[Music] hello and a warm welcome I am armed interest professor for organizational behavior at the foot baingan University in Germany and this is my course on social research methods so welcome everybody to my course social research methods my name is Armin trost I am professor at the foot one University in Germany which is somewhere in the Black Forest you might know I used to teach organizational behavior and human resource management maybe some of you know me from my human resource management lectures on YouTube nice to see you here this will be a different topic this
will be about social research methods so let me start about what that is social research method consists of three terms as you see social research methods and let me start with the term research research means that you want to find the truth that's the idea research research is always about finding the truth and when we talk about research we mainly think of scientific research great scientific research so and I mean that's a that's a big term saying we want to find the truth we assume there is a truth out there we cannot instantly see it
we have an idea about the truth but what is the real truth and this is what research is all about and to find access to the truth we have to use methods right so the methods are kind of you can also say vehicles so we've got to learn things about statistics we're going to learn about research design we're going to learn about how to collect data things like questionnaire testing observation systematic observation content analysis all these nice things and these are all very systematic methods right so it's not that you do seing things somehow you
do things in a very systematic way right so that's the idea so methods is the are the tools that the vehicles towards the truth right what does that term social mean here I mean you find research everywhere right you have research in physics and chemistry and biology and and math in all these domains right but but what we're talking about here is is social research and social research refers to we can say more or less human behavior yeah in human behavior is not always social social means interpersonal right behavior in groups and in societies how
do we behave in the existence of people how do we behave you know in a social system how do we perceive other people and all the like but when we use the term social in the context of social research method we we mean something like interpersonal psychological and and you could say it's it's pretty much about about human behavior ok human behavior let's put it that way okay so that's social research matter it's an absolutely fascinating field because I mean we all have an idea about the truth about the social truth we all have a
kind we all share kind of a common sense we all share a kind of some some have kind of empathy or some knowledge about people I mean you know this from your private life that some people seem to have a good understanding about other people these are those people you know maybe your friends or your father your mother or whoever who always gives you good advice whenever it comes to a social question should I break up should I marry her to the fairy and then you get some good advice from people who seem to have
quite a good understanding about the human behavior and the like but you have to be careful what we do in social research is we want to really have a systematic objective understanding and I would like to start this course with some evidences some studies that we have found in the newspaper I would like to start with this these are all evidences that probably were not published in scientific journals but some evidence is that cross your way whenever you open the newspaper whenever you you look into social media you will find somebody reporting kind of scientific
insight so so I would like to share some of these and I will tell you afterwards what what you're supposed to learn out of this so it was I guess a few weeks ago where I came across a post I guess it wasn't LinkedIn it was a post of the World Economic Forum the World Economic Forum and so it's a decent organization right it's and they published a very nice post was actually a video and and this in this the message of this video was people who read live longer okay people who read live longer
okay and if if you are naive you read this and and you think okay now I know it hmm that's scientific okay so I better read so that I live longer you know when whenever in the future whenever you look at evidence at evidence like this it would be good if you would be careful if you would have a kind of question mark in your in your in your mind saying mm-hmm I don't know is that is that is that really a serious study what what did they do and I did not take the time
to look into the study as such but I can guess how they did that so probably they had to look at people who already died I mean when you when you want to measure how long people live you only can't observe people who actually died because you know how long you live nobody knows how long I live but those who died you know how long they lived so so you you you have the a chest and then you you look at how much did these different people read it probably you have a kind of checklist
how many books in a year maybe how much newspaper how regularly did they read or was it more a difficult stuff or easy stuff you know all this kind of things probably and so here is the idea you have one variable with it which is the life expectancy that's the effect and the cause is reading now the problem is really how do you measure reading what is that reading you know what reading is but but really I mean how do you measure this in concrete terms what does that mean what kind of books newspaper regularly
or whatever so that's very difficult but but that's not the point really when you have these two variables reading in life expectancy do you really think that reading affects life yes probably to a certain extent because when you read you stay mentally fit so to speak probably that's the case but but there might be also other effects so let's let's assume yeah this something like social status some people are rich and some people are poor let's put it that simple okay if you are poor you might not be able to fourth box you might not
even have access to box depending on where you live you you if you are poor you might not have a very good nutrition maybe because you might not afford it you might you might be poor because you live an unhealthy life maybe you drink too much maybe you use truck to trucks too extensively so status and all the things around might have an effect on reading and you can imagine this right and also your life also might have an effect on your life expectancy so maybe it's not the case that reading directly affects your life
expectancy but maybe there is another variable we name this a third variable as you gonna learn that affects both and in the end you find the kind of statistical relation between the tooth between the two yeah maybe okay another study I I recently came across said people using the internet extensively show higher probability to suffer from depression yeah okay again we have 2 variables Internet usage that is supposed to be the cause and then we have depression as the effect it cause and effect internet usage depression okay let's start with a effect depression how can
you measure depression what is that depression okay yeah now you might say yeah probably there are a lot of scientists who have a good understanding about depression hmm yeah depression is a very complicated phenomenon we can say and you have two people who both suffer from depression but they suffer from two different things that very often can can be yeah and and now how can you measure depression it's also not so easy I mean there is the there is a inventory that was invented by a professor named Beck who said okay here's an inventory a
question it's the BDI Beck Depression Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory goes a little bit like this and I just paraphrase I do not quote from the test because I don't have it in front of me but probably you have questions like do you sometimes feel useless do you believe that other people think badly about you do you very often is it very often very hard for you to get up in the morning you know things like and when you when you say yes too often probably you are depressed okay sounds nice in theory but
