Key Concepts in Social Research

Geoff Payne, Judy Payne

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780761965435, 9780761965428
• eBook ISBN: 9781446233894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

`This clearly written and user-friendly book is ideal for students or researchers who wish to get a basic, but solid grasp of a topic and see how it fits with other topics. By following the links a student can easily and efficiently build up a clear conceptual map of social research? - Malcolm Williams, Reader in Sociology, Cardiff University

`This is a really useful book, written in an accessible manner for students beginning their study of social research methods. It is helpful both as an introductory text and as a reference guide for more advanced students. Most of the key topics in methods and methodology are covered and it will be suitable as a recommended text on a wide variety of courses? - Clive Seale, Brunel University

At last, an authoritative, crystal-clear introduction to research methods which really takes account of the needs of students for accessible, focused information to help with undergraduate essays and exams. The key concepts discussed here are based on a review of teaching syllabi and the authors? experience of many years of teaching. Topics range over qualitative and quantitative approaches and combine practical considerations with philosophical issues. They include several new topics, like internet and phone polling, internet searches, and visual methods. Each section is free-standing, can be tackled in order, but with links to other sections to enable students to cross-reference and build up a wider understanding of central research methods.

To facilitate comprehension and aid study, each section begins with a definition. It is followed by a summary of key points with key words and guides to further reading and up-to-date examples.

The book is a major addition to undergraduate reading lists. It is reliable, allows for easy transference to essays and exams and easy to use, and exceptionally clearly written for student consumption. The book answers the needs of all those who find research methods daunting, and for those who have dreamt of an ideal introduction to the subject.

Quantitative Methods

Quantitative methods (normally using deductive logic) seek regularities in human lives, by separating the social world into empirical components called variables which can be represented numerically as frequencies or rate, whose associations with each other can be explored by statistical techniques, and accessed through researcher-introduced stimuli and systematic measurement.

Section Outline: Two traditions? Core issues: regularities; variables; numerical values; statistical association; measurement stimuli; controlled measurement; external world. Large samples and deductive logic. ‘Scientific knowledge’. Techniques, philosophy and temperaments. Fashions in methods. Methodological pluralism. Overlap of quantitative and qualitative methods.

It is conventional to divide social research methods into two types: ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’. This makes it easier to identify differences between approaches to research, in the form of a rough ‘shorthand’ way of talking about things. It provides a loose framework for linking specific examples (see below). We will therefore use the distinction as a convenient way of exploring basic styles of research, although quantitative and qualitative methods sometimes overlap (e.g. Finch’s use of sources in discussing family obligations (1989)).

The quickest way to gain a sense of quantitative methods is through examples. In this book for instance, there are sections on Contingency Tables, Hypotheses, Official Statistics, Questionnaires, Sampling and Survey Methods. This is not an exclusive list: other references can be found in more general sections, such as Fieldwork, Levels of Measurement, or Methods and Methodologies (although not all of these are listed in the ‘link list’ at the end of this section).

‘Quantitative methods’ is an umbrella term covering different types of research (Bryman 1988). In its simpler form, it consists of the counting of how frequently things happen (e.g. educational qualification levels among school leavers; attendance at doctors’ surgeries; rates of divorce; proportion of national population living below the ‘poverty line’ (e.g. Dorling 1995; Kumar 1999: 226–40; Iganski and Payne 1999), and the presentation of these frequencies as summaries in tables and graphs (Frankfort-Nachmias and Leon-Guerrero 2000: 72–108). This can be extended by looking at how two or more factors seem to be connected, i.e. have associations (Rose and Sullivan 1993: 3–31) or to multivariate statistical techniques and mathematical models of social patterns (Sapsford 1999: 169–98; Schutt 1999).

Almost all forms of quantitative research share certain features.:

• The core concern is to describe and account for regularities in social behaviour, rather than seeking out and interpreting the meanings that people bring to their own actions.
• Patterns of behaviour can be separated out into variables, and represented by numbers (rather than treating actions as part of a holistic social process and context).
• Explanations are expressed as associations (usually statistical) between variables, ideally in a form that enables prediction of outcomes from known regularities.
• They explore social phenomena not just as they naturally occur, but by introducing stimuli like survey questions, collecting data by systematic, repeated and controlled measurements.
• They are based on the assumption that social processes exist outside of individual actors’ comprehension, constraining individual actions, and accessible to researchers by virtue of their prior theoretical and empirical knowledge.

They often test theoretical hypotheses (i.e. using deductive not inductive logic), seeking regularities or ‘laws’ of social behaviour, but this approach is less common than often assumed by critics. Thus quantitative sociology focuses on those aspects of social behaviour that are most patterned and can best be quantified, rather than on highly fluid situations. The detail of social interaction and the meanings which individuals bring to the interaction are seen as lower-level and less important levels of explanation. This approach lays greater stress on prior social order or social structures external to the actors as contributing to the shaping of outcomes.

