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>I'm a little surprised there is no mention of their definition [for 'ethical']. No you're not. ;) If they define it, people can/will disagree with it. If the

• mjn 13y ago
  That's a problem qualitative social scientists often have with this kind of work. In their view, the right way to analyze something like this would require at least several months of classic ethnographic fieldwork: interview and observe people in a community, read its newspapers, try to understand how to it functions, what socioeconomic class categories people see themselves and others as a part of, what problems frequently come up around that, etc. Only after a phase of open-ended investigation to try to understand what's going on would you then try to abstract any general conclusions about how social class in Berkeley impacts something as broad as "ethics". By contrast, the quantitative psych-influenced approach is to pick a proxy variable and measure it, either in the lab or in the field. Much less work, and many people will actually think that style of work is more scientific (it has numbers and p-values). It also makes for better definitive soundbites, because it states a bold conclusion that it doesn't qualify with the dozens of caveats you'd find in a year of real investigation. But it's also considerably more superficial and at risk of measuring based on problematic choices of categories and proxies.
  • mdt 13y ago
    Hmm. I'll have to do something about that. Thanks for the perspective.