you know I I worked in psychiatry for many years and I I have seen really depressed people and what I also learned is you can never ask a depressed person to fill in a questionnaire that does simply not work ask a very depressed person hey John can you respond to this Beck Depression Inventory even respond say no makes no sense probably I don't get the questions and I don't know the answers no no no no no no does not make sense I don't want to do this no you have to force him or her it
won't do this okay but now now let's talk about the cost the internet usage what is internet usage internet usage how can you not use the Internet I mean today even you when you use a modern car electronic vehicle you constantly use the Internet but they always probably thought about Internet when you when you when you use social media or the like but is it for instance when you when you are stream a movie on let's say Netflix also is that Internet you is it of course Internet usage but the authors did they think about
that of internet usage hmm nobody knows right so that's again very very difficult now it could be again that let's say there are people who are very lonely and there are other people who are very socially integrated the lonely people probably suffer more from depression it cause it could all say they they the depression make them lonely so ok lonely people suffer more from depression lonely people use my internet and we know this we for instance we know that if you are in a relationship in a romantic relationship you you you you will post less
content maybe on Facebook there's a clear effect when people are single they they post more content on Facebook but once they are in a relationship they post less okay so being alone being not alone that might affect also internet usage on one side and that might affect depression on the other side okay hmm but then still I mean how can you do it in a research design can you say okay now let's have 1000 people and split them into two half and say okay you 500 you use the internet extensively whatever that means and you
500 people you you don't use the internet extensively whatever that means and then you have this to group we would name this a kind of experiment at least a kind of experiment the correct term for this is a quasi experiment probably or maybe a real experiment we're gonna see okay you have this these two conditions extensive Internet usage not so extensive Internet usage and you let people do this let's say for 100 days and then you use the Beck Depression Inventory and look at the level of depression and the two groups oh that was not
properly not there is designed these researchers used but but you you would need to do it that way really so hmm I question this another thing I came across recently was an outcome a scientific outcome we are saying unemployment leads to lower life expectancy and that here is it again it's the same with reading but in this case it's not about reading it's about unemployment I mean the same the same thing I mean what you never can do is a real experiment saying okay we have 100 people we split them into 250 people will be
now unemployed and the other 50 are employed and and you make a random a random assignment to the two condition this experiment will never work as it's pretty much not allowed to do something like this but that's something you would need to do so what did the research should probably do they looked at people in the real world say okay here are people and and you know probably they have done the same if to me the readings where they looked at people who died and then they calculated the number of the relative proportion probably of
time spent in unemployment and then they then they compared the relative amount of unemployment to their to the to the year whether the age when they died and then they found out that ah okay those who died early probably were more often unemployed I mean imagine this you see this headline unemployment kills and and there is a father maybe who is unemployed and and the the daughter sees this headline said oh but it is unemployed he will die no you don't die because of unemployment it could be that unemployment has some effects on other things
you have less money in your pocket so you have a not so good nutrition maybe maybe you miss some routine unemployment also could lead to some other things you you lose friends you you have less structural day less structure day you miss your daily routine you miss your social interaction you you miss a purpose in your life you don't have reasons to get up in the morning maybe you you lose control over your truck consumption so it's not the unemployment probably unemployed I mean that's unemployment it's such really kill people no it's the consequence of
the consequence of the consequence so better be careful here okay there was another study also found interesting that man who drink things with with caffeine in it like tea coffee cold Cola something like this that those have worse sexual potencies or another term regular caffeine consumption negatively affects sexual potency of men when you when you find yourself now drinking coffee while watching this movie this this YouTube video music oh I better have to stop this no you don't need to really not really not again life life is not the world is not so simple in
the world we have a lot of a lot of different interdependencies when you look at ok those people and this particular case we're talking about man so I don't want to discriminate in this case really man when we know that those those men who drink a lot of coffee for instance or we could all say energy drinks and all alike very often are those who sleep less maybe that's why they drink energy drinks and coffee and like they sleep less why do they sleep less because they work much could be or because they spend much
time on party so too much work means stress stress is not good for potency for your health in total also in too much party is not good if you if you spend too much time on party there is a high probability that you drink too much alcohol or or you consume other trucks as well and there is also a very high correlation that we know in health psychology that that there was people who treatment alcohol they they have a higher probability also to smoke much so it's just to say drinking coffee kills your potency maybe
that's true I don't know I'm not I'm not a physician so maybe that's true but but but just when you look at these two variables and you you you you you might you might not be able to draw this conclusion again you you issue you you would need to do an experiment here we really we're going to talk about what is an experiment we're gonna talk about this more more more differentiating way you really need to take some men let's say 100 men and then one drink coffee in like hell and the others don't and
then you look at the quality of the I don't know sperm or whatever rate that it could be but its permeability is that equal to potency hard to say yeah so you know a lot of problems here what I why did I share with you all these things I did share with you all these outcomes because I I wanted to take away your your your naivety really naivety is not good in that regard you you have to be careful and what you're gonna learn in this course is what is the appropriate research design what is
the appropriate statistical analysis what might be the appropriate way how to measure things so that in the end you really can say this one thing affects the other and you will see that is that is really really hot it's really really hard to set up a study that allows you this kind of rename this internal validity saying we really can say one thing is the cause of the other it's not so easy okay so this is this this is a stardom and [Music] what I would like to do now is I would like to to
stop now and next time I will show you why social research is so essentially okay thank you [Music]
