types of research methodology in sociology

2.2 Research Methods

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Recall the 6 Steps of the Scientific Method
• Differentiate between four kinds of research methods: surveys, field research, experiments, and secondary data analysis.
• Explain the appropriateness of specific research approaches for specific topics.

Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. Sociologists generally choose from widely used methods of social investigation: primary source data collection such as survey, participant observation, ethnography, case study, unobtrusive observations, experiment, and secondary data analysis , or use of existing sources. Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use. When you are conducting research think about the best way to gather or obtain knowledge about your topic, think of yourself as an architect. An architect needs a blueprint to build a house, as a sociologist your blueprint is your research design including your data collection method.

When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher wouldn’t stroll into a crime-ridden neighborhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?”

Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviors, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers can’t just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviors or attract attention. In situations like these, other methods are needed. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topics, protect research participants or subjects, and that fit with their overall approaches to research.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire or an interview. The survey is one of the most widely used scientific research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point, most people in the United States respond to some type of survey. The 2020 U.S. Census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Since 1790, United States has conducted a survey consisting of six questions to received demographical data pertaining to residents. The questions pertain to the demographics of the residents who live in the United States. Currently, the Census is received by residents in the United Stated and five territories and consists of 12 questions.

Not all surveys are considered sociological research, however, and many surveys people commonly encounter focus on identifying marketing needs and strategies rather than testing a hypothesis or contributing to social science knowledge. Questions such as, “How many hot dogs do you eat in a month?” or “Were the staff helpful?” are not usually designed as scientific research. The Nielsen Ratings determine the popularity of television programming through scientific market research. However, polls conducted by television programs such as American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance cannot be generalized, because they are administered to an unrepresentative population, a specific show’s audience. You might receive polls through your cell phones or emails, from grocery stores, restaurants, and retail stores. They often provide you incentives for completing the survey.

Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel, think, and act—or at least how they say they feel, think, and act. Surveys can track preferences for presidential candidates or reported individual behaviors (such as sleeping, driving, or texting habits) or information such as employment status, income, and education levels.

A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as college athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes. Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample , a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. As a result, a Gallup Poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 2,000 or 10,000 people.

After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask questions and record responses. It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the survey up front. If they agree to participate, researchers thank subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researcher presents the subjects with an instrument, which is a means of gathering the information.

A common instrument is a questionnaire. Subjects often answer a series of closed-ended questions . The researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question. This kind of questionnaire collects quantitative data —data in numerical form that can be counted and statistically analyzed. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” responses or correct answers, and chart them into percentages.

Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers—beyond “yes,” “no,” or checkbox options. These types of inquiries use open-ended questions that require short essay responses. Participants willing to take the time to write those answers might convey personal religious beliefs, political views, goals, or morals. The answers are subjective and vary from person to person. How do you plan to use your college education?

Some topics that investigate internal thought processes are impossible to observe directly and are difficult to discuss honestly in a public forum. People are more likely to share honest answers if they can respond to questions anonymously. This type of personal explanation is qualitative data —conveyed through words. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising. The benefit of written opinions, though, is the wealth of in-depth material that they provide.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and it is a way of conducting surveys on a topic. However, participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly.

Questions such as “How does society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. The researcher will also benefit from gaining a subject’s trust, from empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and from listening without judgment.

Surveys often collect both quantitative and qualitative data. For example, a researcher interviewing people who are incarcerated might receive quantitative data, such as demographics – race, age, sex, that can be analyzed statistically. For example, the researcher might discover that 20 percent of incarcerated people are above the age of 50. The researcher might also collect qualitative data, such as why people take advantage of educational opportunities during their sentence and other explanatory information.

The survey can be carried out online, over the phone, by mail, or face-to-face. When researchers collect data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting, they are conducting field research, which is our next topic.

Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined spaces. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In field work, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element.

The researcher interacts with or observes people and gathers data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it’s a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or the DMV, a hospital, airport, mall, or beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting , the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviors in that setting. Field work is optimal for observing how people think and behave. It seeks to understand why they behave that way. However, researchers may struggle to narrow down cause and effect when there are so many variables floating around in a natural environment. And while field research looks for correlation, its small sample size does not allow for establishing a causal relationship between two variables. Indeed, much of the data gathered in sociology do not identify a cause and effect but a correlation .

Sociology in the Real World

Beyoncé and lady gaga as sociological subjects.

Sociologists have studied Lady Gaga and Beyoncé and their impact on music, movies, social media, fan participation, and social equality. In their studies, researchers have used several research methods including secondary analysis, participant observation, and surveys from concert participants.

In their study, Click, Lee & Holiday (2013) interviewed 45 Lady Gaga fans who utilized social media to communicate with the artist. These fans viewed Lady Gaga as a mirror of themselves and a source of inspiration. Like her, they embrace not being a part of mainstream culture. Many of Lady Gaga’s fans are members of the LGBTQ community. They see the “song “Born This Way” as a rallying cry and answer her calls for “Paws Up” with a physical expression of solidarity—outstretched arms and fingers bent and curled to resemble monster claws.”

Sascha Buchanan (2019) made use of participant observation to study the relationship between two fan groups, that of Beyoncé and that of Rihanna. She observed award shows sponsored by iHeartRadio, MTV EMA, and BET that pit one group against another as they competed for Best Fan Army, Biggest Fans, and FANdemonium. Buchanan argues that the media thus sustains a myth of rivalry between the two most commercially successful Black women vocal artists.

Participant Observation

In 2000, a comic writer named Rodney Rothman wanted an insider’s view of white-collar work. He slipped into the sterile, high-rise offices of a New York “dot com” agency. Every day for two weeks, he pretended to work there. His main purpose was simply to see whether anyone would notice him or challenge his presence. No one did. The receptionist greeted him. The employees smiled and said good morning. Rothman was accepted as part of the team. He even went so far as to claim a desk, inform the receptionist of his whereabouts, and attend a meeting. He published an article about his experience in The New Yorker called “My Fake Job” (2000). Later, he was discredited for allegedly fabricating some details of the story and The New Yorker issued an apology. However, Rothman’s entertaining article still offered fascinating descriptions of the inside workings of a “dot com” company and exemplified the lengths to which a writer, or a sociologist, will go to uncover material.

Rothman had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers experience a specific aspect of social life. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behavior. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, experience homelessness for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers might have a question: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” or “What is it like to be homeless?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside.

Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in analyzing data and generating results.

In a study of small towns in the United States conducted by sociological researchers John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, the team altered their purpose as they gathered data. They initially planned to focus their study on the role of religion in U.S. towns. As they gathered observations, they realized that the effect of industrialization and urbanization was the more relevant topic of this social group. The Lynds did not change their methods, but they revised the purpose of their study.

This shaped the structure of Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture , their published results (Lynd & Lynd, 1929).

The Lynds were upfront about their mission. The townspeople of Muncie, Indiana, knew why the researchers were in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviors of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behavior. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job.

Once inside a group, some researchers spend months or even years pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book and describe what he or she witnessed and experienced.

This type of research is what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted for her book Nickel and Dimed . One day over lunch with her editor, Ehrenreich mentioned an idea. How can people exist on minimum-wage work? How do low-income workers get by? she wondered. Someone should do a study . To her surprise, her editor responded, Why don’t you do it?

That’s how Ehrenreich found herself joining the ranks of the working class. For several months, she left her comfortable home and lived and worked among people who lacked, for the most part, higher education and marketable job skills. Undercover, she applied for and worked minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a retail chain employee. During her participant observation, she used only her income from those jobs to pay for food, clothing, transportation, and shelter.

She discovered the obvious, that it’s almost impossible to get by on minimum wage work. She also experienced and observed attitudes many middle and upper-class people never think about. She witnessed firsthand the treatment of working class employees. She saw the extreme measures people take to make ends meet and to survive. She described fellow employees who held two or three jobs, worked seven days a week, lived in cars, could not pay to treat chronic health conditions, got randomly fired, submitted to drug tests, and moved in and out of homeless shelters. She brought aspects of that life to light, describing difficult working conditions and the poor treatment that low-wage workers suffer.

The book she wrote upon her return to her real life as a well-paid writer, has been widely read and used in many college classrooms.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the immersion of the researcher in the natural setting of an entire social community to observe and experience their everyday life and culture. The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a social group.

An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small U.S. fishing town, an Inuit community, a village in Thailand, a Buddhist monastery, a private boarding school, or an amusement park. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain ways and respect certain cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible.

A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might watch the way villagers go about their daily lives and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat center, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record data, and collate the material into results.

Institutional Ethnography

Institutional ethnography is an extension of basic ethnographic research principles that focuses intentionally on everyday concrete social relationships. Developed by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith (1990), institutional ethnography is often considered a feminist-inspired approach to social analysis and primarily considers women’s experiences within male- dominated societies and power structures. Smith’s work is seen to challenge sociology’s exclusion of women, both academically and in the study of women’s lives (Fenstermaker, n.d.).

Historically, social science research tended to objectify women and ignore their experiences except as viewed from the male perspective. Modern feminists note that describing women, and other marginalized groups, as subordinates helps those in authority maintain their own dominant positions (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada n.d.). Smith’s three major works explored what she called “the conceptual practices of power” and are still considered seminal works in feminist theory and ethnography (Fensternmaker n.d.).

Sociological Research

The making of middletown: a study in modern u.s. culture.

In 1924, a young married couple named Robert and Helen Lynd undertook an unprecedented ethnography: to apply sociological methods to the study of one U.S. city in order to discover what “ordinary” people in the United States did and believed. Choosing Muncie, Indiana (population about 30,000) as their subject, they moved to the small town and lived there for eighteen months.

Ethnographers had been examining other cultures for decades—groups considered minorities or outsiders—like gangs, immigrants, and the poor. But no one had studied the so-called average American.

Recording interviews and using surveys to gather data, the Lynds objectively described what they observed. Researching existing sources, they compared Muncie in 1890 to the Muncie they observed in 1924. Most Muncie adults, they found, had grown up on farms but now lived in homes inside the city. As a result, the Lynds focused their study on the impact of industrialization and urbanization.

They observed that Muncie was divided into business and working class groups. They defined business class as dealing with abstract concepts and symbols, while working class people used tools to create concrete objects. The two classes led different lives with different goals and hopes. However, the Lynds observed, mass production offered both classes the same amenities. Like wealthy families, the working class was now able to own radios, cars, washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators. This was an emerging material reality of the 1920s.

As the Lynds worked, they divided their manuscript into six chapters: Getting a Living, Making a Home, Training the Young, Using Leisure, Engaging in Religious Practices, and Engaging in Community Activities.

When the study was completed, the Lynds encountered a big problem. The Rockefeller Foundation, which had commissioned the book, claimed it was useless and refused to publish it. The Lynds asked if they could seek a publisher themselves.

Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture was not only published in 1929 but also became an instant bestseller, a status unheard of for a sociological study. The book sold out six printings in its first year of publication, and has never gone out of print (Caplow, Hicks, & Wattenberg. 2000).

Nothing like it had ever been done before. Middletown was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times. Readers in the 1920s and 1930s identified with the citizens of Muncie, Indiana, but they were equally fascinated by the sociological methods and the use of scientific data to define ordinary people in the United States. The book was proof that social data was important—and interesting—to the U.S. public.

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records, conducts interviews, engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.

Researchers might use this method to study a single case of a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim. However, a major criticism of the case study as a method is that while offering depth on a topic, it does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person, since one person does not verify a pattern. This is why most sociologists do not use case studies as a primary research method.

However, case studies are useful when the single case is unique. In these instances, a single case study can contribute tremendous insight. For example, a feral child, also called “wild child,” is one who grows up isolated from human beings. Feral children grow up without social contact and language, which are elements crucial to a “civilized” child’s development. These children mimic the behaviors and movements of animals, and often invent their own language. There are only about one hundred cases of “feral children” in the world.

As you may imagine, a feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers. Feral children provide unique information about child development because they have grown up outside of the parameters of “normal” growth and nurturing. And since there are very few feral children, the case study is the most appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the subject.

At age three, a Ukranian girl named Oxana Malaya suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with dogs, and she ate raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a neighbor called authorities and reported seeing a girl who ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into society, where she was cared for and taught some human behaviors, but she never became fully socialized. She has been designated as unable to support herself and now lives in a mental institution (Grice 2011). Case studies like this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not be obtained by any other method.

Experiments

You have probably tested some of your own personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When you test the theory, your results either prove or disprove your hypothesis.

One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they investigate relationships to test a hypothesis—a scientific approach.

There are two main types of experiments: lab-based experiments and natural or field experiments. In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that more data can be recorded in a limited amount of time. In a natural or field- based experiment, the time it takes to gather the data cannot be controlled but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher.

As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens (cause), then another particular thing will result (effect). To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables.

Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group. The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might provide tutoring to the experimental group of students but not to the control group. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record of a student, for example.

And if a researcher told the students they would be observed as part of a study on measuring the effectiveness of tutoring, the students might not behave naturally. This is called the Hawthorne effect —which occurs when people change their behavior because they know they are being watched as part of a study. The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research studies because sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld 1985).

A real-life example will help illustrate the process. In 1971, Frances Heussenstamm, a sociology professor at California State University at Los Angeles, had a theory about police prejudice. To test her theory, she conducted research. She chose fifteen students from three ethnic backgrounds: Black, White, and Hispanic. She chose students who routinely drove to and from campus along Los Angeles freeway routes, and who had had perfect driving records for longer than a year.

Next, she placed a Black Panther bumper sticker on each car. That sticker, a representation of a social value, was the independent variable. In the 1970s, the Black Panthers were a revolutionary group actively fighting racism. Heussenstamm asked the students to follow their normal driving patterns. She wanted to see whether seeming support for the Black Panthers would change how these good drivers were treated by the police patrolling the highways. The dependent variable would be the number of traffic stops/citations.

The first arrest, for an incorrect lane change, was made two hours after the experiment began. One participant was pulled over three times in three days. He quit the study. After seventeen days, the fifteen drivers had collected a total of thirty-three traffic citations. The research was halted. The funding to pay traffic fines had run out, and so had the enthusiasm of the participants (Heussenstamm, 1971).

Secondary Data Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data analysis . Secondary data does not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are the already completed work of other researchers or data collected by an agency or organization. Sociologists might study works written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, or magazines, or organizational data from any period in history.

Using available information not only saves time and money but can also add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behavior and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the Internet, or social media.

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the World Health Organization (WHO), publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic like the foreclosure rate might be useful for studying the effects of a recession. A racial demographic profile might be compared with data on education funding to examine the resources accessible by different groups.

One of the advantages of secondary data like old movies or WHO statistics is that it is nonreactive research (or unobtrusive research), meaning that it does not involve direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviors. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher will need to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. To guide the search through a vast library of materials and avoid wasting time reading unrelated sources, sociologists employ content analysis , applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as they relate to the study at hand.

Also, in some cases, there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy to count how many drunk drivers, for example, are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it’s possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their GED later.

Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not survey the topic from the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the average salaries paid to professors at a public school is public record. But these figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they’ve been teaching.

When conducting content analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, when Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research in the 1920s, attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal insights about small U.S. communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s attitudes and values.

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Chapter 2. Sociological Research

2.2. Research Methods

Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study — perhaps a positivist, quantitative method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know that they are being observed. A researcher would not stroll into a crime-ridden neighbourhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally. The unique nature of human research subjects is that they can react to the researcher and change their behaviour under observation.

Making Connections: Sociological Research

The hawthorne effect.

In the 1920s, leaders of a Chicago factory, called Hawthorne Works, commissioned a study to determine whether or not changing certain aspects of working conditions could increase or decrease worker productivity. Sociologists were interested in the increased productivity of a test group when the lighting of their workspace was improved. They were surprised however when productivity improved if the lighting of the workspace was dimmed, as well. In fact almost every change of independent variable — lighting, work breaks, work hours — resulted in an improvement of productivity. But when the study was over, productivity dropped again.

Why did this happen? In 1953, Henry A. Landsberger analyzed the study results to answer this question. He realized that employees’ productivity increased because sociologists were paying attention to them. The sociologists’ presence influenced the study results. Worker behaviours were altered not by the lighting but by the study itself. From this, sociologists learned the importance of carefully planning their roles as part of their research design (Franke & Kaul, 1978). Landsberger called the workers’ response the Hawthorne effect  — people change their behaviour when they know they are being watched as part of a study.

The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known for ethical reasons. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld, 1985). Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviours, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers cannot just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Ku Klux Klan conclaves and unobtrusively observe behaviours. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the studies’ outcomes. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topic and that fit with their overall goal for the research.

In planning a study’s design, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, experiment, field research, and textual or secondary data analysis (or use of existing sources). Every research method comes with pluses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a written questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used sociological research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point or another, everyone responds to some type of survey. The Statistics Canada census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Customers also fill out questionnaires on-line and at stores or promotional events, responding to questions such as “How did you hear about the event?” and “Were the staff helpful?” Many people have probably picked up the phone and heard a caller ask them to participate in a political poll or similar type of survey: “Do you eat hot dogs? If yes, how many per month?” Not all surveys would be considered sociological research. Marketing polls help companies refine their marketing goals and strategies; they are generally not conducted as part of a scientific study, meaning they are not designed to test a hypothesis or to contribute knowledge to the field of sociology. The results are not published in a refereed scholarly journal where design, methodology, results, and analyses are vetted.

Often, polls on TV do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or Canadian Idol represent the opinions of fans, but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM) (now called Numeris) ratings, which determine the popularity of radio and television programming in Canada through scientific market research. Their researchers ask a large random sample of Canadians, age 12 and over, to fill out a television or radio diary for one week, noting the times and the broadcasters they listened to or viewed. Based on this methodology they are able to generate an accurate account of media consumers preferences, which are used to provide broadcast ratings for radio and television stations and define the characteristics of their core audiences.

Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think — or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track attitudes and opinions, political preferences, individual behaviours (e.g., sleeping, driving, dietary, or texting habits), or factual social background information (e.g., employment status, income, and education levels). A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as Canadian citizens, university athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes.

Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample : That is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples can be used to represent the population as a whole. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the results will be in characterizing the population being studied. For practical purposes, however, a sample size of 1,500 people will give acceptably accurate results even if the population being researched was the entire adult population of Canada. For instance, an Ipsos Reid poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 1,500 or 10,000 people.

Typically surveys will include a figure that gives the margin of error of the survey results. This is a measure of reliability. Based on probabilities, this will give a range of values within which the true value of the population characteristic will be. This figure also depends on the size of a sample. For example, a political poll based on a sample of 1,500 respondents might state that if an election were called tomorrow the Conservative Party would get 30% of the vote plus or minus 2.5% based on a confidence interval of 95%. That is, there is a 5% chance that the true vote would fall outside of the range of 27.5% to 32.5%, or 1 time out of 20 if pollsters were to conduct the poll 20 times. If the poll was based on a sample of 1,000 respondents, the margin of error would be higher, plus or minus 3.1%. This is significant, of course, because if the Conservatives are polling at 30% and the Liberals are polling at 28% the poll would be inconclusive about which party is actually ahead with regard to actual voter preferences.

Problems with accuracy or reliability can result if sample sizes are too small because there is a stronger chance the sample size will not capture the actual distribution of characteristics of the whole population. In small samples the characteristics of specific individuals have a greater chance of influencing the results. The reliability of surveys can also be threatened when part of the population is inadvertently excluded from the sample (e.g., telephone surveys that rely on land lines exclude people that use only cell phones) or when there is a low response rate. There is also a question of what exactly is being measured by the survey. This is a question of validity . Does asking whether a voter would choose the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, or Greens if an election was held today accurately measure their actual voting behaviour on election day? In the BC election of 2013, polls found that the NDP had the largest popular support but on election day many people who said they would vote NDP did not actually vote, which resulted in a Liberal majority government.

After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask a list of standardized questions and record responses. It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study upfront. If they agree to participate, researchers thank the subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researchers present the subjects with an instrument or means of gathering the information. A common instrument is a structured written questionnaire in which subjects answer a series of set questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question.

This kind of quantitative data  — research collected in numerical form that can be counted — is easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” answers or tabulate the scales of “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” etc. responses, and chart them into percentages. This is also the chief drawback of questionnaires, however: their artificiality. The artificial nature of the questions affects their validity. In real life, there are rarely any unambiguously yes or no answers. Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers beyond yes, no, agree, strongly agree, or another option next to a check box. For example, How do you plan to use your university education? Why do you follow Justin Bieber on Twitter? In those cases, the answers are more nuanced, varying from person to person. Those types of survey questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to provide those answers will convey personal information about their beliefs, views, and attitudes that will need to be interpreted and coded by the researcher.

Some topics that reflect internal subjective perspectives are impossible to quantify simply. Sometimes they can be sensitive and difficult to discuss with a researcher straightforwardly. Sometimes they are nuanced and ambiguous. People might not know how to answer a question on a topic, but the way in which they formulate their response can be illuminating to sociologists. This type of information is qualitative data  — results that are subjective and often based on what is experienced in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising and unpredictable in advance. Nevertheless, the responses are a richer source of primary data on a topic.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and is another way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. They can be quantitative if the questions are standardized and have numerically quantifiable answers: Are you employed? (Yes=0, No=1); On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you describe your level of optimism? They can also be qualitative if participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly. Questions such as “How did society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. Obviously, a sociological interview is also not supposed to be an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust by empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and by listening without judgement.

2. Experiments

People often test personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When one tests a theory, the results either prove or disprove a hypothesis. On an individual level these tests are often of dubious value, of course. If one fails a test once using a particular study technique, it is not likely that one will try the same method 100 more times to make sure. It is also not likely that one rigorously controls the experimental conditions to make sure that it is studying at night and not some other factor that produces the results. However the underlying idea is the same as that used in sociological experiments.  One way sociological researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they test a hypothesis by introducing a variable to a control group and an experimental group under controlled circumstances and compare the outcomes — a scientific approach.

There are two main types of experiments in sociology: lab-based experiments, and natural or field experiments. In a lab setting the research can be controlled so that, perhaps, more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled, but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher. As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result.

To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables. Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group . The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. This is similar to pharmaceutical drug trials in which the experimental group is given the test drug and the control group is given a placebo or sugar pill.

An Experiment in Action: Mincome

A real-life example will help illustrate the field experimental process in sociology. Between 1974 and 1979 an experiment was conducted in the small town of Dauphin, Manitoba (the “garden capital of Manitoba”). Each family received a modest monthly guaranteed income — a “mincome” — equivalent to a maximum of 60% of the “low-income cut-off figure” (a Statistics Canada measure of poverty, which varies with family size). The income was 50 cents per dollar less for families who had incomes from other sources. Families earning over a certain income level did not receive mincome. Families that were already collecting welfare or unemployment insurance were also excluded. The test families in Dauphin were compared with control groups in other rural Manitoba communities on a range of indicators such as number of hours worked per week, school performance, high school drop out rates, and hospital visits (Forget, 2011). A guaranteed annual income was seen at the time as a less costly, less bureaucratic public alternative for addressing poverty than the existing employment insurance and welfare programs. Today it is an active proposal being considered in Switzerland (Lowrey, 2013).

Intuitively, it seems logical that lack of income is the cause of poverty and poverty-related issues. One of the main concerns, however, was whether a guaranteed income would create a disincentive to work. The concept appears to challenge the principles of the Protestant work ethic (see the discussion of Max Weber in Chapter 1. An Introduction to Sociology ). The study did find very small decreases in hours worked per week: about 1% for men, 3% for married women, and 5% for unmarried women. Forget (2011) argues this was because the income provided an opportunity for people to spend more time with family and school, especially for young mothers and teenage girls. There were also significant social benefits from the experiment, including better test scores in school, lower high school drop out rates, fewer visits to hospital, fewer accidents and injuries, and fewer mental health issues.

Ironically, due to lack of guaranteed funding (and lack of political interest by the late 1970s), the data and results of the study were not analyzed or published until 2011. The data were archived and sat gathering dust in boxes. The mincome experiment demonstrated the benefits that even a modest guaranteed annual income supplement could have on health and social outcomes in communities. People seem to live healthier lives and get a better education when they do not need to worry about poverty. In her summary of the research, Forget notes that the impact of the income supplement was surprisingly large given that at any one time only about a third of the families were receiving the income and, for some families, the income amount would have been very small. The income benefit was largest for low-income working families, but the research showed that the entire community profited. The improvement in overall health outcomes for the community suggest that a guaranteed income would also result in savings for the public health system.

To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring while the control group does not receive tutoring. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. In a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for instance.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps one of the most famous sociological field experiments ever conducted. In 1971, 24 healthy, middle-class male university students were selected to take part in a simulated jail environment to examine the effects of social setting and social roles on individual psychology and behaviour. They were randomly divided into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. The prisoner subjects were arrested at home and transported, blindfolded, to the simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building on the campus of Stanford University. Within a day of arriving the prisoners and the guards began to display signs of trauma and sadism respectively. After some prisoners revolted by blockading themselves in their cells, the guards resorted to using increasingly humiliating and degrading tactics to control the prisoners through psychological manipulation. The experiment had to be abandoned after only six days because the abuse had grown out of hand (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). While the insights into the social dynamics of authoritarianism it generated were fascinating, the Stanford Prison Experiment also serves as an example of the ethical issues that emerge when experimenting on human subjects. It was also not a true experiment in the sense that there was no comparison between a control group and the experimental group.

3. Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined experimental spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive approach rather than to positivist approaches. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In fieldwork, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element. The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people, gathering data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it is a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or a boxing club, a hospital or an airport, a mall or a beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting, the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviours in that setting. Fieldwork is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for developing causal explanations of why they behave that way. From the small size of the groups studied in fieldwork, it is difficult to make predictions or generalizations to a larger population. Similarly, there are difficulties in gaining an objective distance from research subjects. It is difficult to know whether another researcher would see the same things or record the same data. There are three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

When is sharing not such a good idea.

Choosing a research methodology depends on a number of factors, including the purpose of the research and the audience for whom the research is intended. The type of research that might go into producing a government policy document on the effectiveness of safe injection sites for reducing the public health risks of intravenous drug use, would be different than exploratory research into the meaning of drug use in specific subcultures. Public administrators likely want “hard” (i.e., quantitative) evidence of high reliability to help them make a policy decision. The most reliable data would come from an experimental research model in which a control group can be compared with an experimental group using quantitative measures.

This approach has been used by researchers studying InSite in Vancouver (Marshall et al., 2011; Wood et al., 2006). InSite is a supervised safe-injection site where heroin addicts and other intravenous drug users can go to inject drugs in a safe, clean, supervised environment. Clean needles are provided and health care professionals are on hand to intervene in the case of overdoses or other medical emergency. It is a controversial program both because heroin use is against the law (the facility operates through a federal ministerial exemption) and because the heroin users are not obliged to quit using or seek therapy. To assess the effectiveness of the program, researchers compared the risky usage of drugs in populations before and after the opening of the facility and geographically near and distant to the facility. The results from the studies have shown that InSite has reduced both deaths from overdose and risky behaviours, such as the sharing of needles, without increasing the levels of crime associated with drug use and addiction.

On the other hand, if the research question is more exploratory, the more nuanced approach of fieldwork is more appropriate. Graduate student Andrew Ivsins at the University of Victoria wanted to study the reasons why individuals in the crack smoking subculture engage in the risky activity of sharing pipes despite the known risks. The research needed to focus on the subcultural context, rituals, and meaning of sharing pipes, and why these phenomena override known health concerns. Ivsins studied the practice of sharing pipes among 13 habitual users of crack cocaine in Victoria, B.C. (Ivsins, 2010; Ivsins, Roth, Benoit, Fischer, 2013). He met crack smokers in their typical setting downtown, and used an unstructured interview method to try to draw out the informal norms that lead to sharing pipes. One factor he discovered was the bond that formed between friends or intimate partners when they shared a pipe. He also discovered that there was an elaborate subcultural etiquette of pipe use that revolved around the benefit of getting the crack resin smokers left behind. Both of these motives tended to outweigh the recognized health risks of sharing pipes (such as hepatitis) in the decision making of the users. This type of research was valuable in illuminating the unknown subcultural norms of crack use that could still come into play in a harm reduction strategy, such as distributing safe crack kits to addicts.

Participant Observation

Loïc Wacquant is a French sociologist who grew up in Montpellier in the south of France, but when he came to the U.S. to study life in Chicago’s south side ghetto he joined the Woodlawn boxing gym, as its only white member, “seeking an observation point from which to scrutinize, listen to, and touch up-close the everyday reality of the black American ghetto” (Wacquant, 2004). It was by accident then that he started his research into boxing. Over a period of three years of intensive practice he became an accomplished apprentice boxer, which also enabled him to participate in the lives of the club members, “accompany[ing] them in their everyday peregrinations outside of it, in search of a job or an apartment, hunting for bargains in ghetto stores, in their hassles with their wives, the local welfare office, or the police, as well as cruising with their “homies” from the fearsome housing projects nearby.” What he discovered was the “highly codified nature of pugilistic violence,” the various methods of building, risking, and protecting the boxer’s “bodily capital,” and the deeply embedded ways in which the boxing gym was integrated into the habitus of ghetto life. Wacquant coined the term carnal sociology to refer to a type of sociology that studies the social world from the point of view of the bodies and bodily practices of the participants (Wacquant, 2015).

Wacquant had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers study a naturally occurring social activity without imposing artificial or intrusive research devices, like fixed questionnaire questions, onto the situation. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behaviour. Researchers temporarily put themselves into “native” roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, or live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers often have a question that cannot be answered from the secondary literature: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” “What is it like to be homeless?” or “What is hip hop subculture like in the 21st century?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside. Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open-minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results.

Loïc Wacquant was upfront about his mission. The boxers of the Woodland’s club knew why he was in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviours of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behaviour. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job. Once inside a group, some researchers spend months, or even years, pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book, describing what they witnessed and experienced.

