Research in Social Sciences

Research in social science refers to an activity of collecting, analyzing and interpreting

information for social, educational, economic and political purposes. Social science research is
carried out through scientific method for instance, ask a question, form a hypothesis, conducting
empirical research, making conclusion and evaluation of the drawn conclusion.

There are different sources of knowledge acquisition for research in social sciences which are as
below:

1: Experience:

A well-used source for knowing is experience. Through personal experiences one can find out
many answers to the questions one may face. Much knowledge is passed from one generation to
another generation due to result of experiences. In a nut shell, learning from the experiences is
one of the ability of intelligent behavior.

There as several limitations of experience as source of knowledge acquisition for example how
you are affected by an event relies on who you are. Two persons will have different experiences
from the same situations they have faced. For example, there are two supervisors who observe
the same classroom at the same time and one may write a report on how things went right and
second supervisor might focus on writing a report as how things went wrong.

2: Authority

Things which are difficult to know or impossible to understand by personal experience, people
will depend on the authority which is to seek the knowledge from someone who might have the
experience with the problem or might be expertise in any given situation. For example, a person
may visit to a physician to ask health related questions or an investor might visit stockbroker to
know answers of the questions related to investment.

Authority can be a very easy and quick way of knowing things, but authority as source of
knowledge has shortcomings as well. First, the authority as source of knowledge can be wrong
because people may claim to be the expert of the relevant field when they really do not know
anything. Second, you may find out that authorities might disagree on an issue among
themselves stating that their opinion might be more personal than fact.
3. Reasoning

Reasoning is of the sources of knowing in which people use their logic to make judgment and
draw inferences reasoning consist of inducting reasoning and deducting reasoning which are
further explained below.

Deductive reasoning

Deductive reasoning can be described as the thinking process where people adopt the general to
specific approach to the knowledge acquisition by using logical arguments. For instance, “ All
men are mortal”. The king is a man, so king is mortal.

Inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning where people adopt the specific to
general approach to acquire knowledge. For example, I have seen thee students in the hostel
leaving trash on the floor, so the students in this hostel are disrespectful.

The Scientific approach

It is a systematic and more organized form of experience, authority and reasoning which lead to
knowing and thus it is more rigorous and authentic source of knowledge. Research in social
sciences is formal, systematic way of inquiring which aimed at finding out the questions’
answers associated with social phenomena. Research questions are based on the experiences and
observations.

Characteristics as a Scientific Method:

1. Replicability: Research replicability means if the results from your experience or test can
be replicated if repeated exactly the same way.
2. Falsifiability: it refers to the statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong and it be
challenged and are opened to changes.
3. Precision: the term refers to the state of being precise or exactness. In scientific
investigation it is important to ensure we are obtaining the results as we use sample
instead of population.
4. Parsimony: the term refers to the state of being careful in terms of making research
claims.