Reflect on the concepts presented in the video (https://www.ted.com/talks/stuart_firestein_the_pursuit_of_ignorance?language=en) and overview and the example of a growing body of research as captured in the article A Review of Facebook Research in the Social Sciences (https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/doi/full/10.1177/1745691612442904).
Also, consider the question (As a social scientist, the big question that I would ask is: how can one measure the attention or the focus level whenever one is watching an advert? Adverts are aimed to create awareness of a product or service by getting the attention of the viewers. Measuring the attention and the focus of the viewers should be determined to gauge the effectiveness of a particular advert.) you posed about your advertisements in your observation journal in the last theme. Then, in a short answer response, address the following questions:

1. How does social science inquiry advance and evolve over time?
2. Why is it important that our understanding of social science concepts continue to develop and expand?
3. Then, consider the question you posed in the observation journal, which you submitted in Theme 2. How could others build upon this question through additional research or follow-up questions?

Answer preview

How does social science inquiry advance and evolve over time?

After reviewing the TED video and the article, I believe that social science inquiry is evolving at an alarming rate. New technologies such as Google and social media platforms coupled with many scientific papers produced daily are the reasons for the evolution in inquiry methods.  According to Firestein, scientific knowledge is accumulating exponentially, and there is, therefore, a need to change the testing system used in schools from weeding to evaluation to take advantage of this new knowledge (TED, 2013). Firestein suggests that evaluation questions should be such that an answer leads to another question. A question…

 

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