One of the most famous studies of this sort was Rosenhan’s (1973), “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” Unbeknownst to staff, Rosenhan and eight of his colleagues gained admission as patients into 12 different psychiatric hospitals. They wanted to test whether, and how, sanity could be distinguished from insanity in the institutions that had been created to make this distinction, and how people are treated on the basis of that distinction. As Rosenhan put it, although people generally believe they can tell the normal from the abnormal, “there are a great deal of conflicting data on the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms as ‘sanity,’ ‘insanity,’ ‘mental illness,’ and ‘schizophrenia.'” Despite their normal behaviour, the pseudo-patients were not detected. Rosenhan noted that when diagnoses had been made, it was very difficult to reverse them. “Once a person is designated abnormal, all of his other behaviours and characteristics are coloured by that label.” Moreover, the psychological consequences for the pseudo-patients was distressing and far from therapeutic. All of the pseudo patients reported feelings of powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, and mortification. “At times, depersonalization reached such proportions that pseudo-patients had the sense that they were invisible, or at least unworthy of account.”  Rosenhan concluded that the outcome for the pseudo patients was not the result of personal failings or callousness of staff — the “overwhelming impression of them was of people who really cared, who were committed and who were uncommonly intelligent” — but of the environment and structure of the hospitals themselves.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Researchers seek to immerse themselves in the life of a bounded group by living and working among them. Often ethnography involves participant observation — Loïc Wacquant’s research mentioned above is an ethnography — but the focus is the systematic observation of an entire community.

The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. It aims at developing a thick description of people’s behaviour that describes not only the behaviour itself but the layers of meaning that form the context of the behaviour (Geertz, 1973). An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small Newfoundland fishing town, an Inuit community, a scientific research laboratory, a backpacker’s hostel, a private boarding school, or Disney World. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain unique ways and respect certain unique cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible, and keeping careful notes on their observations. A sociologist studying ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon might learn the language, watch the way shaman and apprentices go about their daily lives, ask individuals about the meaning of different aspects of the activity, study the group’s cosmology, and then write a paper about it. To observe a Buddhist retreat centre, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record how people experience spirituality in this setting, and collate the material into results.

Latour and Woolgar’s (1986) study of the Salk Institute Laboratory in California is an example of ethnography that detailed the social processes of science by following the paper trail involved in publishing articles of scientific research. How are the objective truths arrived at before they are stated in scientific papers? What do scientists actually do to produce objective science, especially when the factual “things” they seek to describe are complex, diffuse, and messy?

Latour and Woolgar watched the work of the Salk Institute scientists for two years as the scientists studied and isolated endocrinological (hormonal) processes in the body. They noted that the major product or focus of the lab was the creation of texts and that every activity, from the preparation of samples to the sweeping of the floors, was in some way involved in this process.  In the end, each scientific paper cost approximately $30,000 U.S. to produce — in 1979 dollars. Therefore, detailing each step in the process provided an overall picture of the culture of this tribe of scientists as they sought to provide accounts of reality.

From this vantage point, Latour and Woolgar were fascinated with the processes of inscription by which material substances, like the brain tissues of rats, were extracted, rendered as test tube samples and then turned into textual outputs like graphic arrays or numerical figures. On the basis of comparing mathematical curves of these textual “traces” of the original substances, scientists were able to say whether they had either isolated a “solid” substance or had been obliged to discard “elusive and transitory” substances as false artifacts of the inscription device. Latour and Woolgar concluded that the particular reality of hormones that the lab presented as an objective and factual reality “out there,” was the product of particular inscription devices and practices. The particular realities do not exist without the particular inscription devices and practices that produced them. With the use of different inscription devices and practices, a different objective reality would have been created. They caution that this does not mean that science is simply “made up” like a fiction, but that it is dependent on a network of individuals, accepted practices, and technical devices which are more or less precarious and uncertain. Scientists are a tribe, much like the tribes that anthropological ethnologists have studied, who have a culture, beliefs, and practices, who gossip and share meals together, and who produce accounts of reality based on their own unique ethnographical circumstances.

The Feminist Perspective: Institutional Ethnography

Dorothy Smith elaborated on traditional ethnography to develop what she calls institutional ethnography (2005). In modern society the practices of everyday life in any particular local setting are often organized at a level that goes beyond what an ethnographer might observe directly. Everyday life is structured by “extralocal,” institutional forms; that is, by the practices of institutions that act upon people from a distance.It might be possible to conduct ethnographic research on the experience of domestic abuse by living in a women’s shelter and directly observing and interviewing victims to see how they form an understanding of their situation. However, to the degree that the women are seeking redress through the criminal justice system, a crucial element of the situation would be missing.In order to activate a response from the police or the courts, a set of standard legal procedures must be followed, a case file must be opened, legally actionable evidence must be established, forms filled out, etc. All of this allows criminal justice agencies to organize and coordinate the response. The urgent and immediate experience of the domestic abuse victims needs to be translated into an abstract format that enables distant authorities to take action. Often this is a frustrating and mysterious process in which the immediate needs of individuals are neglected so that the needs of institutional processes are met. Therefore, to research the situation of domestic abuse victims, an ethnography needs to somehow operate at two levels: the close examination of the local experience of particular women, and the simultaneous examination of the extralocal, institutional world through which their world is organized.In order to accomplish this, institutional ethnography focuses on the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through “textually mediated” practices: the use of written documents, standardized bureaucratic categories, and formalized relationships (Smith, 1990). Institutional paperwork translates the specific details of locally lived experience into a standardized format that enables institutions to apply the institution’s understandings, regulations, and operations in different local contexts. A study of these textual practices reveals otherwise inaccessible processes that formal organizations depend on: their formality, their organized character, their ongoing methods of coordination, etc.An institutional ethnography often begins by following the paper trail that emerges when people interact with institutions: How does a person formulate a narrative about what has happened to him or her in a way that the institution will recognize? How is it translated into the abstract categories on a form or screen that enable an institutional response to be initiated? What is preserved in the translation to paperwork, and what is lost? Where do the forms go next? What series of “processing interchanges” take place between different departments or agencies through the circulation of paperwork? How is the paperwork modified and made actionable through this process (e.g., an incident report, warrant request, motion for continuance)?Smith’s insight is that the shift from the locally lived experience of individuals to the extralocal world of institutions is nothing short of a radical metaphysical shift in worldview. In institutional worlds, meanings are detached from directly lived processes and reconstituted in an organizational time, space, and consciousness that is fundamentally different from their original reference point. For example, the crisis that has led to a loss of employment becomes a set of anonymous criteria that determines one’s eligibility for Employment Insurance. The unique life of a child with a disability becomes a checklist that determines the content of an “individual education program” in the school system, which in turn determines whether funding will be provided for special aid assistants or therapeutic programs. Institutions put together a picture of what has occurred that is not at all the same as what was lived.The ubiquitous but obscure mechanism by which this is accomplished is textually mediated communication. The goal of institutional ethnography, therefore, is to make “documents or texts visible as constituents of social relations” (Smith, 1990). Institutional ethnography is very useful as a critical research strategy. It is an analysis that gives grassroots organizations, or those excluded from the circles of institutional power, a detailed knowledge of how the administrative apparatuses actually work. This type of research enables more effective actions and strategies for change to be pursued.

The Case Study

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person, group or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, social setting, organization, group, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like biographical documents and archival records, conducts interviews, and engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.

Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim, with the idea that the individual case exemplifies something important about a larger topic or social phenomenon: the problems of “aging out” of foster care, the operation of power outside the law, the relation to rebellious bodies in the cancer patient, etc. Case studies also enable researchers to document particular social processes in action, such as the implementation of a social policy or the roll out of a dating app; they would explore, in detail, how they are interpreted by participants, how they develop step by step, and their effects in a particular socio-political context. However, a major criticism of the case study as a research method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person or event, since one person or event does not verify a pattern.

However, case studies are especially useful when the single case is unique. Little (2012) used the autobiographical materials of ex-neo-Nazi leader, Ingo Hasselbach, to study the process and difficulties of leaving a tight-knit, neo-Nazi group, and a life of political violence. What were the stages of leaving and what were the various ways in which Hasselbach acted upon himself to transform himself into a “normal” democratic citizen? From the outside, the attraction to neo-Nazism, the thrills of street violence and the difficulties of leaving this political subculture behind might seem incomprehensible to most people. The difficulties that Hasselbach had in changing his identity, even after having made the decision to “step out,” are therefore informative for thinking about the problems of responding to political extremism.

4. Secondary Data or Textual Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data or textual analysis . Secondary data do not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are drawn from the already-completed work of other researchers, as well as from sources like newspapers, social media, pop culture, archives, census statistics, sales records, letters, and so on.

One of the most famous studies in early American sociology was Znaniecki and Thomas’ The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-1920), which explored the formation of the immigrant Polish ethnic community in Chicago, in the early 20th century, by examining personal documents, letters, immigration brochures, newspaper articles, and church and court documents.

Using available information not only saves time and money, but it can add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way — a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might review movies, televisions shows, pop psychology articles, and women’s magazines from that period. Or, to research changes in behaviour and attitudes due to the emergence of social media, a sociologist would rely on texts, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Twitter trends, and the like.

One methodology that sociologists employ with secondary data is content analysis . The quantitative approach to content analysis is a form of textual research that selects an item of textual content (i.e., a variable) that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. For example, Gilens (1996) wanted to find out why survey research shows that the American public substantially exaggerates the percentage of African Americans among the poor. He examined whether media representations influence public perceptions, and did a content analysis of photographs of poor people in American news magazines. He coded and then systematically recorded incidences of three variables in the photos: (1) race: white, black, indeterminate; (2) employed: working, not working; and (3) age. Gilens discovered that not only were African Americans markedly overrepresented in news magazine photographs of poverty, but that the photos also tended to under represent “sympathetic” subgroups of the poor — the elderly and working poor — while over representing less sympathetic groups — unemployed, working age adults. Gilens (1996) concluded that by providing a distorted representation of poverty, U.S. news magazines “reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks as mired in poverty and contribute to the belief that poverty is primarily a ‘black problem.’”

Social scientists can also do statistical research by analyzing the data provided by a variety of agencies. Governmental departments, public interest research groups, and global organizations like Statistics Canada, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic that measures inequality of incomes might be useful for studying who benefited and who lost as a result of the 2008 recession; a demographic profile of different immigrant groups might be compared with data on unemployment to examine the reasons why immigration integration is more effective for some communities than for others.

One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is non-reactive (or unobtrusive) research, meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher needs to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. In some cases there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy, for example, to count how many drunk drivers are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it is possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their high school diplomas later. Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed, or do not address the precise question the researcher is asking. For example, the salaries paid to professors at universities are often published, but the figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach that salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they have been teaching.

In his qualitative research, sociologist Richard Sennett (2008) uses secondary data to shed light on current trends from contemporary urban life to material culture. In The Craftsman , he studied homo faber (the human as maker): the human desire to perform quality work, from carpentry to computer programming. “What [does] the process of making concrete things reveal to us about ourselves[?]” He studied the line between craftsmanship and skilled manual labour. He also studied changes in attitudes toward craftsmanship that occurred not only during and after the Industrial Revolution, but also in ancient times. Obviously, he could not have firsthand knowledge of periods of ancient history, so he had to rely on secondary data for his study. For example, Sennett describes technique as a key component of human life. It is a product of bodily practices, resistant materials, and powers of the imagination. However,  specific techniques, like the “hand habits of striking a piano key or using a knife,” have disappeared and have to be reconstructed through close study of historical instruction manuals, descriptions, and the like. The research problem is to be able to go from historical texts about craftmanship, and sometimes from the crafted artifacts themselves, to understand how the process of skills development occurs and why it was a prominent component of public status in some eras and not in others.

Reading Tables

One of the common forms in which one encounters secondary data is the contingency table . A contingency table provides a frequency distribution of at least two variables that allows the researcher to see at a glance how the variables are related. Table 2.3 shows the frequency of different types of firearm crime for Canada and the United States. In this table, the independent variable (the causal variable) is the country, either Canada or the United States. The dependent variable, displayed in the columns, is the frequency of offenses that involve firearms in the two countries. This is given as an absolute number (“Number”), as a percentage of the total number of crimes in that category (i.e., as a percentage of the total number of homicides, major assaults and robberies; “Percent of total offenses”), and as rate calculated per 100,000 population (“Rate”). To interpret the table, the researcher has to pay attention to what adds up to 100%. This table does not provide the complete information in each column, but it is straight forward to recognize that if 33% of the homicides in Canada involved the use of a firearm, another 67% of homicides did not. The table, for instance, does not say that 33% of all firearm crimes in Canada were homicides. From these figures one can also calculate the total number of homicides that took place in Canada in 2012 by a simple ratio: If the 172 homicides that involved firearms represents 33% or 1/3 of all the Canadian homicides, then there were (approximately) 516 homicides in Canada in 2012.

Table 2.3 suggests that there is a definite correlation between country and firearm-related violent crime. This is most clearly demonstrated by percentages and rates per capita rather than absolute numbers, because the United States has a population approximately 9 times the size of Canada’s. Comparisons of absolute numbers are difficult to interpret. Violent crime in the United States tends to involve firearms much more frequently than violent crime in Canada. With respect to homicides, there were 8,813 homicides involving firearms in the United States in 2012, accounting for 69% of all homicides, while in Canada, firearms accounted for 33% of homicides. The column that gives the rates of firearm violence per 100,000 population allows the researcher to identify a comparison figure that takes into account the different population sizes of the two countries. The rate of firearm-related homicide in the United States was about seven times higher than in Canada in 2012 (0.5 per 100,000 compared to 3.5 per 100,000), firearm-related major assault was about ten times higher (53 per 100,000 compared to 5 per 100,000), and firearm-related robbery was about five times higher (8.9 per 100,000 compared to 45.1 per 100,000).

The question that this data raises is about causation. Why are firearm-related violent crimes so much lower in Canada than in the United States? One key element are the legal restrictions on firearm possession in the two countries. Canadian law requires that an individual has a valid licence under the Firearms Act, in order to own or possess a firearm or to purchase ammunition. Until 2012, all firearms also had to be registered, but with the repeal of the national gun registry provisions for long guns (rifles and shot guns), currently only hand guns and prohibited weapons (assault weapons, fully automatic firearms, and sawed-off rifles or shotguns) have to be registered. In the United States firearm regulations are state-specific, and only a few states place restrictions on the possession of firearms. In 2007, there were 89 firearms for every 100 citizens in the United States, which is the highest rate of gun ownership of any country (Cotter, 2014). By contrast, figures from 1998 show that there 24 firearms for every 100 citizens in Canada (Department of Justice, 2015). Nevertheless, as Canada’s firearm-related homicide rate is higher than several peer countries, most notably Japan and the United Kingdom, variables other than gun control legislation might be a factor.

