Strongly Agree
My name is Michael Lichter, and I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Welcome to my blog, “Somewhat Agree.” This blog was created for my benefit and for the benefit of the students taking my Spring 2006 “Survey Research” course, otherwise known as SOC578 and SPM517. This course meets (much too early!) on Tuesday mornings in 474 Park Hall at the North Campus of the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
My primary reason for starting this blog is to provide an example for my SOC578/SPM517 students. I don't expect this example to be particularly stellar, but I suspect it will still be good enough. My goal is to use the blog as a “file” in the sense of C. Wright Mills in his essay “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” from his classic book The Sociological Imagination.
Over time, I will be adding the various elements that Mills suggests we keep in our files, but the point for the moment this blog is just a bookmark or place-keeper. This is where my stuff will go as I generate it.
What does the title of the blog signify? “Somewhat agree” is a common response option in surveys, usually found just to the right of "Strongly agree" and to the left of “Somewhat disagree” (or “Neither agree nor disagree” in surveys that are nice enough to provide a neutral option rather than forcing people to take a stand).
Like all ordinal response categories, “somewhat agree” is ambiguous. If I somewhat agree, how much less do I agree than if I “strongly agree”? Also, if I somewhat agree, doesn't that imply that I somewhat disagree? Yet, “somewhat disagree” is considered to be very distinctly different from “somewhat agree.” As a researcher, I’d prefer not to have the ambiguity, but as a blogger I welcome it. C’est la vie.
My primary reason for starting this blog is to provide an example for my SOC578/SPM517 students. I don't expect this example to be particularly stellar, but I suspect it will still be good enough. My goal is to use the blog as a “file” in the sense of C. Wright Mills in his essay “On Intellectual Craftsmanship,” from his classic book The Sociological Imagination.
Over time, I will be adding the various elements that Mills suggests we keep in our files, but the point for the moment this blog is just a bookmark or place-keeper. This is where my stuff will go as I generate it.
What does the title of the blog signify? “Somewhat agree” is a common response option in surveys, usually found just to the right of "Strongly agree" and to the left of “Somewhat disagree” (or “Neither agree nor disagree” in surveys that are nice enough to provide a neutral option rather than forcing people to take a stand).
Like all ordinal response categories, “somewhat agree” is ambiguous. If I somewhat agree, how much less do I agree than if I “strongly agree”? Also, if I somewhat agree, doesn't that imply that I somewhat disagree? Yet, “somewhat disagree” is considered to be very distinctly different from “somewhat agree.” As a researcher, I’d prefer not to have the ambiguity, but as a blogger I welcome it. C’est la vie.
posted by mightbe at 5:36 AM
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