Product Code Database
Social research is research conducted by following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative.Shackman, Gene. What is Program Evaluation, A Beginner's Guide. Module 3. Methods. The Global Social Change Research Project. 2009. Available at http://www.ideas-int.org. See Resources.
Most methods contain elements of both. For example, qualitative data analysis often involves a fairly structured approach to coding raw data into systematic information and quantifying intercoder reliability. There is often a more complex relationship between "qualitative" and "quantitative" approaches than would be suggested by drawing a simple distinction between them.
Social scientists employ a range of methods in order to analyze a vast breadth of social phenomena: from analyzing census survey data derived from millions of individuals, to conducting in-depth analysis of a single agent's social experiences; from monitoring what is happening on contemporary streets, to investigating historical documents. Methods rooted in classical sociology and statistics have formed the basis for research in disciplines such as political science and media studies. They are also often used in program evaluation and market research.
There are no laws in social science that parallel the Physical law in natural science. A law in social science is a universal generalization about a class of . A fact is an observed phenomenon, and observation means it has been seen, heard or otherwise experienced by researcher. A theory is a systematic explanation for the observations that relate to a particular aspect of social life. are the basic building blocks of theory and are abstract elements representing classes of phenomena. or are basic assertions assumed to be true. are conclusions drawn about the relationships among concepts, based on analysis of axioms. Hypothesis are specified expectations about empirical reality derived from propositions. Social research involves testing these hypotheses to see if they are true.
Social research involves creating a theory, operationalization (measurement of variables) and observation (actual collection of data to test hypothesized relationship). Social theories are written in the language of variables, in other words, theories describe logical relationships between variables. Variables are logical sets of attributes, with people being the "carriers" of those variables, for example, gender can be a variable with two or more attributes: male, female and non-binary gender.
Variables are also divided into independent variables (data) that influences the dependent variables (which scientists are trying to explain). For example, in a study of how different dosages of a drug are related to the severity of symptoms of a disease, a measure of the severity of the symptoms of the disease is a dependent variable and the administration of the drug in specified doses is the independent variable. Researchers will compare the different values of the dependent variable (severity of the symptoms) and attempt to draw conclusions.
In addition, good research will "look for differences that make a difference" (Rule 2) and "build in reality checks" (Rule 3). Rule 4 advises researchers to replicate, that is, "to see if identical analyses yield similar results for different samples of people" (p. 90). The next two rules urge researchers to "compare like with like" (Rule 5) and to "study change" (Rule 6); these two rules are especially important when researchers want to estimate the effect of one variable on another (e.g. how much does college education actually matter for wages?). The final rule, "Let method be the servant, not the master," reminds researchers that methods are the means, not the end, of social research; it is critical from the outset to fit the research design to the research issue, rather than the other way around.
Explanations in social theories can be idiographic or nomothetic. An idiographic approach to an explanation is one where the scientists seek to exhaust the idiosyncratic causes of a particular condition or event, i.e. by trying to provide all possible explanations of a particular case. Nomothetic explanations tend to be more general with scientists trying to identify a few causal factors that impact a wide class of conditions or events. For example, when dealing with the problem of how people choose a job, idiographic explanation would be to list all possible reasons why a given person (or group) chooses a given job, while nomothetic explanation would try to find factors that determine why job applicants in general choose a given job.
Research in science and in social science is a long, slow and difficult process that sometimes produces false results because of methodological weaknesses and in rare cases because of fraud, so that reliance on any one study is inadvisable.
Statistical sociological research, and indeed the formal academic discipline of sociology, began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Auguste Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality.Wacquant, Loic. 1992. "Positivism". In Bottomore, Tom and William Outhwaite, ed., The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method (1895).Gianfranco Poggi (2000). Durkheim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In this text he argued: main goal is to extend scientific rationalism to human conduct. ... What has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism."Durkheim, Emile. 1895. Rules of the Sociological Method. Cited in Wacquant (1992).
Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than that of Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes. He developed the notion of objective suis generis "" to delineate a unique empirical object for the science of sociology to study. Through such studies he posited that sociology would be able to determine whether any given society is "healthy" or "pathological", and seek social reform to negate organic breakdown or "social anomie". For Durkheim, sociology could be described as the "science of , their genesis and their functioning".Durkheim, Émile 1895 The Rules of Sociological Method 8th edition, trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John M. Mueller, ed. George E. G. Catlin (1938, 1964 edition), p. 45
In the mid-20th century there was a general—but not universal—trend for American sociology to be more scientific in nature, due to the prominence at that time of action theory and other system-theoretical approaches. Robert K. Merton released his Social Theory and Social Structure (1949). By the turn of the 1960s, sociological research was increasingly employed as a tool by governments and businesses worldwide. Sociologists developed new types of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Paul Lazarsfeld founded Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, where he exerted a tremendous influence over the techniques and the organization of social research. His many contributions to sociological method have earned him the title of the "founder of modern empirical sociology". Lazarsfeld made great strides in statistical survey analysis,Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Henry, N. W. (1966). Readings in mathematical social science. Cambridge: MIT Press. panel methods, latent structure analysis, and contextual analysis. Many of his ideas have been so influential as to now be considered self-evident.
|
|
