Do you like to know things? Do you ever wonder what other people know or how they know what they do? Have you ever made a decision, and do you plan to make decisions in the future? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you will probably find the information in this book\u2014particularly the information on research methods\u2014very useful. If you answered no to all of them, I suspect that you will have reconsidered by the time you finish reading this text. Let\u2019s begin by focusing on the information in this chapter. Here we\u2019ll consider the variety of ways that we know things and what makes social scientific knowledge unique. We\u2019ll also consider why any of this might matter to you and preview what\u2019s to come in later chapters.<\/p>\n
Define research methods.<\/p>\n
If I told you that the world is flat, I\u2019m hoping you would know that I\u2019m wrong. But how do you know that I\u2019m wrong? And why did people once believe that they knew that the world was flat? Presumably the shape of the earth did not change dramatically in the time that we went from \u201cknowing\u201d one thing about it to knowing the other; however, something certainly changed our minds. Understanding both what changed our minds (science) and how might tell us a lot about what we know, what we think we know, and what we think we can know.<\/p>\n
This book is dedicated to understanding exactly how it is that we know what we know. More specifically, we will examine the ways that sociologists come to know social facts. Our focus will be on one particular way of knowing: social scientific research methods. Research methods are a systematic process of inquiry applied to learn something about our social world. But before we take a closer look at research methods, let\u2019s consider some of our other sources of knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"