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4071 - Social Scientific Inquiry
4071 - Social Scientific Inquiry
In spites of the criticisms, the fact remains that social norms do exist, and the social scientist
can observe those norms. When norms change over time, the social scientist can observe
and explain those changes. Ultimately, social regularities persist because they tend to make
sense for the people involved in them. Whereas the social scientist may suggest that it is
logical to expect a given type of person to behave in a certain manner, those people may
very well agree with logical basis for the expectation. Thus, while the religious right-wing
bigot could vote for the agnostics, left-wing radical black candidate, he would consider it
stupid to do so.
In order to give scientific status to social sciences the social scientist argue that the social
behaviour can be subjected to scientific inquiry since social behaviour could be measured and
regularities & order in social behaviour could be established. In addition to the above they
count several characteristic of the social science and compare those with the physical sciences.
While comparing the social sciences and physical sciences with respect to the characteristics
they argue that the social science and physical science differ with respect to degree only.
The Characteristics of Social Science:
Logical Reasoning (Deduction & Induction): Science is fundamentally a rational activity,
and scientific explanation must make sense. Religions may rest on revelations, custom or
traditions, gambling on faith; but science must rest on logical reasoning.
Logic is a difficult and complex branch of philosophy, and a full delineation of systems of logic is
well beyond the scope of this note. Perhaps a few examples will illustrate what is meant by
science being logical. For example, a given event cannot, logically, cause another event that
occurred earlier in time. The movement of a bullet cannot cause the explosion of the
gunpowder propelling it. Thus science takes a different approach from the teleological views
assumed by some religions. For example, some Christians believe that Jesus was destined to
be crucified, and that this destiny thereby caused him to be betrayed and tried. Such a view
could not be accepted within the logic of science.
In the logic of science, it is impossible for an object to have two mutually exclusive qualities.
The flip of a coin cannot result in both a head or a tail. By contrast we might note that many
deeply prejudiced people argue that Jews are both "clannish" (refusing to mix with non-Jews)
and "pushy" (forcing themselves in with non-Jews). Faced with such an assertion, the
scientist would suggest that either one or both of the characterizations of Jews are untrue or
that the two characteristics are being defined in such a way that they are not mutually
exclusive,.
Similarly, a given event cannot have mutually exclusive results. Thus, getting a college
education cannot make a man both wealthier and poorer at the same time. It is possible for a
college education to result in wealth for one man and poverty for another just as some Jews
might be described as clannish and others pushy, but contradictory results or descriptions fly
in the face of logic and are intolerable to science.
This is not to say that science in practice is-wholly devoid of illogical assertions. Many readers
will realize that physicists currently regard light as both particles and waves even though
these are contradictory descriptions of the nature of light. This particular contradiction exists in
science since light behaves as particles under some conditions and waves under others. As a
result of this situation, physicists continue to use the two contradictory conceptualizations as
they may be appropriate in given conditions. Nevertheless, such a situation represents a
strain for the logic of science.
Beyond this common-sense notion of logic, there are two distinct logical systems important to
the scientific quest, referred to as deductive logic and inductive logic which could briefly be
described as follows ;
(i)
The voting decision in an election may have resulted from a number of different factors.
And one event may have one cause, while a similar event may have a different cause.
Two men may vote for the same candidate for different reasons, but it is assumed that
reasons exist in each case.
(ii)
Increment in prices of cars over the last few years have not been associated with
significant decline in demand. This has been observed by a researcher and he might find
several causes for this. A persons preferences for a particular product may have
several reasons such as his income, social status, his brand loyalty etc. Similar
examples could be many when we consider behaviour of several variables in the
economy.
While the social scientist often begins with an attempt to explain a rather more limited range of
social behavior or the behavior of a limited subset of the population, his goal is normally to
expand his findings to explain other forms of behavior and other subsets of the population.
Parsimony
As the previous sections indicate the scientist spends much of his effort in the attempt to
discover the factors that determine types of events. At the same time, he attempts to discover
those factors that do not determine the events. Thus, in determining the acceleration of a falling
object, we discount its color as being irrelevant.
