EDUCATION

Sociology in Education

Sociology in Education

Analytical process of quantitative data

Quantitative data are data that have been measured numerically. A number of other entries in this dictionary describe particular statistical techniques for quantitative data analysis (for example regression, factor analysis, correlation, cluster analysis, log linear analyses, path analysis).

In the natural sciences, advances were often associated with being able to quantify, or measure, aspects of the physical world, for instance temperature, electrical voltage, or the speed of light. Some sociologists (often associated with positivism in the philosophy of science) have assumed that social sciences will also progress most effectively through developing measures of sociological phenomena. For instance, the social capital paradigm has been distinctive in attempting to develop measures of such social investments that would permit one to chart changes in these forms of capital over time, or to compare countries in terms of their levels of social involvement. Similarly, a great deal of effort has gone into developing precise numerical measures of social class and social stratification.

An opposing view is that reducing complex sociological phenomena to numbers over-simplifies our accounts of those phenomena and limits or distorts our understanding. For instance, in making the claim that social capital has fallen in the United States since the mid twentieth century, researchers have measured the change in the average number of clubs and societies that American citizens are members of. Or, in making claims about the differences in the level of social capital in different countries, researchers have typically relied on questionnaires that ask how much individuals trust each other or important public institutions. Critics of such approaches argue that the nature and role of clubs and societies has changed over time, and that people in different countries assign a different meaning to the word trust, so these measures are flawed.

The alternative to quantitative research is termed qualitative research, in which typically the investigators are more concerned with understanding the nature and meaning of people, or the complexity of social institutions - for example Clifford Geertz, or proponents of hermeneutics). Examples of their research styles would be their attempts to understand the meanings individuals assign to phenomena by in-depth interviews or the nature of institutions by conducting ethnographies.

The methods of analyzing quantitative and qualitative data are very different, employing statistics for the former or qualitative research for the latter.

Throughout its history, sociology has spent much time preoccupied by disputes between advocates of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. More recently, many researchers have taken a pragmatic approach and considered, for any given research problem, which approach (or what combination of the two) will lead to the most satisfactory understanding of the research question. In other cases, both are used simultaneously, for example in triangulation (Giddens, 2008).

Information analysis and Procedures

The information technologies have experienced dramatic growth since the 50's, at a rate at which computing power grows exponentially every year. In this natural growth of computing has been accompanied by the information, the volumes are making it unreadable by ...