Social Research

Theory, Methods and Techniques

Piergiorgio Corbetta

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761972532, 9780761972525
• eBook ISBN: 9781446236703
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Metodologia e ricerca nelle scienze sociali

`This is an impressively detailed, clearly written book.... It is a book that I would like students to read? - Clive Seale, Goldsmiths College, London

Social Research: Theory, Methods and Techniques presents an understanding of social research practice through appreciation of its foundations and methods. Stretching from the philosophy of science to detailed descriptions of both qualitative and quantitative techniques, it illustrates not only `how? to do social research, but also `why? particular techniques are used today.

The book is divided into three parts:

Part One: Illustrates the two basic paradigms - quantitative and qualitative - of social research, describing their origins in philosophical thought and outlining their current interpretations.

Part Two: Devoted to quantitative research, and discusses the relationship between theory and research practice. It also presents a discussion of key quantitative research techniques.

Part Three: Examines qualitative research. Topics range from classical qualitative techniques such as participant observation, to more recent developments such as ethnomethodological studies.

Overall, the author offers an engaging contribution to the field of social research and this book is a reminder of the solid foundations upon which most social research is conducted today. As a consequence it will be required reading for students throughout the social sciences, and at various levels.

Part One

The Logic of Social Research

1 Paradigms of Social Research

1. Kuhn and the paradigms of sciences

2. Three basic questions

3. Positivism

4. Neopositivism and postpositivism

5. Interpretivism

6. A final note: radicalization, criticism and new tendencies

This chapter illustrates the philosophical bases of the two basic approaches to social research which gave rise to the families of quantitative and qualitative techniques. We will begin with the concept of paradigm – that is, the perspective that inspires and directs a given science. Then we shall examine the historical roots and the guiding principles of the positivist and the interpretive paradigms. The chapter ends with a few reflections concerning currents trends in social research.

1. KUHN AND THE PARADIGMS OF SCIENCES

The notion of ‘paradigm’ has ancient origins in the history of philosophical thought. It was utilized both by Plato (to mean ‘model’) and by Aristotle (to mean ‘example’). In the social sciences its use has been inflated and confused by multiple and different meanings: these range from a synonym for theory to an internal subdivision of a theory, from a system of ideas of a pre-scientific nature to a school of thought, from an exemplary research procedure to the equivalent of method. It seems useful therefore briefly to review the meaning given to the concept of the paradigm by the scholar who, in the 1960s, brought it once again to the attention of philosophers and sociologists of science. We are referring to Thomas Kuhn and his celebrated essay The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962).

Reflecting on the historical development of the sciences, Kuhn refuted the traditional understanding of the sciences as a cumulative and linear progression of new acquisitions. According to the traditional conception, single inventions and discoveries would be added to the previous body of knowledge in the same manner as bricks are placed one on top of another in the construction of a building. According to Kuhn, however, while this is the process of science in ‘normal’ times, there are also ‘revolutionary’ moments, in which the continuity with the past is broken and a new construction is begun, just as – to take up the building metaphor again – from time to time, an old brick building is blown up to make room for a structurally different one, for example a skyscraper made of glass and aluminium.

Kuhn illustrates his argument with a rich collection of examples from the natural sciences (especially from physics). For instance, he cites the development of optical physics, which is currently interpreted in quantum terms; according to this view, light is made up of photons, which display some of the features of waves and some of the properties of particles. Kuhn points out that, before quantum theory was developed by Planck, Einstein and others, light was believed to be a transversal wave movement. This latter theory was developed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Still earlier, in the seventeenth century, the dominant view was that of Newtonian optics, according to which light was made up of material corpuscles.

The shift from one theoretical perspective to another is so pervasive and has such radical consequences for the discipline concerned that Kuhn does not hesitate to use the term ‘scientific revolution’. What changes in a given discipline after one of these revolutions? It produces ‘a shift in the problems available for scientific scrutiny and in the standards by which the profession determined what it should count as an admissible problem or as a legitimate problem-solution’ (1962: 6). A reorientation in the discipline occurs that consists of ‘a displacement of the conceptual network through which scientists view the world’ (1962: 102). This ‘conceptual network’ is what Kuhn calls a ‘paradigm’, and it is this aspect of his theorising, rather than his analysis of the developmental process in science, that interests us here.

Without a paradigm a science lacks orientations and criteria of choice: all problems, all methods, all techniques are equally legitimate. By contrast, the paradigm constitutes a guide: ‘Paradigms’ – recalls Kuhn – ‘provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture’ (1962: 109).

