Research Methods

Steve Chapman, Patrick McNeill, Patrick Mcneill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134327287
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Marketingforschung

Timely update of a now classic introductory text Second edition sold over 30, 000 copies - a well established brand Clear and concise introduction to research methods - appropriate for vocational and professional training markets

1
Research methods in sociology

‘What is sociology about?’ is probably the question that sociologists are asked more often than any other. A reasonable reply might be that sociologists are interested in those aspects of human behaviour which are the result of the social context in which we live. They do not concentrate on features which are the result of our physical or biological makeup. Sociology stresses the patterns and the regularities of social life which are, most of the time, orderly and largely predictable.

The next question is then, typically, ‘But what do you actually do?’ and it is to this question that this book is addressed. While there is, as you may know, considerable variation and disagreement among sociologists, they are united in the conviction that argument that is based on sound evidence is superior to argument based on false evidence, limited evidence, or no evidence. Evidence has to be collected from the social world around us, and this requires empirical research to be done. ‘Empirical’, in this context, simply means ‘based on evidence from the real world’ in contrast to ‘theoretical’, which refers to ideas that are abstract or purely analytical. Theories must be tested against the real world, ‘Theory, in fact, is the building which is made from the hard-won bricks of research studies’ (Mann 1985). This still leaves open the question of what counts as sound evidence, and this in turn leads to a central theme of this book: ‘How can we collect sound evidence about the social world that can be used to increase our understanding of that world?’

Over the years, sociologists have used a wide variety of methods of data collection and analysis. They have studied an even wider variety of aspects of social life, from such matters as how people avoid bumping into each other in the street to topics as wide-ranging as the causes of the rise of capitalism. In fact, a brief history of sociology since the end of the last century is an effective way of introducing the variety of research styles and some of the topics studied.

The late nineteenth century

Modern sociology is usually thought to have its roots in the work of classical sociologists who worked at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. These writers, of whom Marx (1818–83), Weber (1864–1920) and Durkheim (1858–1917) are usually regarded as the most important, were essentially theorists, who based their analysis of what was happening to the rapidly changing European societies of that time on evidence from historians and other sources rather than on their own original research.

At about the same time, i.e. the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Booth (1840–1916) was conducting one of the first major social surveys, which he published between 1891 and 1903 in seventeen volumes entitled Life and Labour of the People in London. Booth, prompted by a number of newspaper and magazine articles, was concerned to find out the true extent of poverty among the working classes of London at that time, and he collected vast quantities of data about them, using a combination of early survey techniques and other less statistical methods. He went from house to house in certain areas of the East End of London, painstakingly recording the number of residents, the number of rooms they occupied, their living conditions, their income, diet, clothing and so on. He also collected their own accounts of the experience of poverty and their feelings about it. He spent some time actually living as a boarder in houses in the areas that he was studying and making detailed studies of particular families.

Anthropology and the Chicago School

The first third of the twentieth century saw the development of anthropological fieldwork. Researchers who were interested in the way of life of what were regarded as primitive peoples went to live among them to study their societies from the inside. Previously, investigations like this had been done mainly from the outsider’s point of view, and it was men like Evans-Pritchard (1902–73), Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) and, particularly, Malinowski (1884–1942), who determined that the only really effective way of understanding the way of life of these peoples was to go and live among them for an extended period of time, learning their language and becoming accepted as a member of their social groups.

Another very important school of sociological research developed under the influence of Robert E.Park (1864–1944) at the University of Chicago in the period between the two world wars. They based almost all their work on anthropological techniques, but they were interested in the wide variety of lifestyles that they found on their own doorsteps in Chicago, rather than in simple tribal societies. They used a method that became known as ‘participant observation’, in which the researcher both observes the social processes of a group and actually participates in the life of that group. They combined this with interviewing, some taking of life-histories and the use of various official records and other documents. In this way, these researchers built up a picture of lifestyles in Chicago at that time, especially those of certain deviant groups such as hoboes and gang-members.

