Group Project 1

Assessing the Evidence

       In the first two weeks of this class you have read about the "promise" of sociology and the method of critical analysis we will use in this class. You have read about the lack of social statistics available to analyze "social health" as compared to the abundance of data on economic conditions, especially those affecting the holdings of people who have money to invest. You have also read about the ways that sociologists are often considered to be "biased" because the nature of their research inevitably results in paying attention to some questions rather than others. Hopefully, you also noticed Becker's point that the best response sociologists can have to such charges is to pay close attention to applying their research methods rigorously and honestly. You can disagree with my choice of topics, you can think I have asked the wrong questions, but if I do my research properly you shouldn't be able to dispute the facts.

For your review, here is the diagram that we use to represent our model of analysis:

Note that the "problem frame" is the way that a group (a significant number of people or a group of "significant" people, like the media) defines an issue as a social problem. In the process of framing a problem, the framing group uses an argument that usually includes some claims that "the facts" or evidence support the way the group views the problem--how extensive it is, and what are its causes. An important task of a critical analyst (that's you!) is to assess the reliability of such evidence and any conclusions the group draws from it. When Becker writes about the importance of using research methods carefully, he is anticipating this kind of critical analysis. Because if a sociologist has done her/his research carefully and correctly, the evidence revealed is much more reliable than other sources of information that we use to make judgments about social issues. While personal experience can be a useful guide (although incomplete, in C. Wright Mills' and most sociologists' views) in our personal lives, it is inadequate for making judgments about the larger society. After all, how much of what goes on in the entire United States (let alone the entire world) can you ever personally experience?

This is why the authors of Social Health are calling for better and more frequent gathering and reporting of data about key issues of our society's welfare. Don't you find it curious, as they do, that accurate data that will allow investors with lots of money to make even more money is readily available, but data that may help us address issues like child poverty are harder to come by?

The Greek philosopher Aristotle showed that arguments use three different methods of persuasion: logic, authority, and emotion. Since sociology is a science, we place our greatest confidence in the first type of argument, for logic must rely on facts and the rules of reason in drawing conclusions from those facts. This is the primary method of all sciences.We cannot cover all the methods of logic and science in this course. We can, however, begin to recognize the importance of factual evidence in enhancing our confidence that a person or organization is correctly assessing the situation, and is constructing the social problem frame based on objective reality, not merely on a figment of their imagination. We can also assess the logic of their conclusions based on whatever evidence they have presented. Clearly, a good number of arguments about social problems involve emotion. But if a social problem frame is based solely on appeals to emotion, or on the charisma or authority of the one defining the problem, the potential for distortion and delusion is great.

In most cases we are unable to do original research and observation on an issue. We must rely on information from others as the basis for our understanding of the problem. If our goal is to find the objective reality so that our understanding of the issue is not biased by subjective perceptions (such as prejudice or preconceived notions), we must ask several important questions regarding the evidence presented in support of the social problem frame. First among those questions for a sociologist is whether the evidence has been observed using sound research methods.

One of the most common types of research involves the use of surveys, in which a standard set of questions is given to a selected "sample" of respondents. The methods of this type of research have been refined over the last couple of centuries so that a properly done survey can give a pretty good snapshot of views of the population that is being studied. An advantage and disadvantage of surveys is that they are relatively cheap, especially if they are improperly done, and therefore there is a lot of information based on "surveys" (or polls) reported in the media that purports to be representative of public views, but probably is not, because the survey has not been done using sound scientific methods.

Your reading assignment for this group project includes a guide to critically analyzing surveys, and a guide to assessing the logic that a person or group might use in drawing conclusions from the evidence, or even making conclusions about the issue without any evidence at all. For your discussion, you will apply these kinds of assessment to articles you might find in the media or on the web.

The Assignment

1. Read this assignment carefully, and read the assigned article in Intersections and the Nizkor website.

2. Between Wednesday, September 3 and Saturday, September 6, discuss all the questions below first among members of your own small group in the Blackboard discussion page for this class. ( I’ll create these “private” groups in Blackboard.) When you go to the Discussion page, you should see your group (and only your group) show up on your Discussion page as “GP1 Group x” where x is the number of your group.

3. Late in the week, on the Discussion board you will find a topic titled “Group Project 1 Summary.” Each member of your group will be responsible for presenting a brief summary of your group's discussion of only one of the questions under that Summary topic. You may be tempted to simply cut and paste from your group discussion. That will not be acceptable. The idea is to summarize your group's discussion, not simply repeat what you or someone else in your group already wrote. I will indicate which question each group should present in the description of the group project 1 summary topic.  You should complete these summaries by Monday, September 8.

4. Finally, you may reply to at least one of these summaries from another class member for a “bonus” point.

5. Your scores for the group project will be based on the following scale:

            Comprehension of the reading assignment                                                  5 points

            Group dynamic (amount of discussion in your small group):                        5 points

            Critical analysis of the evidence in the articles (based on the readings):       5 points

            Report to the class in the summary discussion                                              5 points

            Bonus for replying during summary discussion                                             1 point

            Total possible points: 20

1. Which is more likely to give an accurate reflection of the views of people in a society (for example, what do the majority think): the views of the people you know personally, those of some people you meet casually in daily life, or the report of a carefully conducted sociological study? Why?

2. Find an example of a bad survey in the media. (This shouldn't be hard; "instant polls", for example, are ubiquitous on the web and during TV news shows.) Using Schuman as a guide, explain why the bad survey is unlikely to reveal anything meaningful about society as a whole.

3. Explore the website http://pollingreport.com . Again, using Schuman as a guide, compare any two polls on the same topic and explain the differences in the results.

4. Find one example of a logical fallacy as presented on the Nizkor Project fallacies site in a current news article on TV, newspaper or magazine, or web page. Explain why your example is a fallacy.