Sociology 217 | Research Methods | Professor Ghaziani Practicum: Analyzing Research Abstracts The purpose of this exercise is to analyze abstracts of academic articles. Below are questions that you should be able to answer when you read any sociology article. Keep these on hand, and feel free to apply them on your own for additional practice. Note: every abstract will not provide an answer to all of these questions. In today's practicum, I will identify the relevant questions for you to answer. 1. Social science is distinct from ordinary human inquiry in 5 ways. Identify any 2 of these. 2. What 2 of the 7 goals of social research is the scholar pursuing? 3. Identify the dependent and independent variables. 4. How were the independent and dependent variables conceptualized? 5. How were the independent and dependent variables operationalized? 6. What type of relationship does the article hypothesize or find? 7. Did the researcher use nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio levels of measurement? 8. Was the study qualitative or quantitative? How do you know? 9. Did the researcher use inductive or deductive reasoning? How do you know? 10. What examples of analytic framing (by case or attribute) do you see in the abstract? 11. What social theory did the researchers engage? 12. Was the study exploratory, descriptive, or explanatory? How do you know? 13. What was the unit of analysis? What type of unit of analysis is this? 14. Was the study cross-sectional or longitudinal? 15. If the study was longitudinal, was it a panel study, a cohort study, or a trend study?
Example 1. Sex and School: Adolescent Sexual Intercourse and Education Bill McCarthy and Eric Grodsky Social Problems, 2011, Vol. 58, No. 2 Abstract A number of studies document a negative relationship between adolescent sexual intercourse and high school educational experiences and outcomes; yet, this research risks conflating the consequences associated with sex in romantic relationships with those that result when sex occurs in other relationship contexts. We predict that, compared to abstinence, intercourse in romantic relationships will have limited consequences for education, whereas the negative effects associated with sex in other relationships will be pronounced. We evaluate our hypothesis with two waves of data on nine measures of educational experiences and outcomes from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our results are generally consistent with our predictions: the context in which sexual activity occurs substantially moderates the relationship between sexual intercourse and several education measures. These findings contradict the claims some abstinence-only curricula make regarding the link between adolescent sex and a plethora of negative outcomes. We speculate that such programs reinforce the notion that sex, and in particular sex that occurs in nonromantic relationships, is counternormative. As a result, they may needlessly increase the risk that some sexually active adolescents will have negative educational experiences and outcomes. Dependent variable: Independent variable: Unit of analysis: Type of unit of analysis: Framing by Case: Cross sectional or longitudinal: How do you know? Type of question/study: Hypothesis: Type of