 Believe it or not, we live and breathe sociology every day. We interact in groups on a daily basis, and we depend on each other for socialization. Because of this, we might take sociology for granted. We might not even know that we create and recreate our social world daily. Isn't sociology just common sense? Well, not really. Common sense depends on our own observations and life experiences, but those observations and experiences are often very different from someone, say, who lives in a different part of the country or world. Not everyone's experiences are the same. People don't behave the way they are just because that's who they are. We are heavily influenced by society. Sociology applies the scientific method and aims to understand how groups of people may experience life and be affected by values, beliefs, behaviors, and even events and the way society is structured. Applying a scientific analysis helps us begin to understand a large, socially complex picture. So what is the scientific method? Let's break it down into six steps that will give us a greater understanding of how the discipline of sociology is different than common sense. The first step in the scientific method is to ask a question. Really, you can either ask a question, define a problem, or define an area of interest. Being very specific and narrow is important in this step. Asking a question such as, what makes a culture rich is too vague because the word rich can be defined in a number of different ways. Do we mean rich as in monetary wealth, or do we mean rich as in living fulfilling lives? Or maybe we mean the material products a culture produces and their value to society. The more specific you are, the better chance there is to have a valid study or a study that measures what it is meant to measure. Next, you need to research existing sources. This step is otherwise known as a literature review. Researching existing studies helps a researcher understand their own topic better and to build a study that would add to their research already conducted. One thing you want to make sure that you absolutely do not do is to create a study that has already been done or to plagiarize previous work. After this step, you formulate a hypothesis. You may have already heard a hypothesis defined as an educated guess. While this is true, there is a bit more to a hypothesis. A hypothesis makes a correlation between two variables. One variable tends to predict how another variable will change. These two variables are referred to as the independent and dependent variables. The independent variable is the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect or the thing that has changed. In other words, the dependent variable depends on the independent variable for its results. If we are studying gender and want to know about how people in the workplace are treated based on identifying as male or female, identifying as male or female is the independent variable and how they are treated is the dependent variable. The fourth step is to design and conduct a study. There are many different types of studies you can conduct, including surveys, field research, engaging in participant observation, or an ethnography. You can conduct an analysis of a single event, or a person through a case study, design an experiment, or review existing research. Each of these methods are a distinct approach, serve a specific purpose, and are discussed in depth in our text. The type of information you yield from each study is very different. For example, surveys are great for gathering demographic information on a particular culture, such as how many in that population identify as male or female, but would not be good for understanding the ways that people are treated differently in the workplace based on identifying as male or female. After you design and conduct a study, you draw conclusions. The type of hypothesis you create and the type of study you conduct will determine the study's conclusions. It is important to note that in this step, and throughout the study, remaining objective is an important role of any researcher. A researcher must let the study speak for itself and not manipulate the findings to say what he or she thought the conclusions would be or what they want them to be. Last, you report results. Reporting results adds to the body of research and creates an informed society. If the study was funded by outside sources, those sources need to be included in the information. Once again, ethics and objectivity are important as conclusions should not be biased by the group or organization that funded the study. By reporting results, researchers are held responsible for the methodology and findings. So, now that you know about the scientific research process, what is one current social topic or issue that can be better understood by applying the scientific method? Discuss one topic and two different research designs that could be applied to that topic. How would the findings be different based on the design? In other than objectivity, what are other ethical issues that researchers face?