Research Methods Summary

As noted above, there is not only a variety of theoretical perspectives in sociology, but also a diversity of research methodologies that can be used in studying the social. In large part, the choice of research methodology follows from the choice of the research question. Of course, the choice of the research question itself depends on the same sort of underlying values and decisions about the nature of the world that divide the theoretical perspectives in sociology. In addition, the choice of the research question involves both the character of the social phenomenon being studied and the purpose of the research in the first place.

Again, it is useful to map out the different methodologies in a diagram. They can be positioned along two axes according to: (a) whether the subject matter or purpose of the research calls for highly reliable findings — consistent between research contexts (high reliability) — or for highly valid and nuanced findings true to the specific social situation under observation (unique observation), and (b) whether the nature of the object of research can be meaningfully operationalized and measured using quantitative techniques (quantitative data) or is better grasped in terms of the texture of social meanings that constitute it (qualitative data). The advantages and disadvantages of the different methodologies are summarized in Table 2.4 below.

Image Descriptions

Figure 2.18 Long Description: A sociology for women would offer a knowledge of the social organization and determinations of the properties and events of our directly experienced world. [Return to Figure 2.18]

Figure 2.19 Long description: Different Research Methods: Textual analysis uses qualitative data and is highly reliable. Participant observation uses qualitative data and is a unique observation. Experiments and survey research use quantitative data and are highly reliable. Journalism uses quantitative data and is a unique observation. [Return to Figure 2.19]

Media Attributions

• Figure 2.10 Hawthorne Works factory of the Western Electric Company, 1925. By Western Electric Company  by Western Electric Company, Photograph Album, 1925,  via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.11 Didn’t they abolish the mandatory census? Then what’s this? by Khosrow Ebrahimpour, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.12 Dauphin Canadian Northern Railway Station by Bobak Ha’Eri, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under CC BY 3.0 licence.
• Figure 2.13   Punk Band by Patrick, via Flickr, is used under CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.14   Crack Cocaine Smokers in Vancouver Alleyway by [name invalid], is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.15  Loïc Wacquant at the Woodlands Gym used by permission of Loïc Wacquant.
• Figure 2.16   Dormitory at Longue Pointe Asylum, Montreal, 1911 by the McCord Museum, VIEW-11279 , via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 2.17 Jonas Salk – Polio by Sanofi Pasteur used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.18   Sociology for Women by Zuleyka Zevallos is used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.

Introduction to Sociology – 3rd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2023 by William Little is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Module 2: Sociological Research

Introduction to research methods, what you’ll learn to do: identify and differentiate between types of research methods, discussing the benefits and limitations of each.

Figure 1 . Surveys gather different types of information from people. The U.S. Census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. (Photo courtesy of US Census Bureau/flickr)

As Laud Humphreys’ study illustrated, conducting research can be quite complex, especially when it comes to informed consent. Humphreys’ research design included surveys (when he went do-to-door) and field research (when he served as a “watch queen”). His role in the tea room as participant observer allowed him to observe (listen to) behavior that was naturally occurring with or without his presence. When we discuss experiments, we will see that the “setting” is often manipulated in some way by the research team in order to examine an independent variable. Secondary data is another research methodology that involves reviewing materials that already exist, such as previous studies (i.e., a literature review could lead to use of other peoples’ data and/or existing records such as arrests on sodomy charges).

Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. Sociologists generally choose from widely used methods of social investigation:  primary source data collection  such as survey, participant observation, ethnography, case study, unobtrusive observations, experiment, and  secondary data analysis , or use of existing sources. Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use. When you are conducting research think about the best way to gather or obtain knowledge about your topic, think of yourself as an architect. An architect needs a blueprint to build a house, as a sociologist your blueprint is your research design including your data collection method.

When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher wouldn’t stroll into a crime-ridden neighborhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?”

Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviors, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers can’t just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviors or attract attention. In situations like these, other methods are needed. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topics, protect research participants or subjects, and that fit with their overall approaches to research.  In this section, you’ll examine how researchers use each of these research methods. 

• Introduction to Research Methods. Authored by : Sarah Hoiland and Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Research Methods. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:5y6RWnGd@12/Research-Methods . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]
• US Census Worker (2010). Provided by : US Census Bureau. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/uscensusbureau/7024455607/ . License : CC BY-ND: Attribution-NoDerivatives

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Learning Objectives

• Differentiate between four kinds of research methods: surveys, field research, experiments, and secondary data analysis
• Understand why different topics are better suited to different research approaches

Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study—perhaps a detailed, systematic, scientific method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study.

When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher wouldn’t stroll into a crime-ridden neighborhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally. This is called the Hawthorne effect —where people change their behavior because they know they are being watched as part of a study. The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld 1985).

Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviors, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers can’t just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviors. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the study. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topics and that fit with their overall approaches to research.

In planning studies’ designs, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, field research, experiment, and secondary data analysis , or use of existing sources. Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviors and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used scientific research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point, most people in the United States respond to some type of survey. The U.S. Census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Not all surveys are considered sociological research, however, and many surveys people commonly encounter focus on identifying marketing needs and strategies rather than testing a hypothesis or contributing to social science knowledge. Questions such as, “How many hot dogs do you eat in a month?” or “Were the staff helpful?” are not usually designed as scientific research. Often, polls on television do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance represent the opinions of fans but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the Nielsen Ratings, which determine the popularity of television programming through scientific market research.

Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think—or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track preferences for presidential candidates or reported individual behaviors (such as sleeping, driving, or texting habits) or factual information such as employment status, income, and education levels.

A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as college athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes. Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample : that is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples represent the population as a whole. For instance, a Gallup Poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 2,000 or 10,000 people.

After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask questions and record responses. It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study up front. If they agree to participate, researchers thank subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researcher presents the subjects with an instrument, which is a means of gathering the information. A common instrument is a questionnaire, in which subjects answer a series of questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question. This kind of quantitative data —research collected in numerical form that can be counted—are easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” responses or correct answers, and chart them into percentages.

Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers—beyond “yes,” “no,” or the option next to a checkbox. In those cases, the answers are subjective and vary from person to person. How do plan to use your college education? Why do you follow Jimmy Buffett around the country and attend every concert? Those types of questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to write those answers will convey personal information about religious beliefs, political views, and morals. Some topics that reflect internal thought are impossible to observe directly and are difficult to discuss honestly in a public forum. People are more likely to share honest answers if they can respond to questions anonymously. This type of information is qualitative data —results that are subjective and often based on what is seen in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising. The benefit of written opinions, though, is the wealth of material that they provide.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and it is a way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short-answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. However, participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly.

Questions such as, “How did society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. And, obviously, a sociological interview is not an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust, from empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and from listening without judgment.

Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive framework rather than to the scientific method. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In field work, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element.

The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people and gathers data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it’s a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or the DMV, a hospital, airport, mall, or beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting , the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviors in that setting. Field work is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for understanding why they behave that way. You can’t really narrow down cause and effect when there are so many variables floating around in a natural environment.

Much of the data gathered in field research are based not on cause and effect but on correlation . And while field research looks for correlation, its small sample size does not allow for establishing a causal relationship between two variables.

Some sociologists study small groups of people who share an identity in one aspect of their lives. Almost everyone belongs to a group of like-minded people who share an interest or hobby. Scientologists, folk dancers, or members of Mensa (an organization for people with exceptionally high IQs) express a specific part of their identity through their affiliation with a group. Those groups are often of great interest to sociologists.

Jimmy Buffett, an American musician who built a career from his single top-10 song “Margaritaville,” has a following of devoted groupies called Parrotheads. Some of them have taken fandom to the extreme, making Parrothead culture a lifestyle. In 2005, Parrotheads and their subculture caught the attention of researchers John Mihelich and John Papineau. The two saw the way Jimmy Buffett fans collectively created an artificial reality. They wanted to know how fan groups shape culture.

What Mihelich and Papineau found was that Parrotheads, for the most part, do not seek to challenge or even change society, as many sub-groups do. In fact, most Parrotheads live successfully within society, holding upper-level jobs in the corporate world. What they seek is escape from the stress of daily life.

At Jimmy Buffett concerts, Parrotheads engage in a form of role play. They paint their faces and dress for the tropics in grass skirts, Hawaiian leis, and Parrot hats. These fans don’t generally play the part of Parrotheads outside of these concerts; you are not likely to see a lone Parrothead in a bank or library. In that sense, Parrothead culture is less about individualism and more about conformity. Being a Parrothead means sharing a specific identity. Parrotheads feel connected to each other: it’s a group identity, not an individual one.

In their study, Mihelich and Papineau quote from a recent book by sociologist Richard Butsch, who writes, “un-self-conscious acts, if done by many people together, can produce change, even though the change may be unintended” (2000). Many Parrothead fan groups have performed good works in the name of Jimmy Buffett culture, donating to charities and volunteering their services.

However, the authors suggest that what really drives Parrothead culture is commercialism. Jimmy Buffett’s popularity was dying out in the 1980s until being reinvigorated after he signed a sponsorship deal with a beer company. These days, his concert tours alone generate nearly $30 million a year. Buffett made a lucrative career for himself by partnering with product companies and marketing Margaritaville in the form of T-shirts, restaurants, casinos, and an expansive line of products. Some fans accuse Buffett of selling out, while others admire his financial success. Buffett makes no secret of his commercial exploitations; from the stage, he’s been known to tell his fans, “Just remember, I am spending your money foolishly.”

Mihelich and Papineau gathered much of their information online. Referring to their study as a “Web ethnography,” they collected extensive narrative material from fans who joined Parrothead clubs and posted their experiences on websites. “We do not claim to have conducted a complete ethnography of Parrothead fans, or even of the Parrothead Web activity,” state the authors, “but we focused on particular aspects of Parrothead practice as revealed through Web research” (2005). Fan narratives gave them insight into how individuals identify with Buffett’s world and how fans used popular music to cultivate personal and collective meaning.

In conducting studies about pockets of culture, most sociologists seek to discover a universal appeal. Mihelich and Papineau stated, “Although Parrotheads are a relative minority of the contemporary US population, an in-depth look at their practice and conditions illuminate [sic] cultural practices and conditions many of us experience and participate in” (2005).

Here, we will look at three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.

Participant Observation

In 2000, a comic writer named Rodney Rothman wanted an insider’s view of white-collar work. He slipped into the sterile, high-rise offices of a New York “dot com” agency. Every day for two weeks, he pretended to work there. His main purpose was simply to see whether anyone would notice him or challenge his presence. No one did. The receptionist greeted him. The employees smiled and said good morning. Rothman was accepted as part of the team. He even went so far as to claim a desk, inform the receptionist of his whereabouts, and attend a meeting. He published an article about his experience in The New Yorker called “My Fake Job” (2000). Later, he was discredited for allegedly fabricating some details of the story and The New Yorker issued an apology. However, Rothman’s entertaining article still offered fascinating descriptions of the inside workings of a “dot com” company and exemplified the lengths to which a sociologist will go to uncover material.

Rothman had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers experience a specific aspect of social life. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behavior. Researchers temporarily put themselves into roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers might have a question: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” or “What is it like to be homeless?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside.

Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results.

In a study of small towns in the United States conducted by sociological researchers John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, the team altered their purpose as they gathered data. They initially planned to focus their study on the role of religion in U.S. towns. As they gathered observations, they realized that the effect of industrialization and urbanization was the more relevant topic of this social group. The Lynds did not change their methods, but they revised their purpose. This shaped the structure of Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture , their published results (Lynd and Lynd 1959).

The Lynds were upfront about their mission. The townspeople of Muncie, Indiana, knew why the researchers were in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviors of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behavior. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job.

Once inside a group, some researchers spend months or even years pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book and describe what he or she witnessed and experienced.

This type of research is what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted for her book Nickel and Dimed . One day over lunch with her editor, as the story goes, Ehrenreich mentioned an idea. How can people exist on minimum-wage work? How do low-income workers get by? she wondered. Someone should do a study. To her surprise, her editor responded, Why don’t you do it?

That’s how Ehrenreich found herself joining the ranks of the working class. For several months, she left her comfortable home and lived and worked among people who lacked, for the most part, higher education and marketable job skills. Undercover, she applied for and worked minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a retail chain employee. During her participant observation, she used only her income from those jobs to pay for food, clothing, transportation, and shelter.

She discovered the obvious, that it’s almost impossible to get by on minimum wage work. She also experienced and observed attitudes many middle and upper-class people never think about. She witnessed firsthand the treatment of working class employees. She saw the extreme measures people take to make ends meet and to survive. She described fellow employees who held two or three jobs, worked seven days a week, lived in cars, could not pay to treat chronic health conditions, got randomly fired, submitted to drug tests, and moved in and out of homeless shelters. She brought aspects of that life to light, describing difficult working conditions and the poor treatment that low-wage workers suffer.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America , the book she wrote upon her return to her real life as a well-paid writer, has been widely read and used in many college classrooms.

• Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Ethnographies involve objective observation of an entire community.

The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small U.S. fishing town, an Inuit community, a village in Thailand, a Buddhist monastery, a private boarding school, or an amusement park. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain ways and respect certain cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible.

A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might watch the way villagers go about their daily lives and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat center, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record data, and collate the material into results.

Institutional Ethnography

Institutional ethnography is an extension of basic ethnographic research principles that focuses intentionally on everyday concrete social relationships. Developed by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith, institutional ethnography is often considered a feminist-inspired approach to social analysis and primarily considers women’s experiences within male-dominated societies and power structures. Smith’s work is seen to challenge sociology’s exclusion of women, both academically and in the study of women’s lives (Fenstermaker, n.d.).

Historically, social science research tended to objectify women and ignore their experiences except as viewed from the male perspective. Modern feminists note that describing women, and other marginalized groups, as subordinates helps those in authority maintain their own dominant positions (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, n.d.). Smith’s three major works explored what she called “the conceptual practices of power” (1990; cited in Fensternmaker, n.d.) and are still considered seminal works in feminist theory and ethnography.

In 1924, a young married couple named Robert and Helen Lynd undertook an unprecedented ethnography: to apply sociological methods to the study of one U.S. city in order to discover what “ordinary” people in the United States did and believed. Choosing Muncie, Indiana (population about 30,000), as their subject, they moved to the small town and lived there for eighteen months.

Ethnographers had been examining other cultures for decades—groups considered minority or outsider—like gangs, immigrants, and the poor. But no one had studied the so-called average American.

Recording interviews and using surveys to gather data, the Lynds did not sugarcoat or idealize U.S. life (PBS). They objectively stated what they observed. Researching existing sources, they compared Muncie in 1890 to the Muncie they observed in 1924. Most Muncie adults, they found, had grown up on farms but now lived in homes inside the city. From that discovery, the Lynds focused their study on the impact of industrialization and urbanization.

They observed that Muncie was divided into business class and working class groups. They defined business class as dealing with abstract concepts and symbols, while working class people used tools to create concrete objects. The two classes led different lives with different goals and hopes. However, the Lynds observed, mass production offered both classes the same amenities. Like wealthy families, the working class was now able to own radios, cars, washing machines, telephones, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators. This was an emerging material new reality of the 1920s.

