HUMAN SCIENCES

1. Areas of knowledge HUMAN SCIENCES

2. Human Sciences -Overview • What are the human sciences? • Studying people from the outside – human experiments – predicting human behaviour. • Considerations for this form of study. • Studying people from the inside – surveys, questionaires and interviews. • Considerations for this form of study. • Interpreting and using data. • Conclusions – to what extent are the human sciences useful? What are the problems associated with these areas of study?

3. DiscussionWhat are the human sciences? • In pairs - List the subjects you think are in this Area of Knowledge. • Note briefly what each one studies.

4. Some of the Human Sciences

5. DiscussionWhat are the human sciences? • Table discussion-On your list, show any interconnections you can find. • What do these subjects all have in common? • Write a definition for your group– what are the human sciences?

6. What are the human sciences- a definition. • Human sciences are the study of human behaviour, the patterns in human society and individual actions.

7. Methodology?In pairs: How do Human Scientists “find out?”

8. METHODOLOGY • Questionnaires and surveys • Interviews • Observation • Gathering and interpretation of statistics • Study of written sources (official records, books…) • Study of artefacts • experiments

9. Group discussion (tables) • How do human scientists use all the ways of knowing in their studies?

10. Studying human beings – ways of knowing • In their studies, human scientists take a range of approaches, using all the ways of knowing. • From the outside – sense perception, using careful observation with the challenge of inferring the meaning of activities observed. • From the inside – language – in interviews, questionaires. • In some fields emotional empathy is also relevant. • Reasoning – in planning investigations, drawing conclusions, making higher level generalisations.

11. Human sciences – who is in the centre? Where do we place ourselves, psychologically and culturally, as we learn?

12. Discussion (table) • Anthropology: what problems do you foresee in the study of other cultures? • To what extent can we understand a culture through observation? • Homework – complete this reflection.

13. 1. Methodology in the human sciences - Human experiments – predicting human behaviour. USF elevator experiment Asch experiment In pairs: What do these videos demonstrate about human behaviour? How might this affect the outcome of an experiment and how might we make allowances for it?

14. 2. Methodology in the human sciences - Human experiments – predicting human behaviour. • The Milgram experiment. Does this experiment show any additional considerations for human experiments? What ethical problems does this raise?

15. Discussion (tables) - Studying people from the outside – observations, lab experiments. What are the considerations for this form of study? Difficulties, problems, challenges, requirements. • Homework – complete this reflection for homework.

16. Issues in Experimentation • Agreed definitions • Cultural assumptions and biases – in design; in what is observed; in interpretation • People as the subject/ interaction between scientist and subject • Behaviour of people being observed … (the observed respond to the expectations of the observer) • Hawthorne Effect (presence of observers produces a bias and unduly affects the outcome of the experiment) • Controlled or repeat experiments (impossible in almost all cases)

17. Surveys, interviews and questionaires. • Discussion (pairs) - What problems with interviews as a methodology does Sir Humphrey demonstrate?

18. Questionaire: (groups) • Identify at least 10 flaws that make this questionaire and its subsequent interpretation unlikely to gather accurate information. • What skills must the human scientist possess to find out information through questioning?

19. The placebo effect • Discussion (pairs): What are the implications of this phenomenon for human scientists?

20. Surveys and interviews - considerations • Scope and scale • Sample size and choice • Question(er) bias/ loaded questions • Quality of answers • Assumptions? • Choice of language • Reliance on memory • Reporting – reliability • Consideration of alternatives • Representation of conclusions

21. Lies, damned lies and statistics • Discussion - Which of the human sciences might rely heavily on statistics to build knowledge? Give examples of how they do this. • What are some of the pitfalls of building knowledge in this way?

22. Discussion (tables):Human Science Knowledge Issues and links with other WOKs and AOKs • In what senses can empathy, intuition and feeling be considered legitimate or especially powerful ways of knowing in the human sciences? • How might the language used in polls, questionnaires and other information-gathering devices of this sort influence the conclusions reached? • What are the main difficulties human scientists confront when trying to provide explanations of human behaviour? What methods have been invented to circumvent these difficulties and to minimize their influence on the results that are obtained? • How does the use of numbers, statistics, graphs and other quantitative instruments affect the way knowledge claims in the human sciences are valued? • In what ways might the beliefs and interests of human scientists influence their conclusions? Do the same considerations apply in other areas of knowledge such as the natural sciences or mathematics? • What differences and similarities are there between the human sciences and the natural sciences, in terms of both their methods and procedures for gaining knowledge and the nature of the knowledge produced?

23. Homework To what extent are the human sciences useful? What are the problems associated with these areas of study? Complete this reflection.