Postwar research

After the Second World War, there was a change of emphasis among sociologists concerning what research techniques produced the best data. Under the influence of researchers in America such as Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–70), greater emphasis was put on the need for proof and on the importance of data being as objective as possible, i.e. that it should be free of any influence of the individual researcher who happened to collect it. It was argued that, using the right data-collection techniques, it should be possible to assemble information about the social world that is free of bias, and that could be analysed using the statistical techniques which had been developed. The emphasis in this work was on the collection of statistical data, i.e. in the form of numbers, rather than descriptions of particular ways of life. The intention was to uncover the causes of human social behaviour, often with a view to influencing social policy in order to reduce social problems and generally improve the quality of life. This approach was strongly influenced by the methods of natural science and is known as positivism. The emphasis during the 1950s was on surveys but these were often supplemented with other methods.

During the 1960s, there were great changes in sociology in Britain. There was a reaction against the kind of sociology that encouraged the survey style of social research, and a move towards participant observation and other fieldwork techniques, such as informal or ‘unstructured’ interviews. Some sociologists, strongly influenced by American sources, became converted to ethnomethodology, which set out completely to recast the objectives of sociological enquiry ( see pp.).

For several years, in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, sociologists seemed to spend as much time and effort arguing about how they should be thinking about and studying the social world as they did in actually doing research. These disputes were once over-dramatically described as ‘British sociology’s wars of religion’, and, while sociology emerged in the late 1970s as a stronger discipline than it had been previously, this was not a period which was very productive in terms of sociology’s public image. However, some excellent studies were done at this time, many using fieldwork techniques and participant observation rather than surveys.

There were important developments in social research in the 1980s, one of which was the growth of feminist research (Roberts 1981). Feminist scholars have shown how all academic disciplines have been dominated by a male view of the world. In social science, this has meant that women have been virtually ignored, except as they related to men, and that the male has been seen as the norm. Studies of social mobility, of schools, of work, of leisure, of youth culture, even of the family, either ignored women or saw them only through male eyes. Feminist research has begun to restore the balance by researching women’s lives, by demonstrating how far British society is dominated by men and by reinterpreting evidence originally produced by men. The purpose of feminist enquiry is to bring about female emancipation and to devise more open and equal methodological techniques suited to researching women, their issues and views of the world.

The 1980s also saw the emergence of the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens. He aimed to show how aspects of the social structure of society, particularly social class, ethnicity and gender, interact with the social meanings held by social actors, to bring about or constrain social action. Giddens recognized that people’s actions are the result of their interpretations of their social reality but he points out that people’s choice of action is often limited by structural factors which are largely beyond their control. For example, we have seen in recent years, major changes in female aspirations in regard to education. Young females now interpret further and higher qualifications as a necessary step to establishing a good career. However, the choices that result may be constrained by the patriarchal structure of work which has traditionally suited male working patterns. Giddens’s theory strongly encouraged the use of multiple methods. Quantitative methods were seen as suited to exploring the influence of the social structure whilst qualitative methods aimed to uncover how people interpreted that social structure. Taylor’s (1982) research into suicide on the London Underground is a good example of a piece of research influenced by Giddens in terms of both theory and practice.

The 1990s saw the emergence of a postmodernist critique of research practice. This critique suggests that ‘truth’ and ‘authenticity’ are unattainable goals for researchers because postmodernists claim that these do not exist as universal and objective realities. Rather, they are concepts relative to time and place. There is therefore no objective standard to judge that one version of the ‘truth’ is better than another. Postmodernists reject the ‘expert’ status of the sociological researcher because the researcher is only one interpreter of reality. The researcher’s claim to ‘truth’ is no more valuable than anyone else’s. Postmodernists also reject the concept of Validity’ which they see as an attempt to impose a set of rules in regard to how research should be conducted.