Most quantitative research therefore operates with less detail than qualitative methods, but with a wider scope and more generalised level of explanation. It utilises representative samples (Sampling: Types) to control for variations between people. Sometimes this is based on pragmatic decisions. For the basic frequencies about how many people experience certain conditions that feed into government policy (age groups, occupations, educational skills), we need accurate counts rather than highly sophisticated and detailed studies. It is much easier to use quantitative methods to identify national rates of, say, health or social inequality, or how such conditions relate to other social processes over say 40 years (Longitudinal Studies: Marmot and Wilkinson 1999; Payne and Roberts 2002) than to depend on and wait around for the face-to-face personal methods of qualitative research. Without a critical appreciation of numbers, the sociologist must struggle to engage with the forces of commerce, politics and other numerical disciplines that drive public life (Dorling and Simpson 1999; Payne 2003).

However, quantitative method is not just about pragmatics. It would be wrong to over-emphasise the idea that quantitative methods involve a concern just with ‘social facts’. Much of the tradition is exploratory and through the use of Attitude Scales interested in ‘meanings’. In its more positivistic formats (Positivism and Realism), researchers are usually seeking to test prior theoretical ideas (i.e. using deductive, not inductive, logic), and to produce results that can be expressed as ‘laws’ of social behaviour that are generally applicable.

This claim to scientific knowledge and expertise is one of the key features of quantitative social research. Its techniques are claimed to liberate researchers from personal bias and values, allowing the results to approximate to a distinctive ‘truth’. The visibility of much of the technical process (sampling designs, questionnaires, code-books), and the potential this gives for subsequent replication of studies by other researchers, is used to substantiate a case that quantitative methods provide the basis for a social science. The objective knowledge of the quantitative sociologist is different from ordinary, everyday personal experience or beliefs. Research findings are both reliable and valid (Reliability; Validity). They are of a different nature than the interpretive observations of small-scale interactions that typify the work of the qualitative social researcher.

Most sociologists would argue that the methods they use follow logically from prior intellectual understandings of the world. These philosophical standpoints about what counts as ‘social’, and how it can be accessed, are rigorously developed. Research practice depends on preexisting conceptual frameworks (Bryman 2001: 214–26) that have been carefully elaborated and that can be logically defended (this of course also applies to qualitative sociology). In some cases that draw heavily on the philosophy of logical positivism (Positivism and Realism), quantitative methods are logically the only way to engage with the social world. However, claims for such consistency are more often implicit: there is a big difference between a tendency for philosophical stance and method to hang together, and for it actually to happen consistently.

We can identify three elements here. One is research technique per se (Social Surveys, Questionnaires, etc.). The second is the underlying intellectual understandings from which sociologists start. Other examples can be found in the sections on Positivism and Experiments. Third, debates over quantitative and qualitative methods reflect basic assumptions about free will and determinism: quantitative methods suiting those who tend to see human life as constrained and determined by external factors, and qualitative methods fitting more comfortably with those who stress the freedom of the individual to choose.

It is therefore unsurprising that many sociological accounts vehemently dismiss alternative approaches. Academics trained to think consistently are naturally critical of views that they reject. For instance, qualitative sociologists have criticised quantitative methods as being superficial and failing to appreciate the complexity of social existence (Ethnography), falsely claiming to be value neutral, and treating the people being researched as mere objects (Feminist Research). However, such attacks also reflect the history of academic institutions, briefly illustrated in Qualitative Methods.

A glance at current sociological journals will show that American sociology is largely quantitative in style, and has been for many decades. In Britain, quantification was never so well established, and is currently the minority method of choice (Payne et al. in press). This has not prevented a great deal of conflict over research methods, leading some commentators to call for ‘methodological pluralism’, a plea for tolerance. This did not demand that every sociologist must practise all kind...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• User’s Guide
• Key Concepts
• Action Research
• Association and Causation
• Attitude Scales
• Auto/biography and Life Histories
• Bias
• Case Study
• Coding Qualitative Data
• Community Profiles
• Community Studies
• Content Analysis
• Contingency Tables
• Documentary Methods
• Ethical Practice
• Ethnography
• Ethnomethodology and Conversational Analysis
• Evaluation Studies
• Experiments
• Feminist Research
• Fieldwork
• Grounded Theory
• Group Discussions/Focus Groups
• Hawthorne Effect
• Hypothesis
• Indicators and Operationalisations
• Internet and Other Searches
• Internet Polling
• Interviewing
• Key Informants
• Levels of Measurement
• Longitudinal and Cross-sectional Studies
• Methods and Methodologies
• Objectivity
• Observation
• Official Statistics
• Participant Observation
• Positivism and Realism
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Questionnaires
• Reflexivity
• Reliability
• Sampling: Estimates and Size
• Sampling: Questions of Size
• Sampling: Types
• Secondary Analysis
• Social Surveys
• Telephone and Computer-assisted Polling
• Unobtrusive Methods and Triangulation
• Validity
• Visual Methods