Methodology: Who Needs It?

Martyn Hammersley, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781849202053, 9781849202046
• eBook ISBN: 9781473903432
• Edition: 1

The literature on social science methods and the issues surrounding them has grown massively and continues to increase. Yet many social scientists are ambivalent about methodology. For some, it plays a central, perhaps even an all-encompassing, role; while, for others, it is desirable only in small amounts, or indeed is regarded as an irrelevance, as a distraction from actually doing research.

In this book, Hammersley argues that, in large part, this reflects and is part of a wider problem: the gradual decline of a previously influential academic model of inquiry. This has occurred as a result of ideological challenges and the erosion of the institutional conditions that support academic work. He defends this model, spelling out the demands it places upon social scientists, and examining such issues as the proper role of methodology, the nature of objectivity, the false idea that social scientists should be intellectuals or social critics, the dialectic of academic discussion, the ethics of belief, and the limits of academic freedom. More broadly, he also questions the role of the social research within society and what it means to be a social scientist in the 21st century.

Hammersley?s book is engagingly written and controversial. It tackles the major issues of contemporary social research methodology head on and is an essential read for anyone with an interest in this field.

PART 1

THE ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER: LIMITS, OBLIGATIONS AND VIRTUES

1

METHODOLOGY, WHO NEEDS IT?¹

[…] sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results. (Poincaré 1908: 19–20)

Methodologists remind me of people who clean their glasses so thoroughly that they never have time to look through them. (Freud, cited in Sterba 1982: 120)

Methodology is too important to be left to the methodologists. (Becker 1970: 3)

The literature on social research methodology is now very large. Indeed, it may still be increasing at an increasing rate. It is so substantial that it is unlikely anyone could read all of it; or perhaps even keep up with the latest publications. In part, this growth in the literature results from the fact that, in the UK and elsewhere, substantial ‘training’ in methodology has become institutionalised in many postgraduate programmes, notably as a result of requirements laid down by research funding bodies. There has also been increased emphasis on ‘research capacity building’, aimed at improving the methodological knowledge and skills of practising researchers, and this has included the promotion and dissemination of ‘methodological innovation’ (see Travers 2009).

The sheer scale and growth of the methodological literature might be taken as a sign that social science is in robust health. But it is also possible to draw a very different conclusion: that there is an excessive preoccupation with methodology on the part of social scientists, perhaps amounting to a cancer on the face of research. Approximations to both these views can be found, suggesting that there is some ambivalence towards methodology among social scientists at the collective, and perhaps even at the individual, level. Attitudes no doubt vary according to researchers’ degree of involvement in this type of work, from those who call themselves methodologists and/or contribute substantially to the literature, through to those who do not write about it, believe that it is only of relevance to novice researchers, or perhaps even regard it as a major distraction or obstruction.

Ambivalence towards methodology has been evident for a long time. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Max Weber complained about a ‘methodological pestilence’ in German social science (quoted in Oakes 1975: 13), with researchers becoming preoccupied with epistemological issues; yet, at the same time, he himself produced a batch of highly influential methodological writings (Weber 1949; 1975; 1977). Around the middle of the twentieth century, when the importance of methodological training was beginning to be emphasised in US sociology, C. Wright Mills wrote a paper entitled ‘On intellectual craftsmanship’ that was later developed into an appendix to his book The Sociological Imagination, and was reprinted in various forms in other places. It became a classic methodological text for sociologists. Yet, in this text, Mills declares that much methodological discussion simply ‘disturb[s] people who are at work’, as well as leading to ‘methodological inhibition’ (Mills 1959a: 27). So, here we have a methodological text which warns of the dangers of methodology. Mills also complains about ‘the fetishism of method and technique’ (Mills 1959b: 224), and others have echoed this, referring to ‘methodological narcissism’ (Nisbet 1963: 148), the ‘myth of methodology’ (Kaplan 1964: 24) and ‘methodolatry’ (Gouldner 1965; Janesick 1994: 215).

In this chapter, I will begin with a very brief sketch of the methodological ideas that have shaped social science in the past 50 years, and then examine three genres to be found in the methodological literature today and the ambivalence towards methodology to which they have given rise. Towards the end of the chapter, I will consider the role that methodology ought to play in social research, reflecting on the value of each of the genres but also on how they can lead us astray.

A BRIEF HISTORY

There has not just been an increase in the amount of methodological literature over the past few decades, its content has also changed considerably; this varying, of course, according to disciplinary area as well as across national contexts and language communities. Around the middle of the twentieth century, methodological texts generally treated natural science as the model to be followed, with method being seen as the driving force behind science.² It was widely believed that the development of experimental method in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had been crucial to the remarkable success of the natural sciences, enabling them subsequently to make startling discoveries about the nature of the Universe, the constituents of matter, and the character and development of living organisms. Not surprisingly, much effort was soon made to apply ‘scientific method’ to the task of understanding the social world. Furthermore, it was widely assumed that this could lead to progress in overcoming the increasingly serious problems faced by large, complex industrial societies. The expectation was that social science could deliver parallel benefits to those which science-based technology had brought to many material aspects of human life.

