person who may not be an expert in the subject and might just be posting opinion. This makes it less reliable as it hasn't been peer read. However, Kyle Hill's work has appeared in large magazines, such as Wired, Discover Magazine, and Scientific American. This shows that he is a reliable writer as his articles have been posted by others.

The article also does not seem to have references to where Hill got his information. This makes it even less reliable as he has not posted where he got his information from, so that might also be an unreliable source. The lack of references also causes some questions about the accuracy of the information, Hill should be able to reference at least one or two people who have posted something similar, especially since this is such a big subject.

However, the information seems to be accurate when comparing it to other posts about the same subject. It also contains a lot of fact-based statements, it is not all just opinion and conjecture.

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Science and Common Sense - 29/09/2020

Read and take notes from the following article. Complete the activity at the end (the video part is no longer available).

Bring your activity responses to next week's class.

1.4 Science and Common Sense, Price, Jhangiani, Chiang, Leighton, & Cuttler.

folk psychology - "intuitive beliefs about people's behavior, thoughts, and feelings"

can be reasonably accurate, but most is not. (such as letting anger out, it's not actually helpful (Bushman, 2002))

heuristics - mental shortcuts that help us form and maintain our beliefs

confirmation bias - we tend to focus on things that confirm our beliefs and ignore what goes against our beleifs

skepticism - considering alternatives and searching for evidence

tolerance for uncertainty - there are many things we just don't know, yet

Key Takeaways

"People's intuitions about human behavior, also known as folk psychology, often turn out to be wrong. This is one primary reason that psychology relies on science rather than common sense."

"Researchers in psychology cultivate certain critical-thinking attitudes. One is skepticism. They search for evidence and consider alternatives before accepting a claim about human behavior as true. Another is tolerance for uncertainty. They withhold judgement about whether a claim is true or not when there is insufficient evidence to decide."

Activities

1. Practice: For each of the following intuitive beliefs about human behaviour, list three reasons that it might be true and three reasons that it might not be true:

A) You cannot truly love another person unless you love yourself.

True:

If your relationship with yourself is bad, then it would make it hard to love somebody else as you are focused on yourself and what is wrong/trying to help yourself.

Trying to love someone else when you don't love yourself could make your dislike even worse as you would blame yourself for not being able to be there enough for the other person.

If you don't love yourself before loving somebody else then you might get caught in a toxic relationship as you don't know how you should actually be treated/you might not think you deserve to be treated better.

False:

You might have mental health issues that make it hard to love yourself, this doesn't mean you can't love somebody else.

It is a lot harder to love yourself than to love somebody else as, even without mental health issues, many people always see the worst in themselves and have insecurities, but can see the best in others.

You will never truly love yourself 24/7, therefore you shouldn't limit your life choices by not trying to love someone else.

B) People who receive "crisis counselling" immediately after experiencing a traumatic event are better able to cope with that trauma in the long term

True:

There is less time for the trauma to fester, therefore it could save self-confidence/self-issues in the long run.

Getting help sooner could lead to less mental health issues in the long run as the person is being seen to and knows there are people there to help.

Knowing how to help themselves straight away could lead to less of a chance of triggering a panic caused by the traumatic event because they know what to avoid/what to do.

False:

Everyone reacts to trauma differently, people with a delayed reaction to trauma might not need help until months or years after the traumatic event.

Some people might not need crisis counselling at all.

The person might not want crisis counselling and instead want to see some other health professional.

C) Studying is the most effective when it is always done in the same location

True:

Learning in the same area can help with remembering information (Godden and Baddeley, 1975).

When you sit in the area it will make you more likely to study as your brain knows that that place is your study area, therefore you are less likely to be distracted.

If you study in the same area then you become comfortable there and therefore the information is less likely to stress you out.

False:

That location could begin to stress the person out which would lead to decreased productivity, as it has connotations with studying and therefore exams.

Your exam won't be in the same place you always study, therefore you should be used to trying to study in different areas so that you will always remember what you need to (Context-dependent learning).

Studying in the same place every time could lead to you getting bored or unhappy as you feel like you are constantly in that area, this could lead to you being more distracted in the area as you are just constantly thinking about how much you don't want to study.

