Objectives
Canvas Post: Since we will not meet in person or on zoom this week, please post a few sentences telling us your area of interest (like youth development or nonprofit management) and what you hope to get from this class. Your posting is due by 11:59 PM on August 31 Topic 1: What will you do in this course? How will your work be judged? Examine the course syllabus by August 31. Do NOT just skim through it. Examine it. Now is the time to ask for clarifications. Don't be shy -- better to ask questions now than later. Topic 2: Why is social science research hard and why is research design critical to good social science? Read this comment by Mark White about the "soft versus hard" sciences. Do you agree with the author's comments about how hard the social sciences really are? Have you thought about social science as a science? Many students in our discipline say that they have not really thought a lot about "being a scientist." I encourage you to try thinking about yourself as a scientist. What background do you need to do the very hard work in the social sciences? This reading On the Hard and Soft Sciences in Public Health has a lot of terms in it that you will be hearing all semester -- reliability, generalizability, reproducibility, consistency, validity, epistemology... These are basic terms that scientists use. We might as well start here -- trying to figure out what "science really is" and therefore what "scientists must be able to do." It's a short (2 pages), non-technical read -- really it is. He closes with a very definite statement. Share yourresponses to his resounding final statement on the Week 1 Canvas Discussion Board. |