Like the physical scientist, the social scientist attempts to gain the most explanatory power out
of the smallest number of variables. In many cases, the additional consideration of new
variables adds explanatory and predictive power, but it also results in a more complicated
model. And, in practice, the addition of more variables often reduces the generalizability of the
explanation, since certain variables may have one effect among members of one subset of the
population and a different effect among those of other subsets.
It should be noted that the parsimonious character of social science, like its deterministic
posture, opens it to criticism than those holding a more individualistic view of human behavior.
Whereas they would tend to explore the depths of idiosyncratic (a person's particular way of
thinking or behaving) factors resulting in a decision or action on the part of a given person, the
social scientist consciously attempts to limit such inquiry.
The social scientist, (to continue with one of the earlier examples) then night attempt to explain
overall voting behavior through the observation of, say, three or four variables. The critic might
object that each of the voters had "many other individual reasons" for voting as he did, that the
"limited number of variables" did not adequately explain the "depth" of decision making for any
of the subjects under study. The problem here is that the social scientist has a special goal in all
this. He is consciously attempting to gain the greatest amount of understanding from the
smallest number of variables. Neither the scientist nor his critic in such a case is more correct
than the other; they simply have different goals. We must fully understand the scientist's goal,
however, in order to recognize that this criticism is not a valid one. (The scientist's goal is to find
"general" voting behaviour!)
Ultimately, the scientist attempts to understand the reasons of the events, using as few
explanatory factors as possible, In practice, of course, the number of explanatory factors taken
into account typically increases the degree of
determination achieved. For example a
political scientist may achieve a certain degree of explanation of voting behavior through the
use of only two factor, say party affiliation and social class. Another might achieve a more
complete understanding by also taking into account such other factors as race, region of
upbringing, sex, education, and so forth. (The former is more simple while the later is more
complex). Frequently, the scientist is forced to choose between simplicity, on the one hand,
and degree of explanation on the other. However, he has to be judicious in opting for one
with respect to reality and/or theoretical consistency (the other examples given in this note
could be extended in this line.
Specificity
The social scientist, like the physical scientist, must specify his methods of measurement.
Perhaps this is especially important in the Social sciences, since they deal with concepts
more vaguely defined in common discourse. While the physicist defines "acceleration" more
rigorously than the layman, the scientific definition is not greatly at variance with the
common
understanding of the term. Concepts such as "religiosity" and
"prejudice"
"Preferences" "choices" however have such varied meaning in common language that their
rigorous definitions are not readily apparent.
In conducting a research project on the topic of prejudice/preferences, then, the scientist must
generate a specific operationalization of the concept viz., prejudice/preferences. For
example, he must find agreement/disagreement with several questionnaire statements that
seem to indicate prejudice/preferences. In reporting his research, he will be careful to describe
his operationalizations in detail so that the reader will know precisely how the concept has been
measured. While a given reader may disagree with the operationalization, he will at least know
what it is. A social scientist specifies a methodology of his research inorder to help the fellow
researcher in replicating the findings and/or verifying the theory. This specifies precise
description and mode of measurement in quantifying qualitative variables.
Empirical Verification
Science at its best results in the formulation of general laws or equations describing the world
around us. Such formulations, however, are not useful unless they can be verified through
the collection and manipulation of empirical data. A general theory relating to some human
bahaviour would be useless unless it suggested ways in which data might be collected and
unless it predicted the results that would be obtained from the analysis of those data. For
example, consider when a physicist tells us that all objects fall to the ground when thrown. This
is due to the gravitational force. And a chemist says that H20 is water. All these are
empirically verifiable. In all such cases the scientist is unable to disconfirm the theory.