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The Myth of Common Sense - 29/09/2020

TEDxMidAtlantic 2011 - Duncan Watts - The Myth of Common Sense

problems of social sciences seem easier to understand than that of physics and engineering

"it's not rocket science" - humans are better at rocket science than problems to do with human behaviour

advertising effectiveness

social and economic policies

predicting financial or political crisis

economic development programs

predicting 'hit' books, movies, companies

'Why does rocket science seem hard and social science seem like common sense?'

to do with the nature of common sense

common sense - 'what we rely on to navigate concrete, everyday situations'

problem with common sense

'we try to use common sense to reason about situations that are not concrete, everyday situations

above situations aren't everyday situations and impact thousands of people

'when every conclusion and its opposite appear equally obvious (once you know the answer), there is a problem with the concept of obviousness."

factors are hard to predict (x,y,z -> a) because we don't know the outcome, but once we have the outcome it seems obvious about the factors that were relevant

explanations are just stories, the sequence of events but not why

this is not bad, we have reasons we use stories

'the stories we tell about history are so powerful that we are tempted to generalise from them to make predictions'

history never really repeats itself, therefore we can't use it to make predictions, law of unintended consequences

knowing common sense is unreliable leads us to trying to use other ways to know things, such as the scientific method

the internet has helped us to measure the interactions between people, in real time, and over extended periods of time

this is the equivalent to the discovery of the telescope, but for social scientists

made the previously invisible, visible

even with all the data, social sciences will probably never resemble physics or medical science

elegant laws of physics, social world is messier than that

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Research Project Extract - 28/10/2020

Read pages 20-24 of this extract - Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices, 2012, Anol Bhattacherjee

In your own words, make notes about the research process and summarise the list of common mistakes in research.

There are terms and concepts you may need to look into elsewhere to find out what they mean and to ensure you understand them. Some of these terms may appear in the next activity.

Overview of the Research Process

Scientific research is made up of observation (watching a phenomenon that interests us), rationalisation (linking our observations together to potentially create a theory), and validation (using the scientific method to test the theory)

Two types of research:

inductive - observation and rationalisation

deductive - rationalisation and validation

"Most traditional research tends to be deductive and functionalistic in nature."

Functionalisatic research process:

Exploration

Research Questions - choosing what you are studying (e.g. a behaviour/event/phenomena), a broader question can make it more interesting for people to want to read (this could also help with the literature review)

Literature Review - reading up on previous studies of your topic/studies with similar topics (this can help with choosing data collection methods or sampling methods), this can help you choose a topic that hasn't been researched as much

Theory - choosing which theory/viewpoint you want to cover/use in your research, helps keep information relevant

Research Design

Operationalisation - choosing what you will be measuring (difficult in social sciences, how do you measure happiness/prejudice/liberalism), this is where literature review comes in handy (looking at what others measured in their research)

Research Method - how you will collect you data: qualitative, quantitative or both, then a specific method of collection: survey, questionnaire, etc., more than one method might be chosen for complex phenomena

Sampling Strategy - who will you be doing the research on, what size of group(s), should avoid biased sample groups

Research Proposal - a write-up of what you did for each previous section and why you chose those options, this is used a lot for requesting funding, can also be used for peer advice so that mistakes/problems are identified before the actual study takes place

Research Execution

Pilot Testing - the study is done on a small group of the sample, which helps identify problems

Data Collection - using the research method to collect data from the sample group

Data Analysis - turning the collected data from raw date into analysed data, usually accompanied with visual aids (e.g. graphs), helps the researcher come to a conclusion

Research Report - a written up document with all of your research, findings, and why you chose what you did, must be detailed, this makes it easier for others to repeat what you did and verify your findings, the research proposal makes writing the report easier as you have a lot of your reasoning written down already

Common Mistakes in Research

People choose to study something interesting to only them, not the entire scientific community. Research questions have to have real-life applications/deal with real-life issues that haven't been properly/fully investigated in previous research

People also follow trends/fads in the community and study what everyone else is studying. This is an issue as research takes time, and the trend/fad might be over by the time it is published, making the research almost worthless in that case

Sometimes people choose research questions they cannot actually get answers to. This could lead to them having to stop halfway through the research and have wasted time, or it could lead to a very bad study that doesn't answer anything

People sometimes base their research around a research method, instead of the other way round. This could lead to many important things not being studied because people do not like the research method that would be best

Sometimes people get the data first and then try to fit a question around their data. This makes the data unusable a lot of the time as it does not fit their research needs