When it comes to researching topics in social sciences, remembering the scientific method is a helpful indicator to see if a study is legit, but there's more to it.
The Scientific Method
When doing my reading for class, I completely forgot about the sixth step in the scientific method until I read about it again. For those who also need a refresher, here are all six steps of the scientific method:
Make an observation
Form a hypothesis
Carry out an experiment
Collect the data
Analyze the results
Repeat the experiment
We are supposed to repeat the experiment to ensure that the results didn't happen by accident. Repeating the experiment proves that what we tested is true and will always be predominantly true, even if there are exceptions sometimes.
Using this method includes having both independent and dependent variables. This is a very important part of the process. If these variables aren't able to be proven as reliable and aren't able to properly prove the hypothesis, you should reconsider the variables and see if they can be replaced with something else. I'll explain later.
Other Ways to Learn
Of course, the scientific method is not the only way to learn truth. We can know truths through perception, reasoning, memory, and testimony. We sometimes learn truth through these methods or others, and it's either intentional or unintentional. Our goal is to become intentional in our learning.
Intentionality improves how much information we soak up because we're putting in the effort to learn. If we're unintentional about our learning, just think of the knowledge passing by, and we don't even know what we're missing!
Family Research
Family research is something to NOT mess up. Gathering information involves knowing what sort of research you're observing. Qualitative vs. quantitative, longitudinal, cross-sectional, cross-sectional cohort (longitudinal and cross-sectional combined together in a way), etc.
As pointed out earlier, whatever social science study (or any science study) you conduct, the variables have to be relevant to the study and the results have to somehow answer the original hypothesis. There shouldn't be any fluff to dodge the results, that's easy to do when you didn't get the results you were certain you would get.
Same-sex Marriage Legalized
Surprisingly, there are those today that choose to neglect some true research findings. In the ruling in 2013 to redefine the definition of marriage, the Supreme Justices didn't quite understand the research they were given. To determine if same-sex marriage should be considered included in the definition of marriage, the Supreme Justices were given briefs and read the summaries of research studies.
The problem with these studies is that they didn't have the variables to answer the matter at hand. The studies are meant to determine if same-sex parenting would cause any disadvantages to children, but none of the studies compared children's health, disadvantages or anything that proved relevant to the case.
These studies had gay/lesbian couples as the variables, but didn't contrast their children's outcome to those who have heterosexual parents. Sometimes, they would analyze the relationship of the children to the parents, but that's not the question at hand.
In conclusion, variables are important, especially when it comes to determining what is appropriate to accurately answer the hypothesis. The court misunderstood what the studies accomplished. The answer to determine if having homosexual couples as parents was meant to come from the children and if they are affected by their parents' behavior in a positive light or a negative light.
When it comes to accurately understanding social science remember to practice, practice, practice seeing the important things!
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