Tag: concepts
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Good academic writing with examples
What is good academic writing in the social sciences? How to write academic research articles well? We provide the building blocks of good academic writing with examples. In short, good academic writing builds arcs and achieves flow. How? This is done through point-first paragraphs and logical structures within paragraphs. Don’t worry — we will define…
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Research Questions with Examples
All research starts with a question. We define “research question” and provide examples of research questions in the social sciences. What is a research question? A research question is a clear and concise goal that is derived from the knowledge gap. Researchers ask questions to obtain valuable knowledge about the relationships between concepts. When phrased…
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Knowledge gap and examples
Researchers often talk about the “knowledge gap.” What is the “knowledge gap?” This post explains what the “knowledge gap” is and provides examples from the social sciences. See also At a glance… What is the knowledge gap? The knowledge gap is the space between what we know and what we do not know. “Whereas we…
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How to use ChatGPT in Social Science Research
In this post, I discuss how to use ChatGPT in social science research. The take-away message is: The AI is the assistant and you are the director. Many AI tools for social scientists There are many AI tools out there, including ChatGPT. Otter.ai does transcripts. Notion.so integrates notes (including transcripts). Consensus.app is like Google Scholar…
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How to think about academic writing in the social sciences
With so many parts to write in a research article, academic writing can seem overwhelming. How should we think about academic writing? In this post, to help with your thinking, I present a simple philosophy of academic writing in the social sciences. It acknowledges who we are and is rooted in honesty and respect. Social…
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How to write the theory section of a research article in the social sciences
Every empirical research article in the social sciences requires a theory section. When you do research with data, there are dozens of concepts and theories to choose from. But only some can go into the theory section of your article. What to do? This post provides some commonsense tips on how to write the theory…
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The Elite: Definition and Identification
Sociology has long examined the concept of “elite” as a group with disproportionate power in society. In this post, we examine classic and contemporary definitions of the elite and methods for identifying them. The literature on the elite is vast. We will only scratch the surface to get at key points of definition and methods…
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Socioeconomic Status: Definition and Measurement
What is socioeconomic status? Socio-economic status (SES) refers to a specific configuration of material conditions that impact how people think and behave; those conditions are income, education, and occupational prestige. In this post, we discuss how social scientists define and measure socioeconomic status (SES). We focus on surveys, but these can be adapted to other…
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Quantitative Approaches to Intersectionality: The Small n Problem
A challenge for intersectional survey research is the “Small n Problem”: when there are too few observations in the sample to permit the desired analysis. To perform the multivariate quantitative techniques popular in analyses of survey data, we need an adequate number of cases in each category. For instance, if gender and class are necessary…
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Max Weber’s Theory of Class, Status, and Power
Sociologists love to cite and discuss Max Weber. Weber wrote a famous essay called, “Class, Status, and Party.” Weber designed the essay to set him apart from Karl Marx, who had a unidimensional view of classes, inequality, and society. Max Weber had a multidimensional view of classes, inequality, and society. Two main differences between Weber…