METHODS OF

RESEARCH PT. 2
PAPER 1 - AS SOCIOLOGY
Ms. HIBA KHAN

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Approaches to sociological research

The use of approaches drawing on different research

methods, including case studies, ethnography and
longitudinal studies.

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Case studies
These are in-depth investigations of a single person, group, event or community. Typically, data are
gathered from a variety of sources and by using several different methods (e.g. observations &
interviews).
To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records,
conducts interviews, engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.
Case studies are useful in the early stages of research when the goal is to explore ideas, test, and perfect
measurement instruments, and to prepare for a larger study. Genie – The Wild Child

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 Relevant study: Feral children
A feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers.
Feral children provide unique information about child
development because they have grown up outside of the
parameters of “normal” child development. And since
there are very few feral children, the case study is the most
appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the
subject.

At age three, a Ukranian girl named Oxana Malaya

suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with
dogs, and she ate raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a
neighbor called authorities and reported seeing a girl who
ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into
society, where she was cared for and taught some human
behaviors, but she never became fully socialized. She has
been designated as unable to support herself and now
lives in a mental institution (Grice 2011). Case studies like
this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not
be collectable by any other method.

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Strengths
 Uses multiple methods to gather lots of data about one person or small group to give insight on
their behaviour
 Comprehensive. It is a comprehensive method of data collection in social research.
 It is inexpensive.

Limitations
 it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person/case, since one person does not
verify a pattern
 Due to narrow study the discrimination & bias can occurs in the investigation of a social unit.
 This method is more costly and time consuming as compare to other methods of data collection.
 It takes longer to analyze the data.
 It is a labor-intensive method of data collection.

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Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social
setting. Ethnographies involve objective observation of an entire community.
It focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation
to a community. A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might watch the way villagers go about their
daily lives and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat center, an ethnographer might sign
up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record data, and collate the
material into results.
Relevant Study: Learning To labor
Paul Willis’s ethnographic Paul Willis – Learning study of working-class youth culture: In his famous work
“learning To Labor”, Willis conducts a series of interviews and observations within a school, with the aim
of discovering how and why 'working class kids get working class jobs'. He suggested that working class
children tend to have counter school culture and oppositions to academics and authorities. This would lead
them to workplaces with similar environment and working class dominance.

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Strengths
 Provides comprehensive perspective
 Observes behaviors in their natural environments
 accounts for the complexity of group behaviors, reveal
interrelationships among multifaceted dimensions of
group interactions, and provide context for behaviors.

Limitations
• Dependent on the researcher’s observations and
interpretations
• Difficult to check the reliability of the researcher’s
conclusion
• Observer bias is almost impossible to eliminate
• Ethnography is time consuming and requires a well-
trained researcher.

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Longitudinal Study
Longitudinal Studies are studies in which data is collected at specific intervals over a long period of time in
order to measure changes over time. This post provides one example of a longitudinal study and explores
some the strengths and limitations of this research method.
With a longitudinal study you might start with an original sample of respondents in one particular year (say
the year 2000) and then go back to them every year, every five years, or every ten years, aiming to collect
data from the same people. One of the biggest problems with Longitudinal Studies is the attrition rate, or
the subject dropout rate over time.

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Relevant Study: The Millennium Cohort Study
One recent example of a Longitudinal study is the Millennium Cohort Study, which stretched from 2000 to
2011, with an initial sample of 19 000 children.
The study tracked children until the age of 11 and has provide an insight into how differences in early
socialisation affect child development in terms of health and educational outcomes.
The study also allowed researchers to make comparisons in rates of development between children of
different sexes and from different economic backgrounds.

What are 'Longitudinal Studies'?

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Strengths
 They allow researchers to trace developments over time, rather than just taking a one-off ‘snapshot’
of one moment.
 By making comparisons over time, they can identify causes. The Millennium Cohort study, for
example suggests a clear correlation between poverty and its early impact on low educational
achievement

Limitations
 Sample attrition – people dropping out of the study, and the people who remain in the study may not
end up being representative of the starting sample.
 People may start to act differently because they know they are part of the study
 Because they take a long time, they are costly and time consuming.
 Continuity over many years may be a problem – if a lead researcher retires, for example, his/her
replacement might not have the same rapport with respondents.