Kuhn defines normal science as those phases in a scientific discipline during which a given paradigm, amply agreed to by the scientific community, predominates. During this phase, as long as the operating paradigm is not replaced by another in a ‘revolutionary’ manner, a scientific discipline does indeed develop in that linear and cumulative way that has been attributed to the whole of scientific development. ‘No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sort of phenomena … Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies’ (Kuhn, 1962: 24).

Numerous examples of scientific paradigms are to be found in the history of the natural sciences. Going back to our previous example, we can speak of corpuscular, wave, and quantum paradigms in optical physics. Likewise, as examples of alternative paradigms that have succeeded one another in time, we can quote Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics, Ptolemaic and Copernican cosmology, and so on.

BOX 1.1 PARADIGM

What does Thomas Kuhn mean by ‘paradigm’? He means a theoretical perspective:

• accepted by the community of scientists of a given discipline
• founded on the previous acquisitions of that discipline
• that directs research through:
  • the specification and choice of what to study
  • the formulation of hypotheses to explain the phenomenon observed
  • the identification of the most suitable empirical research techniques.

To what extent can we speak of paradigms in the social sciences? Kuhn notes that the paradigm is a characteristic feature of the ‘mature’ sciences. Before the corpuscular theory of light was introduced by Newton, no common paradigm existed among scientists in this sector; instead, various schools and sub-schools opposed and competed with one another, each with its own theory and point of view. Consequently, concludes Kuhn, ‘The net result of their activity was something less than science’ (1962: 13). In this perspective, because the social sciences lack a single paradigm broadly shared by the scientific community, they are in a pre-paradigmatic state, except perhaps for economics (according to Kuhn, ‘economists agree on what economics is’, while ‘it remains an open question what parts of social science have yet acquired such paradigm at all’ (1962: 14).

What has been said with regard to the social sciences also holds for sociology. Indeed, it is difficult to identify a paradigm that has been agreed upon, even for limited periods, by the community of sociologists. Nevertheless, there exists another interpretation of the thinking of Kuhn, which has been proposed in an attempt to apply his categories to sociology. This interpretation redefines the concept of the paradigm, maintaining all the elements of the original definition (theoretical perspective that defines the relevance of social phenomena, puts forward interpretative hypotheses and orients the techniques of empirical research) except one: that the paradigm is agreed upon by the members of the scientific community. This paves the way for the presence of multiple paradigms inside a given discipline; thus, instead of being a pre-paradigmatic discipline, sociology becomes a multi-paradigmatic one. This is the interpretation of Friedrichs (1970) who, after highlighting the paradigm inspired by Parsons’ structural-functionalism, sees in the Marxist dialectic approach the second paradigm of sociology, in which the concepts of system and consensus that are central to functionalism are replaced by that of conflict.

This interpretation of the concept of the paradigm in terms of an overall theoretical perspective which does not exclude other perspectives but rather is in open competition with them, is certainly the most widespread interpretation and corresponds to the current use of the term in the social sciences. Nevertheless, this less rigorous interpretation, which adapts Kuhn’s original category to the status of the social sciences, must not be trivialized by equating a paradigm with a theory or a school of thought. Indeed, fundamental to the concept of the paradigm is its pre-theoretical and, in the final analysis, metaphysical character of a ‘guiding vision’, ‘a view of the world’, which shapes and organizes both theoretical reflection and empirical research and, as such, precedes both.

In this interpretation, the concept of the paradigm seems useful in analysing the various basic frames of reference that have been put forward, and which are still being evaluated in the field of social research methodology.

2. THREE BASIC QUESTIONS

Having defined and circumscribed the concept of a paradigm and briefly discussed its application to the social sciences, we will now abandon the slippery terrain of the paradigms of sociological theory (one paradigm? two paradigms? a hundred paradigms?) for more solid ground: the methodology of social research. We will not, however, go deeply into the complex epistemological problems of how many and which philosophical frameworks guide empirical research in the social sciences. Instead, we will confine ourselves to a historical review by briefly describing the fundamental perspectives that have been proposed and become accepted during the evolution of the discipline. Since this is a book on social research techniques, it seems natural and proper to begin by raising the question of the founding paradigms of social research, from which the first operative procedures emerged, and which subsequently guided the development of empirical research. Indeed, as has been said, one of the functions of a paradigm is to establish acceptable research methods and techniques in a discipline. As Hughes writes:

Every research tool or procedure is inextricably embedded in commitments to particular versions of the world and ways of knowing that world made by researchers using them. To use a questionnaire, an attitude scale of behavior, take the role of a participant observer, select a random sample … is to be involved in conceptions of the world which allow these instruments to be used for the purposes conceived. No technique or method of investigation … is self validating: its effectiveness, its very status as a research instrument … is dependent, ultimately, on philosophical justification. (Hughes, 1980: 13)