Despite widespread adoption of natural science as a model, from the beginning there were important differences in views among social scientists about the nature of scientific method; as well as conflicting ideas about whether social science is distinctive in its goal or in the nature of the phenomena with which it deals; and, if so, about whether and how scientific method should be adapted to take account of this. Debates about these matters go back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when there were philosophical conflicts between inductive and hypothetico-deductive views of science, and also between those who took physics – rather than, for example, biology – as their model. In addition, there were arguments about the necessary methodological distinctiveness of the historical and social sciences (see Hammersley 1989: ch. 1). Moreover, by the middle of the twentieth century, there was an awareness on the part of many social scientists that their disciplines had not achieved the demonstrable progress characteristic of natural science in the nineteenth century, nor the same practical payoff. One response was to insist on the continuing immaturity of, and difficulties faced by, the social sciences. At the same time, this sense of failure undoubtedly stimulated the promotion of approaches that rejected the natural science model, and in some cases the very idea of science itself (Bateson 1984: ix; Smith 1989; Harding 1991; Denzin and Lincoln 2005; Hutchinson et al. 2008; Peim 2009).

In the second half of the twentieth century, there were also significant changes in attitude towards natural science in the wider society. Its beneficent image began to be tarnished by public recognition of its negative side: of the uses to which its methods and products had been put, for example in warfare and in the Holocaust; of the environmental consequences of the new industries it stimulated; of the disturbing possibilities it opened up in biogenetics; and even of the means it employed, such as animal experimentation. As a result, there was a shift in view about the nature and value of scientific knowledge. As long ago as 1972, the philosopher of science Mary Hesse noted the consequences:

Various intellectual and moral tendencies are currently combining to dethrone natural science from the sovereignty of reason, knowledge, and truth which it has enjoyed since the seventeenth century. Far from being the paradigm of objective truth and control which will make us free of all natural ills and constraints, science is increasingly accused of being a one-sided development of reason, yielding not truth but a succession of mutually incommensurable and historically relative paradigms, and not freedom, but enslavement to its own technology and the consequent modes of social organisation generated by technology. (1972: 275)

These wider challenges to natural science tended further to undermine its role as a theoretical or methodological model for many social scientists. One consequence of this, in the second half of the twentieth century, was the emergence of a fundamental division between quantitative and qualitative approaches within many fields of social science. Views of method as requiring quantitative measurement and the control of variables that were dominant in many areas began to be abandoned by a growing number of social scientists, on the grounds that these were based upon a false, positivist philosophy. Furthermore, qualitative researchers started to draw on very different ideas about the proper nature of social enquiry: from nineteenth-century philosophies like hermeneutics or pragmatism to influential strands in twentieth-century continental philosophy, such as critical theory and post-structuralism. Over time, qualitative research increasingly fragmented into competing approaches that marked themselves off from one another in the name of conflicting philosophical and political commitments: interpretive, ‘critical’, feminist, constructionist, postmodernist, etc. And these developments led to a considerable diversification of the methodological literature.

THREE GENRES

We can identify at least three broad genres within the literature on social research methodology today:

1. Methodology-as-technique
2. Methodology-as-philosophy
3. Methodology-as-autobiography

In each case, a particular kind of methodological writing is treated as central, on the basis of various assumptions about the nature of social enquiry, what it can produce, and the conditions for doing it well.³

METHODOLOGY-AS-TECHNIQUE

In the 1950s and 1960s, methodological writing tended to focus on research designs concerned with hypothesis testing, the details of experimental and survey method, measurement strategies, and techniques of statistical analysis.⁴ What was involved here was a particular conception of social scientific research, whereby the questions to be addressed needed to be identified and made explicit at the outset, and quantitative methods were generally assumed to be required for a scientific approach; though non-quantitative methods were sometimes included as supplements. Furthermore, it was assumed that research method could be quite closely specified in terms of rules to be followed.

Here, methodology was treated as providing the knowledge and skills that are essential for effective social science practice. This involved spelling out the nature of scientific method and its implications for doing social research, along with the provision of advice about how to approach the various decisions involved. There was also great emphasis on the need for social researchers to be trained in methodological procedures, especially in statistical techniques, so as to be able to carry out scientific work well.

Later in the twentieth century, methodological texts became broader in their coverage, generally giving more attention to qualitative methods, though they often preserved the emphasis on technique. This emphasis was even true of many early books that were specifically devoted to qualitative method, in the sense that they were primarily concerned with offering practical guidance.⁵

At its simplest, methodology-as-technique is an attempt to codify the methods social scientists use, specifying their character and proper application in relation to the different research tasks, indicating the grounds on which choices among methods should be made, and so on. And the primary audience here is often students and other novices who need to learn how to do research. The aim is to make method explicit and thereby to provide a basis for learning and improving it. Generally speaking, in this genre of writing, an apparently consensual image of how to pursue research is presented. Even where different methodological philosophies are recognised, these tend to be reduced to a relatively small number of clearly defined options that are to be chosen either according to fitness for purpose or as a matter of taste.