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Cross‐sectional survey- in which scientists study a
number of individuals of different ages who have the same
trait or characteristic of interest at a single time.

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The mixed methods approach to research, including
triangulation and methodological pluralism

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Triangulation/Mixed Methods

The use of more than one method to off-sets the weaknesses of one method with the strengths of
another as a means of improving the reliability and validity of their research.
A combination of methods can give a more rounded picture of someone's life and behaviour; a
researcher could, for example, observe a respondent's behaviour using participant observation
and also question them about why they did and why.
For example Ofsted using overt observations as well as official data (exam results) to assess how
well as school is performing.
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Methodological pluralism/triangulation/realism
Takes several forms
- Within method triangulation = different techniques within the same method
e.g. in questionnaires, using both open and closed questions
- Between-method triangulation = the use of different methods to obtain both
qualitative and quantitive data e.g. unstructured interviews and closed ended
questionnaires.

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Strengths
 While all research methods have strengths and weaknesses a researcher can use the strengths of one
method to compensate for the shortcomings of another.
 By gathering and aggregating different types of data (quantitative and qualitative) and sources (such as
respondents and participant observers) the researcher is more-likely to get a complete, fully-rounded
("holistic") picture of the behaviour they're studying.
 This, in turn, means that by using different methods and sampling strategies a researcher can generally
improve overall data reliability and validity.
 More specifically, data collected using higher reliability methods (such as questionnaires) can off-set
reliability weaknesses in observational methods - with the reverse being the case for validity.
 Confidence in things like the accuracy and truth of research data can be increased using triangulation.
Limitations
 Time consuming
 Expensive
 Too much data to analyse
 If a researcher gets contradictory data from two different sources it can be difficult - if not impossible -
to disentangle "truth" from "falsity’
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Relevant Study: Eileen Barker – Moonies

Used overt participant observation, questionnaires and semistructured interviews in her research
with the Unification Church ("Moonies") - It was described as a 'cult' and is criticised for
'brainwashing' young people into obedience of leader.

Methods used: - 42 page questionnaire (quantitive)

- Overt observation (qualitative)
- Unstructured interviews (qualitative)
- Allowed Barker to see on both a micro/macro scale
- Interviewed a random sample of 30 members from 6-8 hours
- Didn't want covert observation, didn't want to deceive

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The positivist approach, with reference to scientific
method, objectivity, reliability and value-freedom.

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Within sociology, there are two main theoretical approaches to research and to understanding the social
world. The earliest sociologists, such as Comte, developed the positivist approach, but for most of the
history of sociology interpretivism has exited alongside positivism as an alternative approach

Positivism
According to this approach, it is both possible and desirable to study social behavior using similar methods
to those used when studying the natural world; in other words, sociology can be like a science. We can
examine this belief by identifying some of its key ideas, beginning with the idea that social systems are
made up of structures that exist independently of individuals.

Institutions represent behavior at the macro (very large group) level of society. As individuals we experience
social structures as forces bearing down on us, pushing us to behave in certain ways and shaping our
behavioral choices. Although we have a measure of choice in our daily lives, this is limited by social
structures.

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For positivists, where action is decided by structural forces it makes sense to study the social laws of
behavior. This means looking at the structural forces that make people choose one action over another, rather
than studying their effects – the choices themselves. Social structures are seen as real, objective forces;
people cannot stop these forces from acting on them.

Just as natural scientists have observed the effects of ‘unseen forces’ such as gravity or electro-magnetism,
social structures are unseen forces whose effect can be observed by positivists using similar techniques to
those of the natural sciences:

 Systematic observation
 Accurate testing
 Quantitative measurements that create reliable knowledge

This systematic process results in the development of theories that explain the initial observations and predict
future behaviors.
Since this version of science is concerned only with what is, rather than how we might want something to be,
scientists must be personally objective. They do not participate in the behavior being studied, so they do not
bias or influence the data-collection process. They prefer quantitative methods because they allow for the
collection of objective and reliable data. Positivists value reliability; they see it as essential that others can
replicate the research.
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Questionnaires, structured interviews, experiments and observational studies offer higher levels of
reliability than qualitative methods. They also allow the researcher to maintain a high level of personal
objectivity by ‘standing apart’ from the behavior being researched.

