Researching Social Life II

1
Researching Social Life II

• Week 3
• What is social research?

2
What is social research?

• Broadly finding things out about people
• How they behave
• E.g. Commit crime, make friends, recycle rubbish,
  die young, become ill...
• What they believe
• Is tax evasion wrong? Is climate change is caused
  by humans?
• What they feel
• Anger, happiness, boredom, excitement, fear
• What they know
• About science, about politics, about their
  neighbours...
• What they like or dislike
• Drinking alcohol, liberty, equality, the free
  market

3
Individual in society

• Social research (and especially sociological
  research) also means investigating relationship
  between individuals and groups
• How does job status relate to attitudes towards
  politics?
• Why do crime rates vary in different types of
  area?
• How is poverty related to education?
• Individuals are always in a social context of
  some kind. Social research must take account of
  this
• Compared to e.g. Psychology Cognitive
  neuroscience, brain imaging, visual perception

4
Social research or journalism?

• Is talking to friends about their life social
  research?
• Is journalism social research?
• Probably not. But why? What distinguishes these
  activities from social research?
• Social SCIENCE. Scientific method...
• What distinguishes social science from e.g.
  journalism?

5
Use of theory

• see Ch 1 in King, Keohane Verba 1994
• Science uses theory
• Theories explain observed regularities or
  patterns
• E.g. Racial prejudice is more prevalent in
  working class families. A theory could tell us
  why. Scientific theories also must be capable of
  being proved wrong.
• As journalists we might be content only to
  describe some vivid examples

6
Public accountability

• Science is public
• Methods, procedures and data must be open so they
  can be evaluated (peer-review)
• It should in principle be possible for someone
  else to reproduce the findings with the same data
  (not always possible in field settings)
• Journalists do not have to reveal their sources
  (most of the time). No value placed on repeating
  the same story

7
Inference

• In science, the goal is inference.
• In describing phenomena or investigating causes,
  we always want to make inferences that go beyond
  what we directly observe
• E.g we want to be able to say something about
  racial prejudice in general in Britain or in
  Colchester, now, or in the 1960s, etc, and not
  just in the families we have actually observed
• A news story does not need to go beyond its
  particular cast of characters to be interesting

8
Estimating uncertainty

• Inference implies uncertainty about conclusions
• Scientific methods require an estimate of how
  sure we should be of our conclusions
• We may conclude that a reason for racial
  prejudice is perceived competition for jobs in
  poor areas. How certain are we that we are right?
  We need research methods that will help us make
  an informed guess
• News stories need not infer and therefore need
  not guess. (although the best probably do)

9
What kinds of theory?

• What type of theory?
• explanation of observed regularities.
• Merton (1967)
• grand theories vs piecemeal empiricism
• highly abstract not very useful for empirical
  research but may provide ways of thinking about
  things
• e.g. Social representations (Moscovici)
• Historical materialism (Marx)
• Functionalism (Parsons)

10
Middle range theories

• More useful for empirical research a limited
  domain and some testable propositions
• E.g. reference group behaviour (Stouffer)
• Relative risk aversion (Goldthorpe 1997)

11
Theories used in two ways deductive and inductive

• Deductivism
• theory --gt data
• explicit hypothesis to be corroborated or
  rejected
• More common in quantitative research
• Inductivism
• data --gt theory
• generalizable inferences from observations
• Common in both quantitative and qualitative
  research
• In practice, both approaches are often combined
  within a single study

12
Deduction and Induction
13
Epistemological considerations

• Epistemology
• Study of the nature of knowledge
• what is (or should be) considered acceptable
  knowledge?
• (justified true belief?)
• can the social world be studied scientifically?
• is it appropriate to apply the methods of the
  natural sciences to social science research?
• Positivist, realist and interpretivist
  epistemologies in sociology

14
Flavours of epistemology

• Much discussion and debate in sociology (although
  more properly the domain of philosophy)
• Some of it of limited relevance in the practical
  conduct of research
• isms abound!

15
Interpretivism

• subject matter of the social sciences means that
  natural science methods not appropriate
• hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition
• Hermeneutics theory and method of textual
  interpretation
• Phenomenology how the world appears to the
  perceiver
• verstehen interpretative understanding of social
  action (Weber 1947)
• Interpretivism seeks to understand meaning of
  social action for actors themselves
• Less an epistemology and more a guide to what is
  important to research?

16
Positivism

• application of natural science methods to
  social science research
• objective, value-free research methods
• theory testing and theory building through
  observation
• distinction between scientific and normative
  statements
• Term positivism originated with 1930s logical
  positivism but does not bear much relation
• Generally used to denote natural science methods
  for social science

17
Realism

• Often not really distinguishable from positivism
  
• natural science methods appropriate
• But a difference assumes the existence of real
  but unobserved or unobservable mechanisms,
  phenomena
• another variant Critical realism (Bhaskar)
• theoretical terms mediate our knowledge of
  reality
• critical in that uncovering hidden mechanisms
  opens the possibility for social change

18
Summary

• Social/sociological/social scientific research is
  not the same as other kinds of enquiry (e.g.
  journalism, history, literary criticism)
• It is distinguishable insofar as it is
  scientific
• BUT there is great debate over what counts as
  scientific, whether this is an appropriate model
  and whether it is even possible for social
  research at all.
• You will hear lots more about this over the next
  three years!
• Please read Bryman and the King Keohane and Verba
  chapters carefully