Social research is a lot like journalism. Journalists process and condense information about social life, but they also try to avoid manufacturing fictions. (A)Among the many ways of telling about society that could be compared to social research, journalism offers the closest and most fruitful comparison.

Journalists write about what's going on in society; they represent social life. Most often they report on $\fbox{7}$ events, but they also write stories that offer historical perspectives and in-depth interpretations. Journalists also address major trends and social problems, not just the news of the day, and sometimes these reports are very similar to the research reports of social scientists. Also like social researchers, journalists develop special topic areas: some focus on political events; some on economic trends; some on women's issues; some report on everyday life; some analyze major international events and issues; and so on. Virtually all aspects of social life fall within the ^*purview of journalism. If people will read about a topic, journalists will report on it.

Regardless of topic, journalists all face the same problem regarding “evidence” or “facts”. This problem $\fbox{8}$ that of social researchers facing “data” Like social researchers, journalists collect an enormous amount of information that could become evidence for a report. They have to decide what is relevant as evidence and then identify the most pertinent bits. This process of gathering and selecting evidence goes hand in hand with developing the focus of the investigation and the report. As the report becomes more of a finished product - as it ^*coalesces in the mind of the journalist as a story - the collection of evidence becomes more focused and more selective (B)Initial ideas become leads; some leads bear fruit and are pursued vigorously; the story takes shape. Lots of potential evidence and potential stories are left behind.

The same holds true for social research. Social scientists must select from the vast amount of information that social life offers and construct their representations from carefully selected bits and slices. Data collection (that is, the process of gathering evidence) is necessarily selective, and becomes much more $\fbox{9}$ as an investigation progresses. The researcher may start with a few ideas (for example, sensitizing concepts) and maybe a working hypothesis or two. These ideas determine the initial data collection efforts. As more is learned about the subject, either through data collection or data analysis, the research becomes more focused and (C)fewer avenues are kept open. As the results take shape in the mind of the investigator, much of what was initially thought to be important may be cast aside as irrelevant.

Both social researchers and journalists find that, in the end, much of the evidence they collected at the start of the investigation was based on false leads, and that they could have been much more $\fbox{10}$ in their collection of evidence if only they had known at the start what they learned toward the end of the investigation. The collection of evidence is necessarily selective because potentially there is an infinite quantity of evidence. However, both journalists and social researchers find that in the end they cannot use all the evidence they have collected.

There is great danger in both journalism and social research that follows from this need for selective gathering of evidence. (D)Sometimes what may be a false lead is not recognized as such, and it may become the focus or at least an important part of the investigation. False leads pose serious problems in both journalism and social research because they may be biased by accepted knowledge, stereotypes, and common, everyday understandings of social life. For example, there are two common images of the African-American male - the dangerous, inner-city ghetto teenager and ^* the upwardly mobile young professional. As Mitchell Duneier (1992) points out in Slim's Table, both of these images are media creations and have little to do with the lives of most African-American men. Research or journalism that uses these images as starting points will fail to arrive at valid representations of the experiences of most African-American males.

Another problem is the simple fact that people questioned or studied by a journalist or a social researcher may unconsciously or deliberately seek to $\fbox{11}$ those who study them. Both social researchers and journalists strive to get valid evidence. For journalists, this effort is often described as reporting “just the facts “ or at least trying to balance different views of the same facts. Journalists check different sources against each other and maintain constant ^*vigilance in their efforts to detect deception. After all, interested parties may have a lot to gain if their version of “the facts” is accepted by a journalist and then reported as the one true version.

$\fbox{12}$ social researchers are less often the target of outright deception, like journalists they must deal with bias, distortion, and cover-up. For example, while it might seem a simple matter to determine the percentage of homosexuals among adult males in the United States, social researchers have come up with a range of answers, from less than 2% to about 10%. (The more recent studies tend to offer the lower estimates) There are various reasons for this wide range; one of them is surely people's $\fbox{13}$ to discuss their sexual behavior openly.

”Social facts” can be as elusive as bias-free journalism. Thus, (E)the two fields have comparable obsessions with “truth,” or validity as it is known to social researchers. For journalism this is expressed by a concern for reporting only verifiable information. Thus, journalists are very concerned with fact-checking and with the $\fbox{14}$ of their sources of information.

