| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Paradigm | a model or framework for observation and understanding, which shapes both what we see and how we understand it. Point of View. |
| macrotheory | a theory aimed at understanding the "big picture" of institutions, whole societies, and the interactions among societies. (example: Karl Marx's examination of class struggle) |
| microtheory | a theory aimed at understanding social life at the level of individuals/small groups and their interactions. (example: Explaining how the play behavior of girls differs from that of boys). |
| interest convergence | the thesis that majority group members will only support the interests of minorities when those actions also support the interests of the majority group. |
| hypothesis | a specified testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition; more generally, an expectation about the nature of things derived from a theory. It is a statement of something that ought to be observed in the real world if the theory is correct. |
| operationalization | one step beyond conceptualization. The process of developing operational definitions, or specifying the exact operations involved in measuring a variable. |
| operational definition | the concrete and specific definition of something in terms of the operations by which observations are to be categorized. The operational definition of "earning an A in this course" might be "correctly answering at least 90% of the final exam questions." |
| Null Hypothesis | In connection w/hypothesis testing and tests of statistical significance, the hypothesis that suggest there is no relationship among the variables under study. You may conclude that the variables are related after having statistically rejected the null hypothesis. (pg 49) |
| Early Positivism | society simply Was. knowledge would be based on observations through the 5 senses rather than on belief. |
| Conflict Paradigm | often focuses on class, gender, and ethnic struggles. Struggle among economic classes; examining the way capitalism produced the oppression of workers by the owners of industry. |
| Symbolic Interactionism | focus on the nature of interactions |
| ethnomethodology | people are continually creating social structure through their actions and interactions-that they are in fact creating their realities; people are continuously trying to make sense of the life they experience, everyone is acting like a social scientist |
| structural functionalism | the view of society as a social system, then looks for the "functions" served by its various components. a social entity such as an organization or a whole society can be vied as an organism. like organisms, a social system is made up of parts, each of which contributes to the functioning of the whole. |
| feminist paradigm | focuses on gender differences and how they relate to the rest of social organization. draw attention to the oppression of women in many societies which in turn sheds light on oppression in general. |
Combine with other sets
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