There is another way of viewing this characteristic. In a sense,' no scientific theory can ever
be proved. Let's consider the case of gravity. Physicists tell us that a body falls to earth
because
of the general attraction that exists between physical bodies and that this
relationship is affected by the mass of the bodies involved. Since Earth has a vast mass, a
ball thrown out a window will move toward Earth. Such an explanation of gravity is empirically
verifiable. A researcher can throw a ball out a window and observe that it falls to the earth,
This does not prove the 'truth of the theory of gravity, however. Rather, the researcher
specified that if the ball does not fall to the earth, then the theory of gravity is incorrect. Since
the ball is, in fact, observed to behave as expected, the theory of gravity has not been
disconfirmed.
Thus, when we say that a scientific explanation must be subject to empirical testing, we
mean, more precisely, that the researcher must be able to specify conditions under which the
theory would be disproved. As he consistently fails to disprove the theory, then he may
become confident that the theory is correct. But it is important to realize that he will never
have proved it.
In the example of falling bodies, another theorist might note that the experimental ball was
of the same color as the ground to which it fell. He might suggest, therefore, that bodies of the
same color are attracted to each other- for whatever reason he might devise. The initial
experiment, then would lend confirmation to both of the competing theories. The second
theory, however, suggests a method of dis-confirmation. If a ball differing in color from the earth
were thrown out the window, it should not fall to the earth. To do so would disconfirm the
second theory. An appropriate second experiment would hopefully, result in an empirical disconfirnation of the color-attraction theory.
To be useful, social scientific propositions and theories must also be testable in the real world.
Thus it is useless to assert that religiosity is positively associated with prejudice without
suggesting ways in which the two variables might be measured and the proposition tested.
As in the physical sciences, the social scientist must be able to describe empirical
conditions under which a given proposition would be judged incorrect, ways in which it night
be disproved.
Religious belief, such as the existence of God, for example are not susceptible to empirical
verification. Similarly, the assertion that members of a religious or racial groups are disloyal "in
their hearts" even when they appear to act in a loyal manner is not subjected to empirical
verification. However, many hypotheses regarding human social behaviour can be tested
empirically. For example, it has been commonly believed 'in America that women were
level of industiralisation are positively related. Another researcher disagrees with this. He
suggests that either or both the variables have been incorrectly measured. He conducts his
own study measuring the two variables differently and reports a negative relationship or a
stastistically insignificant relationship between the said variables. However, had the first
researcher reported the design and execution of his study in precise and specific details and
the second were only to replicate the study he would have arrived at the same empirical
conclusions. Such observations could be related to inter-subjectivity of the researchers.
Openness to Modification:
It should be clear from the previous section that "science" does not provide a set of easy steps
to the attainment of Truth. Two scientists, both adhering to the previously discussed
characteristics of science, may arrive at quite different explanations of a given phenomenon. At
a given time, there may be no way of evaluating their relative merits. If the two explanations
contradict one another presumably both cannot be correct. Either one or both will later be
proven incorrect, or else it will be discovered that the two explanations are not mutually
exclusive after all.
Countless "scientific" theories of the past have subsequently been disproved and replaced by
better ones. Current theories will eventually be replaced. More basically, we shall probably
never discover absolute truth in any area of inquiry, (particularly in social sciences).
In an important sense science does not even seek Truth but rather utility. Scientific theories
should not be judged on their relative truth value, but on the extent to which they are useful in
understanding the world around us.
The characteristics of science/ Social Science that have been discussed above provide a set
of guidelines that
enhance the utility of discoveries and theories. Inquiries that seek to
adhere to these characteristics will, in the long run, produce more useful discoveries than
inquiries of another sort. Thus, one man may be able to predict the weather more accurately
on the basis of his observation of associated phenomenon than all the scientific
meteorologists in the world, but in the long run the scientists will contribute more to our
general understanding of the nature of the weather.
No social theory is likely to survive indefinitely. Either a growing weight of disconfirming
evidence will bring it down, or a newer, more parsimonious replacement will be found. In any
event, no social science finding can be expected to withstand the long-term test of time.
Adapted from : The Practice of Social Research by E. R. Babbie.
Research Methods by D.H.McBurney