As the Lynds worked, they divided their manuscript into six sections: Getting a Living, Making a Home, Training the Young, Using Leisure, Engaging in Religious Practices, and Engaging in Community Activities. Each chapter included subsections such as “The Long Arm of the Job” and “Why Do They Work So Hard?” in the “Getting a Living” chapter.

When the study was completed, the Lynds encountered a big problem. The Rockefeller Foundation, which had commissioned the book, claimed it was useless and refused to publish it. The Lynds asked if they could seek a publisher themselves.

Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture was not only published in 1929 but also became an instant bestseller, a status unheard of for a sociological study. The book sold out six printings in its first year of publication, and has never gone out of print (PBS).

Nothing like it had ever been done before. Middletown was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times . Readers in the 1920s and 1930s identified with the citizens of Muncie, Indiana, but they were equally fascinated by the sociological methods and the use of scientific data to define ordinary people in the United States. The book was proof that social data was important—and interesting—to the U.S. public.

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records, conducts interviews, engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.

Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim. However, a major criticism of the case study as a method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person, since one person does not verify a pattern. This is why most sociologists do not use case studies as a primary research method.

However, case studies are useful when the single case is unique. In these instances, a single case study can add tremendous knowledge to a certain discipline. For example, a feral child, also called “wild child,” is one who grows up isolated from human beings. Feral children grow up without social contact and language, which are elements crucial to a “civilized” child’s development. These children mimic the behaviors and movements of animals, and often invent their own language. There are only about one hundred cases of “feral children” in the world.

As you may imagine, a feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers. Feral children provide unique information about child development because they have grown up outside of the parameters of “normal” child development. And since there are very few feral children, the case study is the most appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the subject.

At age three, a Ukranian girl named Oxana Malaya suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with dogs, and she ate raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a neighbor called authorities and reported seeing a girl who ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into society, where she was cared for and taught some human behaviors, but she never became fully socialized. She has been designated as unable to support herself and now lives in a mental institution (Grice 2011). Case studies like this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not be collectable by any other method.

Experiments

You’ve probably tested personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When you test the theory, your results either prove or disprove your hypothesis.

One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they investigate relationships to test a hypothesis—a scientific approach.

There are two main types of experiments: lab-based experiments and natural or field experiments. In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that perhaps more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher.

As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result. To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables.

Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group. The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring but not the control group. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for example.

A real-life example will help illustrate the experiment process. In 1971, Frances Heussenstamm, a sociology professor at California State University at Los Angeles, had a theory about police prejudice. To test her theory she conducted an experiment. She chose fifteen students from three ethnic backgrounds: black, white, and Hispanic. She chose students who routinely drove to and from campus along Los Angeles freeway routes, and who’d had perfect driving records for longer than a year. Those were her independent variables—students, good driving records, same commute route.

Next, she placed a Black Panther bumper sticker on each car. That sticker, a representation of a social value, was the independent variable. In the 1970s, the Black Panthers were a revolutionary group actively fighting racism. Heussenstamm asked the students to follow their normal driving patterns. She wanted to see whether seeming support of the Black Panthers would change how these good drivers were treated by the police patrolling the highways. The dependent variable would be the number of traffic stops/citations.

The first arrest, for an incorrect lane change, was made two hours after the experiment began. One participant was pulled over three times in three days. He quit the study. After seventeen days, the fifteen drivers had collected a total of thirty-three traffic citations. The experiment was halted. The funding to pay traffic fines had run out, and so had the enthusiasm of the participants (Heussenstamm 1971).

Secondary Data Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data analysis . Secondary data doesn’t result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are the already completed work of other researchers. Sociologists might study works written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, or magazines from any period in history.

Using available information not only saves time and money but can also add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behavior and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the Internet, or Facebook.

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic like the foreclosure rate might be useful for studying the effects of the 2008 recession; a racial demographic profile might be compared with data on education funding to examine the resources accessible by different groups.

One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is nonreactive research (or unobtrusive research), meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviors. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data doesn’t require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher will need to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. To guide the search through a vast library of materials and avoid wasting time reading unrelated sources, sociologists employ content analysis , applying a systematic approach to record and value information gleaned from secondary data as they relate to the study at hand.

But, in some cases, there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy to count how many drunk drivers, for example, are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it’s possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their GED later.

Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not include the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the average salaries paid to professors at a public school is public record. But the separate figures don’t necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they’ve been teaching.

When conducting content analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research for their book Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture in the 1920s. Attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal the truth about small U.S. communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s’ attitudes and values.

Sociological research is a fairly complex process. As you can see, a lot goes into even a simple research design. There are many steps and much to consider when collecting data on human behavior, as well as in interpreting and analyzing data in order to form conclusive results. Sociologists use scientific methods for good reason. The scientific method provides a system of organization that helps researchers plan and conduct the study while ensuring that data and results are reliable, valid, and objective.

The many methods available to researchers—including experiments, surveys, field studies, and secondary data analysis—all come with advantages and disadvantages. The strength of a study can depend on the choice and implementation of the appropriate method of gathering research. Depending on the topic, a study might use a single method or a combination of methods. It is important to plan a research design before undertaking a study. The information gathered may in itself be surprising, and the study design should provide a solid framework in which to analyze predicted and unpredicted data.

Section Quiz

Which materials are considered secondary data?

• Photos and letters given to you by another person
• Books and articles written by other authors about their studies
• Information that you have gathered and now have included in your results
• Responses from participants whom you both surveyed and interviewed

What method did researchers John Mihelich and John Papineau use to study Parrotheads?

• Web Ethnography

Why is choosing a random sample an effective way to select participants?

• Participants do not know they are part of a study
• The researcher has no control over who is in the study
• It is larger than an ordinary sample
• Everyone has the same chance of being part of the study

What research method did John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd mainly use in their Middletown study?

• Secondary data
• Participant observation

Which research approach is best suited to the scientific method?

• Questionnaire
• Secondary data analysis

The main difference between ethnography and other types of participant observation is:

• ethnography isn’t based on hypothesis testing
• ethnography subjects are unaware they’re being studied
• ethnographic studies always involve minority ethnic groups
• ethnography focuses on how subjects view themselves in relationship to the community

Which best describes the results of a case study?

• It produces more reliable results than other methods because of its depth
• Its results are not generally applicable
• It relies solely on secondary data analysis
• All of the above

Using secondary data is considered an unobtrusive or ________ research method.

• nonreactive
• nonparticipatory
• nonrestrictive
• nonconfrontive

Short Answer

What type of data do surveys gather? For what topics would surveys be the best research method? What drawbacks might you expect to encounter when using a survey? To explore further, ask a research question and write a hypothesis. Then create a survey of about six questions relevant to the topic. Provide a rationale for each question. Now define your population and create a plan for recruiting a random sample and administering the survey.

Imagine you are about to do field research in a specific place for a set time. Instead of thinking about the topic of study itself, consider how you, as the researcher, will have to prepare for the study. What personal, social, and physical sacrifices will you have to make? How will you manage your personal effects? What organizational equipment and systems will you need to collect the data?

Create a brief research design about a topic in which you are passionately interested. Now write a letter to a philanthropic or grant organization requesting funding for your study. How can you describe the project in a convincing yet realistic and objective way? Explain how the results of your study will be a relevant contribution to the body of sociological work already in existence.

Further Research

For information on current real-world sociology experiments, visit: http://openstax.org/l/Sociology-Experiments

Butsch, Richard. 2000. The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750–1990 . Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks, and Ben Wattenberg. 2000. “The First Measured Century: Middletown.” The First Measured Century . PBS. Retrieved February 23, 2012 ( http://www.pbs.org/fmc/index.htm ).

Durkheim, Émile. 1966 [1897]. Suicide . New York: Free Press.

Fenstermaker, Sarah. n.d. “Dorothy E. Smith Award Statement” American Sociological Association . Retrieved October 19, 2014 ( http://www.asanet.org/about/awards/duboiscareer/smith.cfm ).

Franke, Richard, and James Kaul. 1978. “The Hawthorne Experiments: First Statistical Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 43(5):632–643.

Grice, Elizabeth. “Cry of an Enfant Sauvage.” The Telegraph . Retrieved July 20, 2011 ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3653890/Cry-of-an-enfant-sauvage.html ).

Heussenstamm, Frances K. 1971. “Bumper Stickers and Cops” Trans-action: Social Science and Modern Society 4:32–33.

Igo, Sarah E. 2008. The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lynd, Robert S., and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1959. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture . San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.

Lynd, Staughton. 2005. “Making Middleton.” Indiana Magazine of History 101(3):226–238.

Mihelich, John, and John Papineau. Aug 2005. “Parrotheads in Margaritaville: Fan Practice, Oppositional Culture, and Embedded Cultural Resistance in Buffett Fandom.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 17(2):175–202.

Pew Research Center. 2014. “Ebola Worries Rise, But Most Are ‘Fairly’ Confident in Government, Hospitals to Deal with Disease: Broad Support for U.S. Efforts to Deal with Ebola in West Africa.” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, October 21. Retrieved October 25, 2014 ( http://www.people-press.org/2014/10/21/ebola-worries-rise-but-most-are-fairly-confident-in-government-hospitals-to-deal-with-disease/ ).

Rothman, Rodney. 2000. “My Fake Job.” Pp. 120 in The New Yorker , November 27.

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. n.d. “Institutional Ethnography.” Retrieved October 19, 2014 ( http://web.uvic.ca/~mariecam/kgSite/institutionalEthnography.html ).

Sonnenfeld, Jeffery A. 1985. “Shedding Light on the Hawthorne Studies.” Journal of Occupational Behavior 6:125.

Introduction to Sociology Copyright © 2012 by OSCRiceUniversity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Qualitative Methods in Sociological Research

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Qualitative Methods in Sociological Research by Jeff Sallaz LAST REVIEWED: 27 July 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 27 July 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0043

Qualitative research methods have a long and distinguished history within sociology. They trace their roots back to Max Weber’s call for an interpretive understanding of action. Today, qualitative sociology encompasses a variety of specific procedures for collecting data, ranging from life history interviews to direct observation of social interaction to embedded participant observation. In all of these cases, the social scientist directly interacts with those whom he or she is studying. The social scientist attempts to see the world from their perspective and to interpret their practices in a meaningful way. In fact, scholars such as Howard Becker and Clifford Geertz have argued that the ultimate test of the validity of a qualitative research study is whether it produces an account of social action that would make sense to the actors themselves. As this would imply, the foundational logic underlying qualitative studies differs from that of variable-oriented quantitative research. The latter measures particular properties of social phenomena and then uses statistical models to determine patterns of association among these properties, or variables. Because these models require a larger number of cases to establish statistically significant associations, quantitative researchers necessarily must sacrifice depth for breadth. Qualitative researchers, in contrast, are comfortable working with a small number of cases, or even a single case. They have at their disposal a variety of assumptions, theories, and methods to produce rich accounts of social life. In addition, qualitative research can offer unique insight into the relationship between microsocial and macrosocial worlds and even global forces.

The following texts offer the interested reader a general introduction to basic principles and debates associated with qualitative research methods. Ross 1992 and Abbott 1999 situate these methods in historical context. During the first half of the 20th century, ethnographic field research was the gold standard for sociology—especially at the famed Chicago school. The same was true in much of Europe, as Masson 2008 describes in the case of France. Katz 1997 , Burawoy 1998 , and Steinmetz 2005 , in turn, defend ethnography against recent critiques that it does not represent a legitimate mode of inquiry according to the standards of positivist science. That such debates are intertwined with larger moral concerns is demonstrated by Smith 2005 and Van Manen 1990 , both of which argue that qualitative methods are uniquely suited to study the lives of oppressed and subaltern groups.

Abbott, Andrew. 1999. Department and discipline: Chicago sociology at one hundred . Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Robert Park, a sociologist at the University of Chicago in the early 20th century, ordered his students to “Go get the seat of your pants dirty.” Abbott offers a balanced insider account of the famed Chicago School of ethnographic field research.

Burawoy, Michael. 1998. The extended case method. Sociological Theory 16.1: 5–33.

Argues that qualitative methods should not be held to the standards of “positive science.” Rather, they represent an equally valid mode of analysis grounded in a “reflexive science.”

Katz, Jack. 1997. Ethnography’s warrants. Sociological Methods and Research 25.4: 391–423.

DOI: 10.1177/0049124197025004002

Addresses the question how qualitative researchers can justify, or warrant, their case studies in relation to potentially hostile audiences who adhere to a mainstream quantitative view.

Masson, Philippe. 2008. Faire de la sociologie: Les grandes enquêtes françaises depuis 1945 . Grands repères. Guides. Paris: La Découverte.

Currently available only in French, this book covers the history of qualitative field methods in French sociology, especially the diffusion of ideas from the United States.

Ross, Dorothy. 1992. The origins of American social science . Ideas in Context. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

A comprehensive study of the history of sociology in America, this book argues that the legitimacy of qualitative research has been tied to the preeminence of various universities, departments, and faculties.

Smith, Dorothy. 2005. Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people . Gender Lens series. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.

Argues persuasively that ethnographers have a responsibility to impart in their research subjects an understanding of the powerful external forces shaping their everyday life worlds. Very much in the spirit of what C. Wright Mills referred to as the sociological imagination: the capacity to understand personal issues in the context of larger public problems.

Steinmetz, George, ed. 2005. The politics of method in the human sciences: Positivism and its epistemological others . Politics, History and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.

Collection of essays examining how positivism (i.e., an epistemology valorizing empirical observations and the application of the scientific method) came to dominate many human sciences, including sociology. Qualitative researchers often have to deal with the critique that their methods do not meet the standards of positivism.

Van Manen, Max. 1990. Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy . SUNY Series in Philosophy of Education. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.

A short but powerful book offering an accessible introduction to hermeneutic and phenomenological methods. It focuses on the applied aspects of qualitative methods for simultaneously teaching and learning from our subjects.

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ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Research Methods

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 13, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Sociologists use a range of quantitative and qualitative, primary and secondary social research methods to collect data about society.

The main types of research method are:

• Social surveys (questionnaires and structured interviews)
• Experiments (Lab and Field)
• Unstructured interviews
• Partipant Observation
• Secondary qualitative data
• Official Statistics.

This page provides links to more in depth posts on all of the above research methods. It has primarily been written for students studying the A Level Sociology AQA 7192 specification, and incorporates Methods in the Context of Education.

Research Methods at a Glance – Key Concepts  

Research Methods Top Ten Key Concepts – start here if you’re all at sea – includes simple explanations of terms such as validity, reliability, representativeness, Positivism and Interpretivism .

Research Methods A-Z Glossary – a more comprehensive index of the key terms you need to know for AS and A Level Sociology .

An Introduction to Research Methods

Without research methods there is no sociology!

This section covers the basics of the different types of research method and factors influencing choice of research methods, also the important distinction between Positivism and Interpretivism.