Social researchers' concern for validity is seen in their efforts to ^*verify that their data collection and measurement procedures work the way they claim. Researchers attempting to determine the percentage of homosexuals among adult males in the United States, for example, would have to contend with a variety of threats to the validity of their measurement procedures. People with more varied sex lives, for example, are more likely to agree to talk about their sex lives or to fill out questionnaires on their sexual behavior. This bias would surely increase the size of the estimate of the percentage of homosexuals based on survey data. Thus, researchers would have to find some way to address this threat to the validity of their measurement procedures and their estimate of the percentage of homosexuals.

Another similarity between journalists and social researchers is that they must analyze and arrange evidence before they can offer their representations of social life for wider consumption (for example, as news or research reports). As evidence is gathered and selected, the investigator tries to make sense of lt. Ongoing analysis of the evidence $\fbox{15}$ the task of what to collect next. 0nce the gathering and selecting of evidence is complete, the analysis of evidence intensifies. A thorough analysis of evidence, in both journalism and social research, is an important preliminary to arranging it for presentation in a report.

When social life is represented, both social researchers and journalists make connections in their data. When a journalist reconstructs the story of a political scandal, for example, connections and timing are crucially important to the representation of the scandal. It matters who said or did what and when. The goal of analysis is (F)to make these connections. In social research, connections are often causal in nature. An analysis of a decaying section of a city, for example, might focus on the long-term economic and social forces $\fbox{16}$ for the decline.

Journalists analyze their evidence to make sure that the proper connections are made; then they arrange the evidence for presentation in a report. Readers want to know the big picture - the journalist's final synthesis of the evidence - not all the bits of evidence that the journalist collected along the way before arriving at a synthesis. It's the same with social research. It's not possible to include all the evidence the social researcher collected when reporting conclusions. The evidence that is represented in a research report is a select subset of the evidence collected, which of course is a select subset of the vast volume of potential evidence.

The similarities between the work of journalists and the work of social researchers are striking of necessity, they both selectively gather evidence relevant to specific questions, analyze it, and then select a subset of the evidence they have gathered for reporting. The report itself is an attempt to construct for the reader the investigator's conclusions regarding the evidence. Evidence is arranged and condensed in a way that illustrates the investigator's conclusions. In effect, the reader is presented with the investigator's arrangement of a fraction of the evidence collected, a small fraction of the potential evidence. Thus, in both social research and journalism representations of social life (the end products of efforts to tell about society) are condensed descriptions structured according to the investigator's ideas. These representations emerge from a systematic dialogue between the investigator's ideas and evidence.

• purview 「範囲」
• coalesce 「まとまる」
• the upwardly mobile young professional 「都会に住み高収入を得るエリート」
• vigilance 「警戒」
• verify 「(正しいと)説明する」