Research methods, therefore, should not depend on the subjective interpretations of a researcher; the
researcher is objective, and their values do not influence the research. Positivism involves a value-free
approach.

Value-free/Value Freedom: The ability of researchers to prevent their own values (such as personal,
political or religious values) from influencing their research.

In summary, positivist methodology involves these key ideas:

• The primary research goal is to explain, not describe, social phenomenon.

• Scientific research involves the ability to discover the ‘general rules’ (or structures) that decide
individual behavior.
• The social scientist must personally be objective – their research must not be influenced by their
values, beliefs, opinions and prejudices – and systemically objective; that is, they should use objective
methods.
• Scientific research involves the ability to quantify and measure behavior.
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The interpretivist/interactionists/social action theorists
approach, with reference to verstehen, meaning,
subjectivity and validity.

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For interpretivists, the crucial difference between society and physical nature is that social reality is formed
through the interaction of people who have consciousness. This awareness of ourselves and our
relationship to others gives us the ability to act.

People are able to exercise free will over the choices they make about how to behave in different situations,
rather than simply react to outside (structural) stimulation. In this sense, people are not predictable- they do
not always react in the same way. This means that behavior cannot be studied and explained in the way
that natural scientists study and explain the non-human world, and that the positivist approach is not
appropriate for sociology.

For interpretivists, unpredictability is constructed through meanings, ‘Society’ does not exist in an objective
form; it is created by the way people interact with each other and experienced subjectively because we give
it meaning through behavior. People create and re-create a ‘sense of the social system’ on a daily basis.
Society is not something ‘out there’ to be objectively observed but something ‘in here’ to be experienced and
understood.

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The fact that people actively create and RECREATE the social world (through social action i.e. two or more
people interacting) makes it impossible to establish casual relationships either in theory or in practice.
Where social contexts define the meaning of behavior, the best a researcher can do is describe reality from
the viewpoint of those who define it, whether they are in a classroom, a family or any other social situation.

Seeing the social world through the eyes of others involves empathy. Max Weber referred to this as
verstehen – putting yourself in someone’s elses shoes and seeing the world from their eyes/through their
experiences.

If researching social behavior involves understanding how people individually and collectively experience
and interpret their situation, research methods must reflect this social construction of reality.

The aim of interpretivist research is to help respondents ‘tell their story’ and, by so doing, understand and
explain their behavioral choices.

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We can summaries interpretivist methodology as follows:

 The primary aim is to describe social behavior in terms of the meanings and interpretations of those
involved.

 Behavioral rules are context bound; they change in subtle ways depending on the situation.

 Uncovering and describing behavioral rules involves the close study of people’s behavior; the
researcher must gain a good understanding of the context within which behavior occurs. This is why
researchers in this methodology often use participant observation.

 Participation can be desirable because this gives the researcher a deeper insight into behavior, the
kind of ‘objective detachment’ valued by positivists is explicitly rejected. Sociologists should not be
objective and should acknowledge their values rather than try to be value-free in their research.

 While reliability is important, interpretivists place greater emphasis on achieving validity.

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The debates about whether sociology can/should be based
on the methods and procedures of the natural sciences

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The debate about whether scientific methods can be applied to the social world

 Modernity is associated with industrialization, urbanization and the rise of reason. Modernity has a very
central position to science and the scientific method. The natural world could now be explained in a
predictable manner using the methods of science.

 Early sociologists who wanted to study the social world could see that the scientific method was very
powerful and could explain the world around them. Inspired by the natural scientists, sociologists
decided to use the scientific method to study the social world (and not just the natural world). The
problem was, that the methods of the natural sciences such as Physics and Chemistry were being
applied by scientists to things like rocks and chemicals – which did not have consciousness or free will.
Humans, on the other hand possessed consciousness and arguably, also free will (especially if you
look at social reality from the point of view of an interpretivist).

 So social scientists decided to try to develop factual information about the social world/social reality by
collecting evidence, testing hypothesis and analyzing data to see if the experiment verified or disproved
the hypothesis. Such social scientists are called Positivists.

