| Term | Definition |
|---|
| C. Wright Mills | first to write about the sociological perspective |
| sociological imagination | ability to see societal ptaterns that inflence the individual as well as groups of individuals |
| troubles | privately felt problems that spring from events or feelings in a person's life |
| issues | affect large numbers of people and hae their origins in the institutional arrangements and history of a society |
| social structure | organized pattern of social relationships and and social institutions that together constitute society |
| empirical | conclusions are based on careful and systematic observations |
| debunking | looking behind the facades of everyday life |
| social institutions | established and organized systems of social behavior with a particular and recognized purpose |
| social change | alteration of society over time |
| social interaction | behavior between two or more people that is given meaning |
| diversity | broad concept that includes studying group differences in society's opportunities, the shaping of social institutions by different social factors, the formation of group and individual identity, and process of social change |
| The Enlightenment | 18th and 19th century Europe; faith in the ability of human reason to solve society's problems |
| positivism | system of thought in which scientific observation and description is considered the highest form of knowledge as oppose to religion |
| organic metaphor | society is an organism consisted of interrelated functions and parts that work together to create the whole |
| Social Darwinism | application of Darwinian thought to society |
| functionalism | interprets each part of society in terms of how it contributes to the stability of the whole |
| conflict theory | emphasizes role of coercion and power, a person's or group's ability to exercise influence and control over others and producing social order |
| symbolic interaction theory | immediate social interaction is the place where "society" exists |
| feminist theory | analyzes the status of women and men in society with the purpose of using that knowledge to better women's lives |
| postmodernism | society is not an objective thing |
| participation observation | sociological research technique in which the researcher actually becomes both participant in and observer of that which she or he studies |
| scientific method | observation, hypothesis testing, analysis of data, and generalization |
| deductive reasoning | creates a specific research question about a focused point that is based on a more general or universal principle |
| inductive reasoning | general conclusions from specific observations |
| replication study | research that is repeated exactly, but on a different group of people or in a different time or place |
| research design | overal logic and strategy underlying a research project |
| quantitative research | uses numerical analysis |
| qualitative research | focuses on a central research questions |
| hypothesis | prediction, or a hunch, a tentative assumption that one intends to test |
| validity | degree which it accurately measures or reflects a concept |
| reliability | repeating the measurement gives the same results |
| content analysis | way of measuring by examining the cultural artifacts of what people write, say, see, and hear |
Combine with other sets
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