• 問1 下線部(A)～(F)の意味に最も近いものを下の(a)～(d)の中からそれぞれ1つ選びマークしなさい。
  • (A) $\fbox{1}$
    • (a) The way of telling about society in social researches is associated with that in journalism
    • (b) The variety of research methods in journalism is comparable to that in social researches
    • (c) It would be better to compare social research with journalism in understanding it properly
    • (d) Among the researches journalism accumulates there are many richer comparative researches
  • (B) $\fbox{2}$
    • (a) Initial ideas should be proposed by the leader of the research team
    • (b) First ideas are the most leading of all
    • (c) Allot the initially proposed ideas grow fruitful afterwards
    • (d) First ideas become a trigger for the production of the next ones
  • (C) $\fbox{3}$
    • (a) what to do is made much clearer
    • (b) more revenue vanishes completely
    • (c) a few streets are being constructed
    • (d) almost all the exits gradually disappear
  • (D) $\fbox{4}$
    • (a) It may be recognized that a failure as such isn't always wrong
    • (b) It may not be recognized that what seems to be a right clue is actually wrong
    • (c) It may not be recognized that a false lead is more difficult than a true one to discover
    • (d) It may be recognized that what's thought to be wrong is often right after all
  • (E) $\fbox{5}$
    • (a) it turns out to be clear which fields tend to be obsessed with truth by comparing social researches with journalism
    • (b) the world of social science, for example sociology, is obsessed by a variety of truths, compared to that of journalism
    • (c) validity in social researches can be compared adequately with truth in journalism, which is different from it
    • (d) social researchers are to the value of validity what journalists are to that of truth
  • (F) $\fbox{6}$
    • (a) to construct a scandal which includes some fundamental information such as who or what
    • (b) to make up connections between as many stories as possible to entertain readers
    • (c) to integrate the data brought by social researchers into a story written by journalists
    • (d) to make the elements that consist of a story meaningful and apt for it
• 問2 $\fbox{7}$～$\fbox{16}$の空所を補うのに最も適切なものを下の(a)～(d)の中からそれぞれ1つ選びマークしなさい。
  • $\fbox{7}$
    • (a) concrete
    • (b) current
    • (c) popular
    • (d) special
  • $\fbox{8}$
    • (a) solves
    • (b) differentiates
    • (c) strengthens
    • (d) parallels
  • $\fbox{9}$
    • (a) rapid
    • (b) good
    • (c) painstaking
    • (d) focused
  • $\fbox{10}$
    • (a) efficient
    • (b) important
    • (c) groundless
    • (d) persuasive
  • $\fbox{11}$
    • (a) escape
    • (b) support
    • (c) mislead
    • (d) dislike
  • $\fbox{12}$
    • (a) Mile
    • (b) Because
    • (c) But
    • (d) Unless
  • $\fbox{13}$
    • (a) chance
    • (b) willingness
    • (c) capability
    • (d) reluctance
  • $\fbox{14}$
    • (a) secrecy
    • (b) price
    • (c) authority
    • (d) number
  • $\fbox{15}$
    • (a) increases
    • (b) simplifies
    • (c) combines
    • (d) replaces
  • $\fbox{16}$
    • (a) prepared
    • (b) noted
    • (c) impressive
    • (d) responsible
• 問3 次の$\fbox{17}$～$\fbox{20}$の各問の答えとして最も適切なものを下の(a)～(d)の中からそれぞれ1つ選びマークしなさい。
  • $\fbox{17}$ Choose the most appropriate answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
    The way to gather evidence selectively in journalism and social research is necessarily unavoidable            .
    • (a) because much of the evidence employed in journalism and social research is difficult to come by
    • (b) because the investigators in the two fields tend to collect evidence in favor of their conclusions
    • (c) because it's actually hard to collect all of the evidence that would support their representations
    • (d) because the investigators in the two areas less often encounter potentially persuasive evidence
  • $\fbox{18}$ Why does the author describe the images of the African-American male?
    • (a) To clarify one of the most serious issues journalists and social researchers should resolve with rapidity.
    • (b) To support the media's appeal to the public of the miserable situation about modern African-American males.
    • (c) To show the danger with social researchers as well as journalists starting their research from the questionable assumption media have made.
    • (d) To deny the work of Mitchell Duneier, especially Slim's Table, is worth analyzing in both social science and journalism.
  • $\fbox{19}$ Choose the most appropriate answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
    In the 10th paragraph, the writer mainly states that            .
    • (a) one of the problems in selective collection of evidence is that the investigation is distorted by some images and perspectives media and common knowledge have created
    • (b) it is inevitable that social scientists have to cope with some negative factors regarding the validity of their measurement methods and the outcomes based on them
    • (c) in order to resolve the problem that the answers made by research subjects mislead the investigation, journalists confirm facts and their sources from different viewpoints
    • (d) although journalists collect a large amount of evidence that may not be utilized finally, their collection of evidence becomes selective and to the point as the cores of the reports become clear
  • $\fbox{20}$ Which of the following is the most appropriate statement about this passage?
    • (a) Journalists, unlike social scientists, have a tendency to make some subjective reports on many issues, instead of putting emphasis on relevant evidence or the authority of its sources.
    • (b) Not to get lost in the forests of evidence, it would be better for both journalists and social scientists to start with common understandings of social life in making some researches.
    • (c) Because of their skilled research methods, social researchers are better than journalists at illustrating their conclusions of the research by putting to use almost allot the evidence they have collected.
    • (d) The arranged interplay between the investigators' concepts and evidence results in rich, well-ordered representations of social life.