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But the problem is that there are 3 different perspectives with sociology regarding which methods
should be adopted when one attempts to do sociological research

1. Positivism/ Positivist sociology (used by structuralists. Focuses on objective states and quantitative
data)

2. Interpretivism/ Anti-Positivist Sociology (Used by Interpretivists. Focuses on subjective states and

qualitative data).

3. Postmodernism/ Postmodern Sociology (Rejects the idea that any method- quantitative or
qualitative- can give us access to the truth)

But first, let us see what science itself is….

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What is Science?
1. Science is a methodology: It is a systematic a way of producing factual/empirical knowledge (rather
than knowledge based on opinion, guesswork or faith) that can be verified about the universe.
2. Science has Procedural Rules - the Scientific Method: Scientific knowledge is created by following a set
of procedures, agreed by the scientific community, that govern how data can be collected and analyzed.

One example of such a set of procedural rules is Karl Popper’s (1934) widely used hypothetico-deductive
method. A scientific procedure generally begins when the scientist observes some phenomenon and poses a
hypothesis or research question.

The steps include:

 Observe a phenomenon
 Make a conjecture/guess about what they were seeing
 Form a testable measurable hypothesis i.e. a statement that you can test.
 Test the hypothesis through an experiment to prove or disapprove it
 Create a generalization from the testing and eventually
 Form a theory that explained the phenomenon

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The Scientific Method is useful because it:
1. Makes knowledge more plausible (it is tested and verified and not simply based on opinions or
guesswork)

2. Allows predictions

3. Science has Ethical Rules: Merton (1942) argued that scientists need a scientific ethos – a code of conduct
of sorts that ensures that scientists actually follow the scientific method and do not make up false results.

Knowledge produced by the scientific method must be:

4. Reliable: This refers to the idea that it is possible to check the accuracy of a piece of research by repeating
(replicating) it to see if we get the same, or very similar results

5. Valid (they do attempt to make data valid): Data is only useful if it actually measures or describes what it
claims to measure or describe. It is possible to measure the extent of crime using government crime
statistics. However, the validity of these statistics may be limited if they only record crimes that are
reported to the police because many crimes go unreported

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What is Science: Rules governing how scientific research should be carried out

SCIENCE IS UNIVERSAL:
 Knowledge is evaluated using objective universally agreed, criteria (and not subjective criteria)

 Personal values play no part in this process and criticism of a scientist’s work should focus on the
falsification of their conclusions or identifying in the research process.

SCIENCE IS COMMUNAL:
 Scientific knowledge is public knowledge that must be freely shared within the scientific community.
Scientists must be able to build on the work done by other scientists. This allows for scientific
understanding to advance on a cumulative basis

 Scientific work must be made available to a community of peers, who are free to criticize it and attempt
to replicate it. Scientific work is not taken on trust

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 SCIENCE IS DISINTERESTED (i.e. NOT BIASED)
 The main responsibility of the scientist is the pursuit of knowledge, (and not say, making money), While
scientists should be recognized for their achievements and rewards for their efforts, they should not
have a personal stake, financial or otherwise, in the outcome of their research

 There is less risk of research bias.

SCIENCE IS SKEPTICAL:
 Nothing is beyond criticism: Unlike religion, there should be no dogma in science

 The scientific community must continually evaluate knowledge because this questioning process
contributes to the development of human understanding. For Merton, this ‘skeptical attitude’
represented the main way in which scientific knowledge differed from other forms of knowledge, such as
religious faith.
 Science is ‘true’ only because it has not yet been disproved. Faith, however, is considered by believers
to be self-evidently true.
 It is important to note this view of science has procedural rules, objectivity, ethical rules, reliable and
valid knowledge etc.)

