Study guide: Reasoning in the Social Sciences

📋 Course Outline

1. The Three Social Science Disciplines
2. Economic Choices and Scarce Resources
3. Scientific Methods and Models
4. Facts, Values, and Scientific Evidence
5. Correlation and Causality
6. Tools and Disciplinary Perspectives

📖 1. The Three Social Science Disciplines

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Economics: Studies choices under scarcity and the activities of a community related to consumption, production, and distribution.
• Sociology: Studies the behavior of individuals living in society.
• Political science: Studies the conquest of power and institutions.

📝 Essential Points

• Social sciences bring together economics, sociology, and political science to investigate economic, social, and political questions using evidence and models.

📖 2. Economic Choices and Scarce Resources

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Economic choice: A decision made by an individual to satisfy needs using limited resources such as time and money.

★ Must-know

• Individuals make trade-offs when they choose among ways to satisfy needs with limited resources.

Further detail

• Lina must choose school supplies and where to buy them while staying within her €120 budget and obtaining them by 10 September.

• Lina’s options differ in price and availability: the local bookshop has products immediately, online delivery takes between 2 and 10 days, and second-hand items may be available today or the next day.

💡 Memory Hook

Limited resources constrain choices; needs and preferences shape what people choose.

📖 3. Scientific Methods and Models

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Scientific model: A deliberately simplified representation of reality that selects elements relevant to a research question and leaves others aside.

★ Must-know

• Models help researchers reason, formulate hypotheses, and study relationships between phenomena, but their conclusions must be confronted with facts.

Further detail

• A researcher studying how price changes influence consumer choices may assume that other factors, such as tastes, income, advertising, and the behavior of others, remain unchanged.

• The pyramid arranges five categories of needs:

  • physiological
  • security
  • belonging
  • esteem
  • accomplishment

• A model’s selection of information depends on the question it is designed to answer, just as a road map and a flood-risk map represent different features of the same place.

💡 Memory Hook

A model is like a purpose-built map: it leaves out details to make the chosen information readable.

📖 4. Facts, Values, and Scientific Evidence

★ Must-know

📌 A judgment of fact is an objective claim grounded in reasoning or evidence, whereas a judgment of value is a subjective assessment.

• To test a claim scientifically, researchers formulate a hypothesis, choose a suitable sample, collect relevant data through methods such as observation or surveys, and compare the hypothesis with the evidence.

Further detail

• The smartphone project at Lycée Jacques-Feyder recorded a class average of 7 h 22 per day in September 2023 and 4 h 57 in March 2024.

• A measured decrease in screen time alone does not prove that school results improve; testing that claim requires a hypothesis and suitable data.

💡 Memory Hook

A fact can be checked against evidence; a value expresses a subjective judgment.

📖 5. Correlation and Causality

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Correlation: A statistical relationship between two variables; a positive correlation occurs when both variables move in the same direction.
• Causality: A relationship in which a change in one variable produces a change in another variable.

★ Must-know

📌 A correlation between two variables is not sufficient to demonstrate that one causes the other, because other factors or reverse influence may explain their relationship.

Further detail

• In summer, ice-cream sales and drownings both increase, but rising temperatures can be a hidden variable associated with both trends.

• An Anses expertise reported an association between greater social-media use among 11–17-year-olds and later bedtimes, shorter sleep, and sometimes poorer sleep quality.

• The expertise considered possible mechanisms and other factors, including: (Anses): time online delaying bedtime, content and interactions maintaining wakefulness, evening screen use disturbing sleep onset, stress, family habits, physical activity, schoolwork organization

💡 Memory Hook

A correlation shows variables move together; only further evidence can establish that one causes the other.

📖 6. Tools and Disciplinary Perspectives

★ Must-know

• Social-science researchers use surveys, observations, samples, data, statistics, and models to investigate questions and test explanations.

📌 Economists examine choices under constraints and how platforms earn money; sociologists examine differences in social practices and group influence; political scientists examine public regulation and the actors who set rules.

Further detail

• Researchers can study the relationship between phone use and school success by selecting a representative sample, observing or surveying participants, and collecting responses alongside school grades.

• Some questions cross disciplinary boundaries: how young people divide time between social media, leisure, and schoolwork can be studied by both economists and sociologists.

• Quantitative tools include:

  • proportions
  • percentages
  • rates of change
  • multiplicative coefficients
  • indices
  • means
  • medians

📊 Synthesis Tables

Three Social Science Perspectives