Research Methods in Sociology – An Introduction  – d etailed class notes covering the basic types of research method available to sociologists such as social surveys, interviews, experiments, and observations

Factors Effecting Choice of Research Topic in Sociology  – detailed class notes on the theoretical, ethical, and practical factors effecting the choice of research methods

Factors Effecting Choice of Research Method in Sociology  – detailed class notes covering theoretical, practical and ethical factors and the nature of topic. NB choice of topic will affect choice of research method. Choice of topic and method are different issues! 

Positivism and Interpretivism – Positivists generally prefer quantitative methods, Interpretivists prefer qualitative methods – this post consists of brief summary revision notes and revision diagrams outlining the difference between positivist and interpretivist approaches to social research. 

Positivism, Sociology and Social Research   – detailed class notes on the relationship between The Enlightenment, industrialisation and positivist sociology, which sees sociology as a science.  

Stages of Social Research  – detailed class notes covering research design, operationalising concepts, sampling, pilot studies, data collection and data analysis. 

Outline and explain two practical problems which might affect social research (10) –  A model answer to this exam question, which could appear on either paper 7191 (1) or 7191 (3). 

Good Resources for Teaching and Learning Research Method s –  simply links (with brief descriptions) which take you to a range of text books and web sites which focus on various aspects of quantitative and qualitative research methods. NB this post is very much a work in progress, being updated constantly. 

Primary Quantitative Research Methods

  social surveys.

An Introduction to Social Surveys  – a brief introduction to the use of different types of survey in social research, including structured questionnaires and interviews and different ways of administering surveys such as online, by phone or face to face.

The advantages and disadvantages of social surveys in social research  –  detailed class notes covering the theoretical, practical and ethical strengths and limitations of social surveys. Generally, surveys are preferred by positivists and good for simple topics, but not so good for more complex topics which require a ‘human touch’ .

Structured Interviews in Social Research – Interviews are effectively one of the means of administering social surveys. This post covers the different contexts (types) of structured interview, and the stages of doing them. It also looks at the strengths, limitations and criticisms.

Experiments

An Introduction to Experiments in Sociology   – a brief introduction covering definitions of key terms including hypotheses, dependent and independent variables and the Hawthorne Effect. NB sociologists don’t generally use experiments, especially not lab experiments, but you still need to know about them! 

Laboratory Experiments in Sociology   – detailed class notes on the strengths and limitations of laboratory experiments. Sociologists don’t generally use lab experiments, but examiners seem to ask questions about them more than other methods – one hypothesis for why is that sociology examiners have a burning hatred of teenagers. 

Field Experiments in Sociology   – detailed class notes on the strengths and limitations of field experiments. Field experiments take place in real life social settings so are more ‘sociological’ than lab experiments.

Seven Examples of Field Experiment for Sociology  –  class notes outlining a mixture of seven classic and contemporary field experiments relevant to various aspects of the AS and A level sociology syllabus .

Longitudinal Studies

Longitudinal Studies – These are interval studies designed to explore changes over a long period of time. Researchers start with a sample and keep going back to that same sample periodically – say every year, or every two years, to explore how and why changes occur.

The Seven Up Series – an in-depth look at Britain’s longest running and best loved Longitudinal study.

What Makes a Good Life ? – Lessons from a Longitudinal Study – This is one of the longest running Longitudinal studies in the world – the respondents were in their 20s when it started, now those who are still alive are in their 80s.

Primary Qualitative Research Methods

Primary qualitative research methods tend to be favoured by Interpretivists as they allow respondents to speak for themselves, and should thus yield valid data. However, because qualitative methods tend to involve the researcher getting more involved with the respondents, there is a risk that the subjective views of the researcher could interfere with the results, which could compromise both the validity and reliability of such methods.

Qualitative research methods also tend to be time consuming and so it can be difficult to to them with large samples of people.

Participant Observation

Overt and Covert  Participant Observation  –  Participant Observation is where researchers take part in the life of respondents, sometimes for several months or even years, and try to ‘see the world through their eyes’. Overt research is where respondents know the researcher is doing research, covert is where the researcher is undercover.

The strengths and limitations of covert participant observation – sociologists don’t generally use covert participant observation because of the ethical problem of deception means they can’t get funding. This methods is more commonly used by journalists doing investigative reporting, or you could even say undercover police officers use it, and you can use these examples to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of this method.

Some recent examples of sociological studies using participant observation – including Pearson’s covert research into football hooligans and Mears’s research into the modelling industry.

Non-Participant Observation  –  detailed class notes on non-participant observation. This is where the researcher observes from the sidelines and makes observations. Probably the most commonly used form of this is the OFSTED inspection.

Interviews in Social Research  –  This post consists of detailed class notes focusing strengths and limitations of mainly unstructured interviews, which are like a guided conversation that allow respondents the freedom to speak for themselves.

Secondary Research Methods

Official statistics.

Official Statistics in Sociology  –  class notes on the general strengths and limitations of official statistics, which are numerical data collected by the government. Examples include crime statistics, school league tables and education statistics.

Evaluating the Usefulness of Official Statistics – the UK government collects a wide variety of statistics, the validity of which can vary enormously. This post explores the validity of Religious belief statistics, crime and prison statistics, and immigration data, among other sources of data.

Cross National Comparisons – Comparing data across countries using official statistics can provide insight into the causes of social problems such as poverty, and war and conflict. This post looks at how you might go about doing this and the strengths and limitations of this kind of research.

Univariate Analysis in Quantitative Social Research – This involves looking at one variable at a time. This post covers the strengths and limitations of bar charts, pie charts and box plots.

Secondary Qualitative Data

Secondary Qualitative Data Analysis in Sociology – class notes covering private and public documents. Public documents include any written or visual document produced with an audience in mind, such things as government reports and newspapers, whereas private documents refer to personal documents such as diaries and letters which are not intended to be seen by their authors.

Content Analysis of the Media in Social Research  –  class notes covering formal content (quantitative) analysis and semiology .

Personal documents in social research – a more in-depth look at the strengths and limitations of using sources such as diaries and letters as sources of data.

Autobiographies in social research – Autobiographies are popular with the British public, but how useful are they as sources of data for the social researcher?

Sociology, Science and Value Freedom (Part of A2 Theory and Methods)

Sociology and Value Freedom  – Detailed class notes .

Methods in Context – Research Methods Applied to Education

Field Experiments applied to Education  – are Chinese Teaching Methods the Best? This is a summary of a documentary in which some students at one school undertook a Chinese style of teaching for 3 months, involving 12 hour days and ‘teach from the front techniques’. The students were then tested and their results compared to students from the same school who stuck to the traditional British way of teaching. The results may surprise you!

Participant Observation in Education  –  focusing on the work of Paul Willis and Mac An Ghail.

Non-Participant Observation in Education  –  focusing on OFSTED inspections, as these are probably the most commonly used of all methods in education .

The Strengths and Limitations of Education Statistics  – This post discusses the strengths and limitations of results statistics. NB these may not be as valid as you think .

Evaluating the Usefulness of Secondary Qualitative Data to Research Education  –  there are lot of documents sociologists may use to research education, including school promotional literature and web sites, policy documents, written records on students, and, if they can access them, personal messages between students referring to what they think about school.

Focus on the AS and A Level Exams

Research Methods Practice Questions for A-level Sociology – you will get a 10 mark question on both papers SCLY1 and SCLY3 most likely asking you to ‘outline and explain’ the strengths and limitations of any of the main research methods. This post outlines some of the many variations.

Research Methods Essays – How to Write Them – general advice on writing research methods essays for the AS and A level sociology exams. This post covers the PET technique – Practical, Ethical and Theoretical.

Assess the Strengths of Using Participant Observation in Social Research (20) – example essay, top mark band.

Methods in Context Essay Template  – a suggested gap fill essay plan on how to answer these challenging ‘applied research methods’ questions.

Methods in Context Mark Scheme  – pared down mark scheme – easy to understand! It may surprise you to know that you can get up to 12/20 for just writing about the method, without even applying it to the question!

Outline and explain two advantages of overt compared to covert observation (10) – you might think that being undercover provides you with more valid data than when respondents know you are observing them, however, there are a few reasons why this might not be the case. This post explores why, and some of the other advantages overt has over covert observation. (Honestly, covert is a lot of hassle!). NB this post is written as a response to an exam style question .

Using Participant Observation to research pupils with behavourial difficulties (20) – a model answer for this methods in context style of essay.

For more links to methods and applied methods essays see my page – ‘ Exams, Essays and Short Answer Questions ‘.

Other Relevant Posts

Learning to Labour by Paul Willis – Summary and Evaluation of Research Methods .

How old are twitter users? – applied sociology – illustrates some of the problems us using social media to uncover social trends.

Twitter users by occupation and social class – applied sociology – illustrates some of the problems us using social media to uncover social trends.

Other posts and links will be forthcoming throughout 2020, check back soon .

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

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• Types of Research in Sociology

In this section, you will find an overview of different research methods in sociology. You will find links to tools and resources in the library related to the different types of research and writing.

Qualitative vs Quantitative Research

• What's the Difference?
• Qualitative Research
• Quantitative Research

Research in Psychology is categorized into two general methods:

Non-numerical evidence, usually examined in its raw form

Used when a researcher wants to understand people's  opinions, idiosyncratic responses to an event, motivations, or underlying reasons for actions or decisions.

Learn about the Types of Qualitative Research Methods. link will open in a new window

Example: Interviewing the victims of a natural disaster to gather a range of emotional responses.

Numbers!  Collected as numerical data or converted into numerical data and examined using statistical methods of analysis.

Used to examine trends and compare populations.

Learn about the Types of Quantitative Research Methods. link will open in a new window

Example: Asking victims of a natural disaster to rank their feelings of anxiety using a pre-determined scale.

When to use them

Psychological research is best when it uses complementary quantitative and qualitative approaches together in the same study, a method called  triangulation.

Example:  Observing parent-child interactions while watching tv then comparing those observations to measured rates of social and cognitive development in the children who participated in the study.

The Research Continuum

The researchers record data by studying participants at a distance.   Researchers try not to influence the participants or their actions.

Types of observational studies include:  Naturalistic Observation link will open in a new window , Participant Observation link will open in a new window ,  or Ethnography. link will open in a new window

The researcher will collect and write detailed accounts of individual lives. A case study can combine a few research approaches, including interviews, observational data, and archival data.

Examples of Case Studies include Freud's history of Anna O link will open in a new window ., and the stories related in Oliver Sacks's best selling book  The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat .

A researcher applies their own analytical model to data that has already been collected.  They attempt to answer a new question or discover a new trend by looking at old data.

Typical sources of archival data include:  census data link will open in a new window , court records will open in a new window , medical records,  and even  case files  from other researchers.

Participants are asked a standard set of questions.  These questions may be delivered in writing or through an interview format.

There are three main types of questionnaire methods:   Random Sampling link will open in a new window , Stratified Sampling link will open in a new window , and Convenience Sampling link will open in a new window .

Researchers are trying to find a solution to an immediate, practical problem.  Examples include reducing drug use or improving worker happiness. 

Field research is a type of applied research that is undertaken in a non-laboratory setting. These settings may include a hospital or workplace.

Research conducted in a controlled environment.  The results help scholars in the field to learn more about psychological processes such as cognition or emotional development.

Common Research Methods

Types of observational studies include:  Non-Participant Observation   window or   Participant Observation .

A classic example of Case Studies in sociology is Erving Goffman's classic  Asylums. link will open in a new window

Information is gathered one-on-one by asking questions orally.   Structured Interviews can sometimes be used to gather quantitative data, because the structure allows the interview to function like a questionnaire.  

More qualitative types of interviewing range from the  Unstructured Interview  which functions like a conversation based around a set list of topics, to the  In-Depth Interview  which may range widely with only a loose guide to direct it.  

In-depth studies of groups in their natural setting.  These studies utilize multiple type of research to create a multi-layered report.  In addition to Participant Observation, a researcher may use interviews, questionnaires, or analysis of secondary research related to the group.

Some good examples of ethnographies available through the Library's online resources include:  Recovery's Edge : An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency Link will open in a new window by Neely Laurenzo Meyers, Sex Work and the City Link will open in a new window by Ysmina Katsulis, and The breakup 2.0 : disconnecting over new media Link will open in a new window by Ilana Gershon.

Experimental Research Methods

What is Experimental Research?

Experimental Research is a sub-type of research in sociology.  It may utilize the same methods as other research, but it differs in that it attempts measure variables as precisely as possible.

Experimental Research starts with a hypothesis  and uses a variety of research methods to  test  that hypothesis.  Ususally involves testing  causal relationships.

Researchers study the cause and effect of variables in a natural setting , such as a classroom or workplace.

This allows the researcher to study participants or phenomena in their natural setting, so results might be more accurate . But they have less control over the variables, so results might not be as precise .

Research conducted in a controlled environment.  

Participants' reactions may be influenced by the unnatural setting, but researchers have more control over variables.

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Developing a Research Question

18 Hypotheses

When researchers do not have predictions about what they will find, they conduct research to answer a question or questions, with an open-minded desire to know about a topic, or to help develop hypotheses for later testing. In other situations, the purpose of research is to test a specific hypothesis or hypotheses.  A hypothesis is a statement, sometimes but not always causal, describing a researcher’s expectations regarding anticipated finding. Often hypotheses are written to describe the expected relationship between two variables (though this is not a requirement). To develop a hypothesis, one needs to understand the differences between independent and dependent variables and between units of observation and units of analysis. Hypotheses are typically drawn from theories and usually describe how an independent variable is expected to affect some dependent variable or variables. Researchers following a deductive approach to their research will hypothesize about what they expect to find based on the theory or theories that frame their study. If the theory accurately reflects the phenomenon it is designed to explain, then the researcher’s hypotheses about what would be observed in the real world should bear out.

Sometimes researchers will hypothesize that a relationship will take a specific direction. As a result, an increase or decrease in one area might be said to cause an increase or decrease in another. For example, you might choose to study the relationship between age and legalization of marijuana. Perhaps you have done some reading in your spare time, or in another course you have taken.  Based on the theories you have read, you hypothesize that “age is negatively related to support for marijuana legalization.” What have you just hypothesized? You have hypothesized that as people get older, the likelihood of their support for marijuana legalization decreases. Thus, as age moves in one direction (up), support for marijuana legalization moves in another direction (down). If writing hypotheses feels tricky, it is sometimes helpful to draw them out. and depict each of the two hypotheses we have just discussed.

Note that you will almost never hear researchers say that they have proven their hypotheses. A statement that bold implies that a relationship has been shown to exist with absolute certainty and that there is no chance that there are conditions under which the hypothesis would not bear out. Instead, researchers tend to say that their hypotheses have been supported (or not) . This more cautious way of discussing findings allows for the possibility that new evidence or new ways of examining a relationship will be discovered. Researchers may also discuss a null hypothesis, one that predicts no relationship between the variables being studied. If a researcher rejects the null hypothesis, he or she is saying that the variables in question are somehow related to one another.

