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| ...An economic system based on profit-seeking and market exchange. ‘Capital’ refers to any asset, including money, property and machines, which can be used to produce commodities for sale or invested in a market with the hope of achieving a profit. |
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| ...The values, norms, habits and ways of life characteristic of a coherent social group. |
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| When the presence of a researcher, or a group’s knowledge that it has been specially selected for research, changes the behaviour of the group, raising problems of the validity of social research. |
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| A set of ideas, values and beliefs that represent the outlook, and justify the interests, of a social group. |
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| In a longitudinal study subjects are followed over time with continuous or repeated monitoring of risk factors or health outcomes, or both. |
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| There are three components of the looking-glass self: We imagine how we appear to others, we imagine the judgement of that appearance, and we develop our self (identity) through the judgments of others. |
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| The period following the mid-eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, characterized by the combination of secularization, rationalization, democratization, individualism and the rise of scientific thinking. |
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| A perspective based on the idea that society is not governed by history or progress but is highly pluralistic and diverse, with no ‘grand narrative’ guiding its development. |
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| A broad all-embracing ‘big theory’ or explanation for how the world and societies operate. |
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| nature vs. nurture debate |
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"Nature versus nurture" is a psychology term related to whether heredity or the environment most impacts human psychological development (behavior, habits, intelligence, personality, sexuality, aggressive tendencies, and so on). It's obvious that you share your parents' DNA in the physical sense — you might have long legs like your father and blue eyes like your mother. But where did you get your love of reading poetry, your quick wit, or your natural athletic abilities? That's what the nature versus nurture debate tackles. |
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| In its most basic form, phenomenology thus attempts to create conditions for the objective study of topics usually regarded as subjective: consciousness and the content of conscious experiences such as judgments, perceptions, and emotions. Although phenomenology seeks to be scientific, it does not attempt to study consciousness from the perspective of clinical psychology or neurology. Instead, it seeks through systematic reflection to determine the essential properties and structures of experience. |
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Approaching topics with an open mind, avoiding bias, and being prepared to submit research evidence to scrutiny by other researchers. |
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organic and mechanical
solidarity |
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| According to Emile Durkheim, a form of social cohesion that results from the various parts of a society functioning as an integrated whole, particularly through the extended division of labour. |
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| A set of values, ideas, beliefs and assumptions providing a model or framework within which scientists operate, and providing guidelines for the conduct of research. These are rarely called into question until the evidence against them is overwhelming. |
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| Information that is gathered by researchers themselves. |
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| This refers to whether another researcher, if repeating or replicating the research using the same method for the same research on the same group, would achieve the same results. |
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| The belief that society is changing so rapidly and constantly that it is marked by chaos and uncertainty, and social structures are being replaced by a whole range of different and constantly changing social relationships. Societies can no longer be understood through the application of general theories like Marxism or functionalism, which seek to explain society as a whole, as it has become fragmented into many different groups, interests and lifestyles. Society and social structures cease to exist, to be replaced by a mass of individuals who are transformed into consumers making individual choices about their lifestyles. |
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| sampling error is incurred when the statistical characteristics of a population are estimated from a subset, or sample, of that population. Since the sample does not include all members of the population, statistics on the sample, such as means and quantiles, generally differ from parameters on the entire population |
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| ...is the study of meaning-making. This includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. |
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| social construction of reality |
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| The way something is created through the individual, social and cultural interpretations, perceptions and actions of people. Official statistics, notions of health and illness, deviance and suicide are all examples of social phenomena that only exist because people have constructed them and given these phenomena particular labels. |
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...traditional society refers to a society characterized by an orientation to the past, not the future, with a predominant role for custom and habit.
Such a society\\ will be marked by a lack of distinction between family and business, with the division of labor influenced primarily by age, gender, and status.[ |
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| The use of multiple research methods as a way of producing more reliable empirical data than is available from any single method. |
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| This is concerned with notions of truth – how far the fi ndings of research actually provide a true, genuine or authentic picture of what is being studied. |
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| A widespread agreement around the main values of a society. |
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Weber defines power as the ability of a actor (or actors) to realize his or her will in a social action, even against the will of other actors. Power relates to the ability to command resources in a particular domain. Economic power, then, is the ability to control material resources: to direct production, to monopolize accumulation, to dictate consumption.
Societal power includes economic power, social power, legal or political power, and so forth. |
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