Within the philosophical perspectives that generated and have accompanied the growth of social research, can we identify visions that are sufficiently general, cohesive and operative to be characterized as paradigms? It seems so. Indeed, there is broad agreement among scholars that two general frames of reference have historically oriented social research since its inception: the ‘empiricist’ vision and the ‘humanist’ vision. Various labels have been used, including ‘objectivism’ and ‘subjectivism’; here, we will utilize the canonical term ‘positivism’ and the less consolidated ‘interpretivism’. As we will soon see, these are two organic and strongly opposed visions of social reality and how it should be understood; and they have generated two coherent and highly differentiated blocks of research techniques. Before describing these techniques, however, it is essential to explore their philosophical origins, since only by doing so can we achieve a full understanding of them.

In order to adequately compare the two above-mentioned paradigms, we will attempt to understand how they respond to the fundamental interrogatives facing social research (and scientific research in general). These can be traced back to three basic questions: Does (social) reality exist? Is it knowable? How can we acquire knowledge about it? In other words: Essence, Knowledge and Method.¹

The ontological question² This is the question of ‘what’. It regards the nature and form of social reality. It asks if the world of social phenomena is a real and objective world endowed with an autonomous existence outside the human mind and independent from the interpretation given to it by the subject. It asks, therefore, if social phenomena are ‘things in their own right’ or ‘representations of things’. The problem is linked to the more general philosophical question of the existence of things and of the external world. Indeed, the existence of an idea in the mind tells us nothing about the existence of the object in reality, just as a painting of a unicorn does not prove the existence of unicorns.

The epistemological question³ This is the question of the relationship between the ‘who’ and the ‘what’ (and the outcome of this relationship). It regards the knowability of social reality and, above all, focuses on the relationship between the observer and the reality observed. Clearly, the answer to this question depends on the answer to the previous ontological question. If the social world exists in its own right, independently from human action, the aspiration to reach it and understand it in a detached, objective way, without fear of altering it during the course of the cognitive process, will be legitimate. Closely connected with the answer given to the epistemological question are the forms knowledge can take: these range from deterministic ‘natural laws’ dominated by the categories of cause and effect, to less cogent (probabilistic) laws, to various kinds of generalizations (e.g. Weberian ideal types), to the exclusion of generalizations (only specific and contingent knowledge being admissible).

The methodological question⁴ This is the question of ‘how’ (how can social reality be studied?). It therefore regards the technical instruments of the cognitive process. Here, too, the answers depend closely on the answers to the previous questions. A vision of social reality as an external object that is not influenced by the cognitive research procedures of the scientist will accept manipulative techniques (e.g. experimentation, the control of variables, etc.) more readily than a perspective that underlines the existence of interactive processes between the scholar and the object studied.

The three questions are therefore interrelated, not only because the answers to each are greatly influenced by the answers to the other two, but also because it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the boundaries between them (though, for the purpose of our exposition, we will try to do so). Indeed, it is difficult to separate conceptions of the nature of social reality from reflections on whether (and how) it may be understood and, in turn, to separate these from the techniques that can be used to understand it. Then again, these interrelations are implicit in the very definition of the scientific paradigm which, as we have seen, is both a theoretical perspective and a guide to research procedures.

3. POSITIVISM

Table 1.1 shows a synopsis of the different paradigms with regard to the fundamental questions introduced above. First of all, it will be noted that two versions of positivism are presented: the original nineteenth-century version, to which even the most tenacious empiricists no longer subscribe, and its twentieth-century reformulation, which was constructed to address the manifest limits of the original version. The original positivist paradigm is presented both for historical reasons – since it was the vision that accompanied the birth of the social sciences and, in particular, the birth of sociology – and because the character of the other two paradigms can be better understood by examining the criticisms levelled against it.

Sociology was born under the auspices of positivist thought. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when the investigation of social phenomena was evolving into a subject of scientific study, the paradigm of the natural sciences reigned supreme. Inevitably, the new discipline took this paradigm as its model. Indeed, the founders of the discipline, Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer among them, shared a naïve faith in the methods of natural science. The positivist paradigm is no more than this: the study of social reality utilizing the conceptual framework, the techniques of observation and measurement, the instruments of mathematical analysis, and the procedures of inference of the natural sciences.

Let us look more closely at the distinctive elements of this definition. The conceptual framework: the categories of ‘natural law’, cause and effect, empirical verification, explanation, etc. The techniques of observation and measurement: the use of quantitative variables, ev...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART ONE: THE LOGIC OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
• PART TWO: QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUES
• PART THREE: QUALITATIVE TECHNIQUES
• References
• Index