From Hypotheses to Evidence: Social Science Research Methods

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course is designed to familiarize undergraduates with ways of knowing the world, through the lens of social science. It will meet the requirement for a research methods course for concentrators in sociology and may be applied to meet methods requirements for other concentrations and departments. We will think about how to pose sociological questions, about what constitutes "evidence", and how to collect and how analyze data about those questions. We will touch on key social theories and concepts. In this course, students will study how appropriate research methods are chosen and employed in influential research and will gain hands-on experience with data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of results. We also learn how to structure a paper or thesis, posing a question, outlining the literature on this question, acquiring evidence and reaching conclusions.