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 Sociology and the Scientific Method: How Perspectives view
Science (Summary Slide)
Positivist
The Positivist take on how the
Scientific Method should be applied
to the social world:
It is both possible and desirable to
study the social world in broadly the
same way the natural scientists study
the natural world
Positivists are not concerned with the
inner workings of a person’s mind.
Instead they explain social behavior
from without (rather than from
within) Harris (2005a) notes that
positivists see social actors as
passively reacting to causes, laws or
facts that are external to them and
which they are powerless to resist
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Interpretivist
The Interpretivist/ anti-positivist take
on how the Scientific Method should
be applied to the social world:
The scientific method can be applied
to the social world, but with some
modifications. Since humans have
consciousness and free will, they
interpret the social world and create
their own meaning. This inferred
meaning can change, depending on
context. So the scientific method
when applied to the social world
must be more nuanced than when it is
applied to the natural world (rocks,
chemicals etc.)
It must take into account things like
human empathy, emotion, the context
in which a social interaction takes
place (students will go quiet when
told to do so by a teacher in a class,
but not outside of school) how active
social agents create meaning and so
on
Interpretivists/ anti-positivists
therefore explain social behavior not
from without but from within
For example, for an interpretivist, to
truly understand what it means to be
homeless, the researcher should
become homeless. This practice
allows sociologists to gain a vital
insight into why homeless people
behave as they do (rather than
collecting quantitative data such as
The role of values in sociology
Is sociological research value-free?
How values enter sociological research?

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 Sociological Knowledge Value-Free or Value Neutral?
SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH & VALUE
FREEDOM:
To establish sociological knowledge, data is
collected and then analyzed or tested objectively.
In other words, the data collected and presented is
‘value-free’ – i.e. it has not been influenced by
the values, beliefs or prejudices of the researcher.
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SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND VALUE
NEUTRALITY:
However, sociologists argue that it is not possible
to act without values, therefore there is no such
thing as value-free. Since sociologists cannot be
value-free, neither can their research - all a
researcher can do is recognize the various points at
which values potentially intrude into the research
process and adjust our research strategy to limit or
neutralize their effect. This is called Value
Neutrality
In a similar vein, sociologist and politician Gunnar
Myrdal posited that total value neutrality is
impossible. He stated that, to make sense of
research and even form hypotheses, sociologists
must utilize their own viewpoints. He proposes
sociologists need to be value-frank, meaning
they explicitly state their guiding viewpoints from
the outset of their research
How Values intrude into Research

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1. What Topic did the Researcher choose to study? Topic of research – who or what to study –
are influenced by a researcher’s personal values. For example: Goffman (1961) chose to study
inmates in an asylum

2. Is the Researcher studying the activities of the Powerful or the Powerless?

 The powerful – as in Pearce’s (1998) study of corporate criminality in the chemical industry

 Or the relatively powerless, Davis (1985), for example, studied the social processes involved in
becoming a prostitute

3. How much is the Researcher scared for their own well-being and what risks are they prepared
to take? For example, powerful people tend to value their privacy, so gaining access to their world
may not be easy and revealing their dirty laundry will probably have greater repercussions

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4. What is the Researcher’s Methodological Bias? Does the researcher prioritize reliability over validity
or vice versa?

 Positivists may prefer to limit respondent choice by giving them a list of answers from which to choose –
perhaps closed questions, where the answers are easy to quantify
 Interpretivists may encourage a respondent to answer in their own words by asking open-ended
questions
 Realists, will try and adopt methodological pluralism, but this has its own issue: it is time consuming,
expensive and may

5. How are Researcher’s Value Influencing What is Being Studied and What is Being Ignored in Data
Analysis: The researcher must make decisions about what data to include and what to exclude from the
completed research.

Coser (1977) argues that while researchers choice is always value relevant (influenced by value), once
choices about what to study and how to study it have been made, value neutrality involves the researcher
acknowledging their values. Sociologists should clearly state the value-relevant assumptions in their work
and make explicit the values they hold so these assumptions may be questions, challenged or changed by
other researchers.
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6. Who is Funding the Research and What are their Priorities and Agendas?

Topic choice (and sometimes also the results of research) are influenced by funding considerations.
Those paying for the research may not only influence what is studied but also how it is studied. This
situation raises ethical questions (see below) about whether a researcher should be held responsible
for the purposes to which their research is put.

For example, ‘Project Camelot’ was research funded by the US government and military in the 1960’s,
designed to influence internal politics and development in Chile. Solovey (2001) argues that the
proposed involvement of sociological researchers in the project was ethically questionable

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