At its most extreme, what is involved here is what might be referred to as proceduralism: the idea that good practice amounts to following a set of rules that can be made explicit as a set of prescriptive dos and don’ts, or even in the form of recipes. Quantitative research is often believed to be codifiable in this way; but there is a temptation to try to proceduralise qualitative research as well, on the grounds that this must be done if it is to be scientific, and/or if newcomers are to be taught how to do it. However, the literature within this genre varies considerably in how closely it approximates to the procedural model.

The early methodology-as-technique texts came to be criticised because of the way they privileged quantitative work, for their ‘positivist’ philosophical orientation, and/or for their encouragement of recipe following. They increasingly came to be seen as at odds with the spirit of qualitative enquiry, not least because of the latter’s emphasis on the importance of creativity in research, and on the role of personal, social and cultural factors in shaping it. Proceduralism, in particular, was rejected for being ideological: that it systematically obscures the fact that research is done by people with distinctive characteristics in particular socio-historical locations, and that it is based on philosophical assumptions.

METHODOLOGY-AS-PHILOSOPHY

One of the effects of the rise of qualitative approaches and associated criticism of quantitative method, and of subsequent disputes amongst proponents of competing qualitative paradigms, was the flourishing of a new genre, what I will call methodology-as-philosophy. Early textbooks, and other publications, in the methodology-as-technique genre had often included some coverage of philosophical ideas about the nature of science, but this was usually restricted to brief preliminaries. Moreover, philosophical debates were generally presented as either already largely resolved or as of minimal practical significance for how research ought to be done. There was rarely much indication that there were sharply conflicting views among philosophers of science or that there are unresolved philosophical problems surrounding social science; despite the fact that, by the end of the 1950s, the philosophy of science was in turmoil, older positivist ideas having collapsed largely as a result of internal criticism (Suppe 1974).

As already noted, many of the early introductions to qualitative method adopted a primarily practical focus, and they too generally gave relatively little space to philosophical issues – by comparison with many later treatments. However, there were already signs of the emergence of a different emphasis. In their influential book The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Glaser and Strauss (1967) argued for a distinctive methodological approach, against the preoccupation with testing hypotheses that dominated quantitative research, and also against the tendency towards a descriptive orientation in much qualitative work. While they make little appeal to the philosophical literature, what they address here are nevertheless philosophical issues: as I noted earlier, there had been a long-running philosophical debate about inductive versus hypothetico-deductive interpretations of scientific method (see Gillies 1993). The year before Glaser and Strauss’s book, Bruyn’s The Human Perspective in Sociology (1966) appeared, and this was largely concerned with outlining the competing epistemological and ontological principles he identified as underpinning qualitative, as against quantitative, enquiry.

Subsequently, the amount of philosophical discussion in the methodological literature increased considerably, as ‘new’ qualitative paradigms sought to distinguish themselves from earlier ones. Furthermore, the character of the philosophical ideas that were appealed to by qualitative researchers changed over time: the influence of nineteenth-century hermeneutics, pragmatism, Marxism and critical theory was later accompanied or displaced by appeals to structuralism, philosophical hermeneutics, deconstruction and other forms of post-structuralism and ‘postmodernism’. In the course of the battles that took place, older philosophical rationales tended to be rejected under the catch-all term ‘positivist’, this becoming an example of what Passmore calls a ‘dismissal-phrase’ (Passmore 1961: 2).⁶

Many of these developments raised fundamental issues. For example, within Marxism the question arose: in what sense can there be scientific study of the social world that escapes ideology, and what requirements must be met to achieve this? Pragmatism raised the question, among others, of in what sense human behaviour can be segmented into units among which determinate causal relations operate, and therefore in what sense such behaviour is amenable to scientific investigation. For hermeneutics, the issue was whether and how we can understand other cultures; and, later, what the implications are of the fact that all understanding is a product of socio-historical location. Ethnomethodology generated questions about what would be required for a fully scientific approach to the study of the social world, in the sense of one that does not trade on commonsense knowledge; and about whether social phenomena have the determinate character that is required for scientific investigation. From post-structuralism, there was the issue of whether discourse, perhaps of any kind, can escape being a reification of the world, an imposition on it and an expression of power.

Central to this new literature, often, has been a very different view about the relationship between research and philosophy from that which had informed the earlier concern with methodology-as-technique. The latter treated philosop...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1: The role of the researcher: limits, obligations and virtues
• Part 2: The dialectic of knowledge production
• Epilogue
• References
• Name Index
• Subject Index