Postmodernist observations of research have not escaped criticism themselves. Devine and Heath note that postmodernism’s ‘wholesale dismissal of conventional criteria for assessing social research can easily collapse into a rather hopeless relativism and consequently an ability to contribute to public debate’ (1999:210). Gomm is even more dismissive when he notes that there is no place for a theory that denies the existence of truth in a book on research methods.

In the last decade, there has been an outbreak of peace in sociology’s own particular conflicts. In research terms, this has shown itself in the way that it has become perfectly acceptable to use a wide variety of research techniques in one study, and to use different techniques for the study of different topics. This may seem blindingly obvious to the newcomer to the discipline, but there were very good reasons for the disputes that took place. The arguments that are now available to justify the use of particular methods are much more convincing than they used to be. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that some writers had been advocating the use of multiple methods for years.

More use is also being made of secondary data, such as personal documents, official statistics, and the huge collection of data held in the UK Data Archive at Essex University (www.data-archive.ac.uk). There have been rapid developments in techniques for the storage, manipulation and retrieval of data, using new technology. Historical sociology is also expanding, with sociologists paying more attention to history and with historians becoming more sociological.

What is research for?

Having started this chapter with two questions, we can now add two more. What is sociological research for? Why is it done at all?

Sociological research, like all scientific enquiry is fundamentally prompted by simple human curiosity, an indispensable quality if research is to be both successful and enjoyable. But curiosity can take different forms.

Descriptive research and explanatory research

Some research aims only to describe, in detail, a situation or set of circumstances. It aims to answer questions like ‘how many?’ and ‘who?’ and ‘what is happening?’ The writer wishes to do no more than add to our knowledge of the social world, simply for the sake of knowing. Other research sets out to explain a social phenomenon. It asks ‘why?’ and tries to find the answer to a problem. This may be a social problem or a sociological problem.

Social problems are those aspects of social life that cause private unhappiness or public friction, and are identified by those in power as needing some kind of social policy to deal with them. ‘Social policy’ refers to those actions of governments that have a direct effect on the welfare of the citizens of a country. This may mean providing income for certain groups of people, as through the British social security system. It may mean providing services, such as education or a health service, which are available to all, or the home help service, which is available to those judged to be most in need of it. Sociological research can provide government with the information needed to identify the size of a problem, and to plan a response to that problem. This does not mean that governments always take action when researchers identify a social problem, or act upon their findings. They are free to ignore social research, and often do.

A sociological problem is any aspect of social life that needs explaining. It may also be a social problem, but sociologists are just as interested in trying to explain ‘normal’ behaviour and events as they are in trying to explain the deviant or the abnormal. Much research is concerned only with increasing our knowledge of how societies work, and explaining patterns of social behaviour. It may have implications for social policy, but this is not the prime purpose.

The distinction between descriptive research and explanatory research is often very blurred. Any explanation requires description, and it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to describe something without at the same time explaining it.

Action research

In recent years, action research has become much more widely used, especially in research into education and schooling. Action research takes the form of a systematic enquiry, often conducted by practitioners and researchers working together, which is designed to yield practical results. These results are then used to improve a specific aspect of practice (e.g. teaching and learning). Like all social science research, the results are made public so that other people can check and test them.

Whatever, the reason for research, it must be remembered that the basic value, as in all science, is truth.

Three important concepts

Three key concepts are used throughout this book. Their meanings will become clear with use, but it is sensible to introduce them briefly at this stage.

Reliability

If a method of collecting evidence is reliable, it means that anybody else using this method, or the same person using it at another time, would come up with the same results. The research could be repeated, and the same results would be obtained. For example, an experiment in a chemistry lesson should always ‘work’. It should always produce the result that is expected, whoever is doing it, at whatever time, provided that the proper procedures are followed.

Some methods in sociology are regarded as being more reliable than others. Any method that involves a lone researcher in a situation that cannot be repeated, like much participant observation research, is always in danger of being thought unreliable.

Validity

Validity refers to the problem of whether th...