Quantitative and qualitative researchers tend to take different approaches when it comes to hypotheses. In quantitative research, the goal often is to empirically test hypotheses generated from theory. With a qualitative approach, on the other hand, a researcher may begin with some vague expectations about what he or she will find, but the aim is not to test one’s expectations against some empirical observations. Instead, theory development or construction is the goal. Qualitative researchers may develop theories from which hypotheses can be drawn and quantitative researchers may then test those hypotheses. Both types of research are crucial to understanding our social world, and both play an important role in the matter of hypothesis development and testing.  In the following section, we will look at qualitative and quantitative approaches to research, as well as mixed methods.

Text Attributions

• This chapter has been adapted from Chapter 5.2 in Principles of Sociological Inquiry , which was adapted by the Saylor Academy without attribution to the original authors or publisher, as requested by the licensor. © Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License .

An Introduction to Research Methods in Sociology Copyright © 2019 by Valerie A. Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sociological Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Research methods and analysis of sociology dealt with techniques to obtain information in a vivid form.

Research is carefully observing patterns for searching for new facts or terms in any kind of subject. For example, there are several research centers for obtaining new results for better performance, say Bhabha Atomic Research center which specializes in nuclear fission and fusion reactions.

Sociologists Redman and Mory explained research work as a systematic way to earn new knowledge or say angle towards anything. For example, after a research work, various developments can be seen.

Research methods are categorized into Qualitative and Quantitative methods .

Quantitative methods included data structures, mathematical formulas, postulates, analysis by pie charts, graphical representations, Co-relation, Regression, etc. The methods used in Quantitative research will be studied in detail below.

• Statistical data

Positivists majorly depend upon this method because they think it is the most convenient and efficient way to see society and its problems.  For example, the rate of sex ratio or the number of rape happening in a particular area makes sociologists see the present scenario of the society.

• Comparative Method

It can be easily guessed from the name itself that the method includes comparing different values. For example, in the science laboratory, there are comparators which compare different values of resistance and thus a mean value is written. Same is the case with sociology, different societies are compared by sociologist and after observing each and every factor they develop some theories under their research work. Marx, Durkheim , and Weber are said to be the inventor of this method which profoundly deals with the logic. The three of them compared many societies with each other to give some of the wonderful research work. Marx studied the phenomenon of difference and thus agreed that societies transform via many changes.

Durkheim observed the basis of division of labour and Weber tried to link the relation between capitalist and exploited countries. This method is still used by many sociologists for letting the world know about differences. For example, Michael Mann compared how every country differs when it comes to power and dominance. Devine showed the condition of workers in different time periods.

• Field Methods

Science experiments are generally done in respective laboratories. But sociology experiments are performed in a natural arrangement outside the labs. For example, sociologists can carry out experiments in which they can observe people interaction ability thus categorizing them into introverts, ambivert, and extroverts. The advantage of this method is that it allows the expansion of areas where the experiment can be performed and better results are obtained as compared to other methods. But likewise, its biggest disadvantage is the variance can cause experiment results to differ unlike experiments performed in a science laboratory. This error is also termed as a Hawthorne effect. The experiments do not account for generalizing any theory as a particular amount of people can be tested.

Qualitative Methods are those methods which depend on the theories of Interactionism Theories. For example people way of talking under different circumstances studied by a researcher. The result will be completely based on the way the researcher perceives everything. The various methods of a Qualitative method are studied below.

• Participant Observation

It can be seen as a modification of Field methods as this method involves the researcher too. The researcher has to keep a mindset as an observant which will decrease the chances of a biased opinion as the perception will not be compressed. The field researchers, data or any theory is studied comprehensively as a researcher and participant point of view.

• Direct Observation

This method was one step up-gradation to field methods and Participant Observation. This observation also included a third party involvement whose perception cannot fall into the claws of a biased nature. For example, even if a researcher tries to complete experiment, he will not totally drench himself into the perception of the participant, thus a third person who will see the whole activity without any judgment will yield better results. For example in cricket matches, apart from umpires, a proper video is taken to see whether the player is out or not. This makes the judgment fair enough for everybody. In simple words, participant and researchers are not aware of the fact that they are being observed which accounts for natural reactions.

• Unstructured Interviewing
• These interviews are completely in contrast to conventionally structured interviews. They differ in various aspects. In unstructured interviewing, there are no set of standardized questions. The discussion can travel in any direction depending on the interviewer. Due to lack of patter, these interviews are hard to crack.
• Case Studies

Case studies do not go along with a single method. There are various methods which are being used for observing even the minute details. It can be called as the summation of the direct method, unstructured interviews etc. The quantitative and qualitative approaches a given situation in an entirely different way. For example, quantitative methods are based on mathematical numbers, graphs, and statistics. But because of this method, much information is lost accounting for little information as compared to the qualitative method. Quantitative analysis is fact-driven but the facts can change anytime but they are mostly copied from earlier records, whereas qualitative analysis is observation-driven, its data can be changed accordingly which is its biggest advantage over the other.

TECHNIQUES OF DATA COLLECTION

Data collection is mainly stored in two ways, primary resources , and secondary resources .

Primary Resources are the data which are obtained by researchers, for example through personal or telephonic interviews, participant behaviour by keenly observing them or asking them a set of questions.

Secondary resources are the data which are mainly records in any form. For example, any old book can provide much information about the time period comes under secondary resources. There is no direct information but mainly statistics, graphs, old research works, or historical books.

MORE METHODS OF QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS:-

• Participant and Quasi-Participant Observation

It has been proved for a long time that observation helps in collecting data as well as result in accurate analysis. Observation contains two major functions viz. causes and effects. The observation is categorized in two ways viz. controlled and uncontrolled, active and passive.

Inactive observation, the researcher is also a part of an analysis. For example, he will take part in a game and will play fairly at his part.

In passive observation, the researcher observes everything from a distant place without getting noticed. For example mother-son duo small gestures can be easily noticed by him/her.

Controlled observations are those matter of solicitation in which things can be brought under control anytime. For example, knowing that someone is observing me I can easily change my reactions.

Uncontrolled observations are those observations in which neither researcher nor the people under observation stop the process of analysis. They are being adaptive to any situation no matter what results can be obtained.

There is another type called a Mixed Observation type. In these methods, extremities are found. Either the researcher is totally drenching in the activity or will be observing every bit in solitude. It is also known as Quasi Participant Observation.

This method involves a panel of interviewers and applicants. For example, in any placement drive, a panel is set up and they took a massive amount of information about the applicants by asking them many questions. Much information about their personality, IQ, confidence, abilities is judged in a matter of some minutes. The interviews can be of many types viz. formal, informal, solo or group.

Informal interviews are not much in trend but the other three are practised at a rapid rate.

• Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a set of questions designed in a format which can be solved by only those who can read and write. Thus the biggest disadvantage of this method is that it cannot be fulfilled by everybody. The sole purpose of this method is storing answers and due to same questions, best answers manage to secure the position.

The schedule is entirely based on the way an interviewer seek things. The questionnaire set is solved by a person in front of the researchers. Thus the question does not affect much, but the perspective of the researcher does. There are many types of schedule:-

• Rating Schedules – This kind of schedules generally come under the HR department. The opinions, ways of accepting or rejecting things, or habits are observed keenly.
• Document Schedules – As the name suggests, it generally involves the paperwork. For example in criminology, criminal’s history is studied. Case studies are also popular, for example how to transform a city into the smart city.
• Evaluation Schedules – Quantitative analysis for example data collection is a primary objective of this schedule. For example, if a company arrives at placement, the students collect every data, for example, the company position, job profile, CTC etc.
• Observation Schedules – The researcher will observe everybody’s intention, either by involving in any activity or by being aloof.
• Interview Schedules – The researcher freely asks respondents any question and after deciding their confidence, time to think, IQ etc is judged.

Continue Reading → Variable,Sampling,Hypothesis,Reliability & Validity

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RESEARCH METHODS

The 'nutshells' provide concentrated summaries. use the arrows or swipe across to explore topics in more detail, including key perspectives  and sociologists ..

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Topic 1 - Choosing a research method

In a nutshell

Positivists and interpretivists differ on their choice of research methods, depending on the type of data they produce, as well as their theoretical issues. Positivists prefer scientific, quantifiable data that is quick and easy to obtain, and is rich in reliability and validity. Interpretivists, on the other hand, value qualitative data that provides in-depth meaning of a small-scale research group, and is therefore rich in validity. The choice of research method is also determined by the practical, ethical and theoretical issues associated with it.

Topic 2 - EXPERIMENTS

An experiment is characterised by its high degree of control that the researcher has over the situation. In an experiment, the researcher identifies and controls all variables that might affect the outcome. By manipulating the variables and observing what happens, the researcher can discover cause and effect relationships. There are two main types of experiments: laboratory experiments and field experiments.

Topic 3 - Questionnaires

Favoured by positivists, written or self-completed questionnaires are a form of social survey and can be distributed in a range of ways - notably, via post, email or handed out in person. Questionnaires are typically a list of pre-set questions that are closed-end questions with pre-coded answers.

Topic 4 - Interviews

In sociological research, there are different types of interviews: structured interviews and unstructured interviews (including group interviews). Sociologists sometimes use semi-structured interviews to combine the elements of both. Structured interviews are favoured by positivists because they are rich in reliability and representativity, whereas unstructured interviews are favoured by interpretivists because they are rich in validity.

topic 5 - Observations

Observations in sociological research take several different forms; they can either be participant or non-participant, meaning that the researcher is directly involved in one but not the other. Although participating in observations gives a direct insight into social behaviour, this is likely to produce the Hawthorne effect due to how participants are aware they are being studied and will change their behaviour accordingly. Additionally, observations can be either covert or overt; the former means the research group are aware the observation is taking place, whereas the latter means the research group do not know they are being researched.

topic 6 - official statistics

Official statistics are quantitative data collected by government bodies. This method is favoured by positivists because data is quick, cheap and easy to access, and it covers a wide range of social issues.

topic 7 - Documents

Documents are secondary data, favoured by interpretivists, which are created by individuals, groups and organisations. They mainly contain qualitative data that expresses beliefs and meanings held by an individual and/or organisation. Different types of documents include personal private documents and historical documents.

topic 8 - Methods in Context

Education is a unique setting for research and includes specific elements that may change the way in which research is conducted. This will all depend on the theme, the method and the topic involved.

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Research Methods in Sociology

An important part of studying sociology at any level is understanding how sociological research works. How do sociologists go about finding information about society? How can we study society?

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• American Identity
• Beliefs in Society
• Crime and Deviance
• Cultural Identity
• Education With Methods in Context
• Families and Households
• Famous Sociologists
• Global Development
• Content Analysis in Sociology
• Data Analysis Sociology
• Ethics in Sociological Research
• Longitudinal Study Sociology
• Positivism and Interpretivism
• Primary Research
• Sampling in Sociology
• Secondary Research
• Social Institutions
• Social Relationships
• Social Stratification
• Sociological Approach
• Sociology of Education
• Sociology of Family
• Stratification and Differentiation
• Theories and Methods
• Work Poverty And Welfare

To try and answer these questions, we'll go over the topic of research methods in sociology. You'll have an introduction to all of the subtopics, which will set you up well for the detailed articles dedicated to each topic.

We'll go over the following topics in an introductory manner.

The research process

Theoretical factors affecting research (including collecting and analysing sociological data and sampling in sociological research)

Ethics in sociological research

Evaluating sociological research

The research process in sociology

The research process is an important starting point for any sociologist that wants to find out something about society. They have to consider what they will study and how they will study it.

So, what is the research process? It may help to think of the process in different 'stages', almost like building blocks that build upon each other. There are several stages, which we will look at now.

Stages of the research process

To increase the chances of successful research, sociologists broadly go through the following stages during the research process.

Existing literature review

With so much information already present, sociologists consider how they can use existing research to inform their own research choices. By doing an existing literature review, they can also be aware of what hasn't been researched yet.

Hypothesis formulation

This stage is effectively where the sociologist decides what they will carry out their research on. They may outline aims of their research so that they are clear on what the research should focus on. They may also present hypotheses.

A hypothesis is a statement that is presented as a prediction or a suggestion about something. Through research, the hypothesis is tested and either proven or refuted.

The following statement: "Students have better concentration when they work at home" is an example of a hypothesis that can be tested through research.

Different types of research methods in sociology

Having formed a hypothesis, sociologists will consider how to test it. This involves the consideration of different types of research methods. Depending on the nature of their research question, they may have to choose between:

• Primary and secondary research
• Quantitative and qualitative research

We will go through each of these research methods in more detail in their respective articles.

To do or not to do: pilot studies

You may have heard television series do 'pilot' episodes to gauge the series' popularity. Similarly, sociologists may carry out pilot studies to trial their research plan before beginning their main study. In doing so, they can iron out any issues beforehand.

Sampling, collecting and analysing the data

Considering how to sample participants, data collection and analysis are key parts of the research process. Sociologists must avoid any bias during these stages so that they do not undermine the validity of the research.

Of course, bias should be avoided at all stages; but it is particularly important here.

Research evaluation

Once the research is complete, it can be evaluated for its strengths and weaknesses. Did it meet the research aims? Is the hypothesis proven or refuted? What did the study do well, and where is it lacking? This helps not only the sociologists who did the research but also other researchers so that they can build upon it.

Using sociological research in real life

The real-life applications of sociological research are more widespread than we may realise. Sociological research is very commonly used to inform governments in creating social policies.

Sociologists identify social issues or problems and carry out research, which can be used to create social polices and actions to address such issues. Social policies informed by sociological research can be found in education, crime, social welfare, housing, etc.

Practical considerations

As well as questions about the research itself, sociologists will need to consider the practicalities of their research. Practical considerations include concerns about time, cost and access.

How long is the research predicted to take? Is it likely to go beyond the predicted time? Is it a short study or a longitudinal study? How long will it take to get results?

Who is funding the research, and does the funding cover all research costs? If the research has not been funded yet, is it likely to be?

It may be possible for a good research proposal to be rejected on the basis of practicalities, for instance, if it costs too much or if it will take too long to produce results.

Now that you've got an idea of the sociological research process let's move on to theoretical factors affecting research.

Theoretical factors affecting research: different types of research methods in sociology

Theoretical factors that shape research include the positivism vs interpretivism debate, issues of sampling, and collecting and analysing sociological data. We'll start with the discussion regarding positivism and interpretivism.

Positivism vs interpretivism

There are many debates in sociology, a key one being that between positivist and interpretivist theorists. This considers a few questions about theory and research, including:

• How should we study society, i.e. objectively or subjectively?
• How should we collect data about society and humans?
• Is society too complex, or can generalisations be made?

With that, let's briefly consider both sides of the debate.

Positivist sociologists believe that sociology is a science and that society can be studied using scientific methods in the same way the natural world can be studied. They believe that there are objective laws of society, which they aim to uncover using scientific research methods.

The focus of positivist researchers is on behaviour that can be observed and measured; they do not consider subjective internal feelings or processes.

Positivist sociologists, therefore, lean towards quantitative research methods that produce objective data, such as experiments and questionnaires.

Interpretivism

On the other hand, interpretivist sociologists believe that society and humans cannot be studied in the same way as the natural world. Humans are complex and have meanings behind their actions; therefore, sociologists must study these meanings to understand people and society.

