At a university, students learn how to do research.
Research means studying something in detail.
Research is important.
Research includes:
1. thinking of a question
2. collecting information
3. understanding the information
4. explaining the results
The aim is for students to be able to conduct their own research.
They should have fun doing research
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Sociology and Methods of Quantitative Social Research
Sociology is a science.
It studies society.
It examines how people live together.
It aims to understand society.
Researchers want to understand why things happen.
To do this, they collect information about these things.
They can collect information in a certain way.
This way is called a method.
A method is a plan that you follow.
This work area uses two main methods:
Surveys and experiments.
In surveys, we ask people questions about a topic that interests us. An experiment is a test.
We want to know which people we should ask.
Or how we collect and evaluate the answers.
It is important that we do everything very carefully.
Because only then can we draw good conclusions.
Quantitative has to do with quantity.
It’s about numbers.
Quantitative methods mean: We count things and write down the results.
We turn the figures into statistics.
For example:
How many inhabitants did Germany have in 2014?
How many were there in 2004?
And how many will there be in 2024?
We use these figures to learn something.
The data is important so that people can form an opinion.
And they are important for decisions.
For example in politics.
We conduct research on many topics in our work area:
- Work
- Economy
- Family
- Education
- Religion
- Culture
These are areas that are important for the lives of all people. Students learn how these areas are connected to other areas.
For example:
- How do work and family influence each other?
- Why does the income of women and men differ?