Interpretivist sociologists lean towards qualitative research methods that produce detailed accounts, such as unstructured interviews and case studies.

Mixed methods approach

Naturally, with such fundamentally different perspectives, these theoretical factors will greatly impact the way sociologists carry out research.

However, it is possible to take a mixed-methods approach , whereby researchers can use 'the best of both worlds' to better research the topic at hand.

Sampling in sociological research

Sampling in sociological studies is an important consideration as it can profoundly impact the validity and generalisability of the research.

Samples should aim to be representative. T his means that they can be applied to the wider population. Different sampling methods include probability and non-probability sampling.

Probability sampling

This sampling method means that everyone in the population has an equal chance of being selected as a participant. There are different types of probability sampling:

• Simple random
• Systematic random
• Stratified random

Non-probability sampling

This method is used where the research focuses not on the wider population but on a certain social group. There are different types of non-probability sampling:

This is a lot of new terminology, so we will go through each type of sampling in its respective article.

Collecting and analysing sociological data

When researchers reach the gathering stage, they collect data using primary and/or secondary research methods.

Primary research

Primary data is collected first-hand by the researcher. It may help to think of it as 'original' data. Examples of research methods that collect primary data include:

• surveys and questionnaires
• longitudinal studies
• observation studies

Secondary research

Secondary data already exists because it has been collected by someone else. An example of a research method that collects secondary data is the use of official statistics.

There are also many other forms of secondary data (such as newspapers and personal documents) that you may come across later in your studies.

Quantitative and qualitative research methods in sociology

Quantitative and qualitative data refers to the type of data collected. Quantitative data is mainly numerical, while qualitative data is heavily word-based.

Quantitative data can be useful for when researchers want to test for some kind of relationship, e.g. a trend, pattern or correlation between two or more variables. Examples of research methods generating quantitative data include questionnaires and laboratory experiments.

On the other hand , qualitative data can be useful for when researchers want a lot of depth, detail and insight into a particular issue. This may be because they want to find out how or why someone or something works. Case studies and unstructured interviews are good examples of research methods generating qualitative data.

Ethics and research methods in sociology

When studying societal issues and humans, researchers will likely face ethical issues. Research has to be conducted in a certain way without infringing on the participants' wellbeing, interests and autonomy.

Ethical issues in sociological research methods address the following considerations:

• Are the participants' identities protected during the research process, including publication?
• Can participants anonymously answer surveys and questionnaires?
• Do the participants know they are being recorded or observed?
• Have the participants given informed consent?

If ethical guidelines are not followed or breached, this can cause issues and can become a key evaluation point for the research (see below).

Evaluating research methods in sociology

When published, other researchers peer-review sociological research, evaluating it using several considerations.

Key research evaluation points

The following are key points of evaluation for sociological research:

How far does the study achieve what it set out to achieve?

Reliability

Can other sociologists replicate the research project in question? If so, are they likely to get the same results?

Representativeness

Is the sample representative enough? Is it biased, e.g. using the researchers' acquaintances as the sample?

Generalisability

How far does the study apply to the wider population? Can we make generalisations about the study?

What are the participants' interests? Have all ethical guidelines been followed?

Sociological Research Methods - Key takeaways

• The research process includes sociologists' considerations of what they will study and how they will study it. There are several stages of the research process.
• Theoretical factors that affect research include the positivism vs interpretivism debate, sampling, and collecting and analysing data.
• Research can be positivist, interpretivist or both, using a mixed-methods approach.
• Ethical guidelines must be followed when conducting sociological research. This is to protect participants.
• Several considerations are taken into account to evaluate research, including validity, reliability, representativeness, generalisability, and ethics.

Flashcards inResearch Methods in Sociology 240

An important part of studying sociology at any level is understanding how sociological _____ works. 

How many stages are there of the research process?

What is the first stage of the research process?

Sociologists may have to choose between which types of research?

• Primary and secondary research 

What is a pilot study?

A pilot study is a study to trial a research plan before the main study is carried out.

What is the purpose of a pilot study?

Pilot studies are carried out to iron out any issues with the research plan.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Research Methods in Sociology

What are research methods in sociology?

Research methods in sociology are ways in which a sociological hypothesis or research aim can be tested. Research methods are used to collect data. An example of a research method is a questionnaire.

What is the best research method in sociology?

It is difficult to judge the best research method in sociology, as several aspects must be considered. This includes assessing the research aims, the type of data is to be collected, and how it will be analysed.

What is a qualitative research method in sociology?

An example of a qualitative research method in sociology is an unstructured interview.

What are quantitative methods in sociology?

Quantitative research methods in sociology are research methods which gather mainly numerical data.

Why are research methods important in sociology?

Research methods are important in sociology as sociologists cannot collect or analyse data and study society without them.

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5 Data: Types and Sources

Subhrangsu Santra

1.      Objective

2.      Introduction

3.      Learning Outcome

4.      Types of Data

4.1    Quantitative Data

4.3   Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data

  Self-Check Exercise 1

5.       Sources of Data: Primary and Secondary

5.1.    Advantages of use of Primary Data

5.2.    Advantages of use of Secondary Data

5.3.    Choice between Primary and Secondary Data

5.4.    Publications containing Primary and Secondary Data

6.       Methods of Collection of Primary Data

7.       Steps of Collection of Primary Data

   Self-Check Exercise 2

8.       Summary

1.        Objective

In this module, an attempt has been made to explain the meaning and concept of data with its types, sources and different methods of data collection to conduct any type of social research. A brief introduction of some quantitative and qualitative techniques of data collection including PRA is also given to allow students to develop a comparative approach.

Data is a plural form of a Latin word datum , meaning ‘facts or statics used for reference or analysis’ . In social sciences, it is treated as a plural noun and used with a plural verb, for instance, we write ‘the data were classified’ and use the term datum in its singular form. According to Hicks (1993: 668), data is “a representation of facts, concepts or instructions in a formalised manner suitable for communication, interpretation, or processing by humans or by automatic means” . Data is basically the combination of different kinds of observation either in quantitative or in qualitative form which is needed to express any problem of the society as well as to find out possible solution of that problem through using appropriate methods of calculation in a research study. Data consists of full information regarding a particular aspect; it summarise a set of facts. Reading, scores, points, goals, measurements obtained from observation of salient features of a certain reality and systematically recorded in a standard form, are, therefore, called data (Singh 2011).

The procurement of observation from different sources for a single object is known as collection of data. So, data is the only leader, whose systematic arrangement can help to reach the actual objective of any study. In any research, data are used to draw conclusions, which help us to understand our environment better. We use data to adjust ourselves to the environment or to change it.

This module will help the students to get basic idea of various types of data and their sources. Students will also learn about various methods of collection of data, steps to be followed to collect those. The module would also provide some basic idea about the use of a qualitative technique called Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) – a tool or a method to collect primary data in a very short time with the active participation of people of that area.

4. Types of Data

There are many ways of classifying data. A common classification is based upon who collected the data . The term ‘primary data’ is used to refer to data collected by the investigator himself/herself for a specific purpose. For instance, a scholar carrying out field research is bound to generate primary data from his/her point of view. In many instance agency/organization collecting primary data allow others to read and use them in original form. Census data, for instance, are primary data. Similarly, National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) or National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) do publish their original data and make those available to researchers. As against this, the term ‘secondary data’ is used to mean data collected by someone else for some other purpose, but being utilized by the investigator for his/her own research purpose. For example, we all use research findings of other scholars to analyse a situation or to prove a point. While using such secondary data, the original data is not cited; rather the analysis of the concerned  author is used. It is therefore called ‘secondary’. There are several advantages and disadvantages of both these types of data. As primary and secondary data also refer to two different sources of data, we would discuss these in some detail later.

Another classification of data is based on objective and subjective points of view. Objective data are those that are external to the individual and to which the researcher has assigned meaning a priori . Dimensions of a house, age of a respondent, education of the family members, etc. are examples of objective data. Subjective data are those relating to the subjective makeup of the individuals studied. Attitudes and opinions are typical illustrations of subjective data.

This objective point of view accepts that the data are validated in the sense that they must be measured and recorded accurately. Data can be shown to be true if they correspond to reality. The objective view makes the following assumptions about data:

•  They are factual, resulting from recording of measurable events, or objects.

•  Data represent information and are the only way we can make information explicit.

•  They record particular instances of reality.

•  They are explicit as they are in a fixed in recorded form.

•  Hence, they can be communicated digitally.

On the other hand, the subjective view makes the following assumptions about data.

•   The data are not necessarily true or accurate as not all errors can be detected automatically and not everyone will necessarily agree that they are a true representation of a particular fact.

•  Some data record subjective opinion, not facts. If data can represent opinions and concepts, they are not truly objective.

•   Data have absolutely no meaning. They acquire meaning only when appropriated and analysed by a human recipient in a particular context.

Another popular way to classify data is to refer to their numerical and non-numerical characters. We prefer to call them quantitative (numerical) and qualitative (non-numerical) data. Information about the age of respondents is quantitative because age of the respondents is expressed in number, say 38 year. It is possible to quantify many aspects of social living. For instance, apart from age, we can also quantify height, weight, literacy, income or distance. We also further divide such quantitative data into two more groups – discrete and continuous. As compared to numerical data, religion of a group of people is qualitative because religion cannot be stated in numerical terms, a person should either be Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist or Christian. There are many non-numerical concepts like love, hatred, relationship, sentiment, emotion, feeling that are difficult to quantify. Even though it is often possible to numerically present a qualitative aspect of social living, say measuring maturity of a person by his age and work experience, the depth of meaning attached to the concept is often lost in the process.

Let us discuss the quantitative and qualitative types of data in some detail to reveal their nuances, advantages and limitations.

4.1 Quantitative Data

The quantitative character of data is technically called numerical variable. Numerical variable is a quantitative character of an object/matter and its values can always be measured. For example, the students of a department may be classified according to their weight as follows:

Table 1: Weight wise distribution of Students

Such a distribution is known as frequency distribution. In this type of classification, there are two elements, namely (i) the numerical variable, i.e. the weight of the students in the above table in five groups or classes, and (ii) frequency, i.e. the number of students in each group or class. There were 12 students having weight between 35 to 45 Kilograms, 109 students having weight between 45 to 55 Kilograms and so on. Thus, we can find out the ways in which the frequencies (i.e. the number of students) are distributed.

Continuous and Discrete Variables

A frequency distribution refers to data classified on the basis of some variable that can be measured, such as price, wage, age, number of unit produced or consumed. The term variable refers to the characteristic that varies in amount or magnitude in a frequency distribution. A variable may be either continuous or discrete .

A Continuous Variable , also called continuous random variable, is capable of manifesting every conceivable fractional value within the range of possibilities, such as the height of the children of an ICDS centre or weight of persons donating blood in a camp. In a continuous variable, data are obtained by numerical measurements rather than counting. For example, the height of an individual may have any value between, say, from 60 inches to 74 inches. It may be 66.4 inches, 66.47 inches or even 66.46589 inches provided we could measure the height so precisely. So a continuous variate can take any infinite number of values within a given interval, however small it may be. Height, weight, temperature, density etc., are example of a continuous variate. Generally, the continuous data are obtained through measurement. Series which can be described by a continuous variable are called continuous series.

A Discrete Variable is that which can vary only by finite “jumps” and cannot manifest every conceivable fraction value. The number of children per family, the number of members per Self Help Group (SHG), the number of classrooms per primary school are example of this type. The number of classrooms per primary school can take only the values 1, 2, 3, 4, ……, i.e. whole numbers; it cannot take any value, e.g. a fractional value. Similarly, the number of members in SHG is a discrete variable. Such kinds of data are derived through counting. Series represented by discrete variables are called discrete series. The following are two examples of discrete and continuous frequency distribution:

Table 2: Classroom wise distribution of Primary School in Raina – I block of Burdwan District

Example of Continuous Frequency Distribution

Let us discuss some other examples:

(a)  Family Size is a discrete variable. Because, it can take only some isolated values. The family size may be either 1 or 2, or 3, or 4 etc. It cannot take any value like we cannot speak of 3.46 members in a family.

(b)   Family Income per Month is also a discrete variable. It can take values like Rs. 6890.50, or Rs. 6890.75, etc., but not any value as income in fraction of Paisa.

Although the theoretical distinction between continuous and discrete variation is clear and precise, in practical numerical work it is only an approximation. The reason is that even the most precise instruments of measurement can be used only to a finite number of places. Thus, every theoretically continuous series can never be expected to flow continuously with one measurement touching another without any break in actual observation.

4.2 Qualitative Data

In qualitative form, data are classified on the basis of some attribute or quality like sex, literacy, colour of hair, religion, etc. In this type of classification, the attribute under any study cannot be measured; it can be classified into different groups and one can find out whether it is present or absent in that unit under study. For example, if the attribute under a study is human population, one can find out how many persons are male and how many persons are female. Thus, when only one attribute is studied, two1 classes are found. This type of classification is known as simple classification.

The type of classification where only two classes are found is also called twofold or dichotomous classification. If instead of forming only two classes, we farther divide the data on the basis of some attribute or attributes so as to form several classes, the classification is known as manifold classification. For example, we may first divide the population into males and females, on the basis of the attribute sex ; each of these classes may be further subdivided in to literate and illiterate on the basis of the attribute literacy . Farther classification can be made on the basis of some other attribute, say employment. The flow chart stated below tries to make the classification clear:

4.3 Quantitative vs. Qualitative Data

Glesne and Peshkin (1992) have made a useful comparison between the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative modes of enquiry as under:

Self Check Exercise 1 :

Q 1. What is quantitative data?

Information about the age of respondents is quantitative because age of the respondents is expressed in number, say 38 year. It is possible to quantify many aspects of social living. For instance, apart from age, we can also quantify height, weight, literacy, income or distance.

Q 2. What purpose do qualitative data serve?

The qualitative data give us in depth knowledge about the problem where quantitative data only can give us the numerical value.

Q 3. How can qualitative data be classified?

In qualitative form, data are classified on the basis of some attribute or quality like sex, literacy, colour of hair, religion, etc. For example, if the attribute under a study is population, one can find out how many persons are male and how many persons are female. Thus, when only one attribute is studied, two classes are found. This type of classification is known as simple classification.

In a study it is found that the total population in the area is 468 out of which 238 are male and 230 are female. The figures are stated in tabular form bellow:

5. Sources of Data: Primary and Secondary

The investigator, while collecting data is faced with one of the most difficult problem of obtaining or gathering the desired information or data. Utmost care must be taken while collecting data because data constitute the foundation on which the superstructure of analysis is built and policy decisions are taken. So if the data are incorrect or inadequate, the whole endeavour becomes useless.

Data may be obtained either from the Primary Source or from the Secondary Source . Primary data are original in character and are generated through surveys/field work conducted by the Government, individuals, institutions and research bodies. Primary source usually has more detail information particularly on the procedures followed in collecting and compilation of the data as compared to the secondary data. For example, data obtained in a population census by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs, are primary data. Such data may be both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Any ethnographic data collected through participant observation, for instance, is also primary data.

By comparison, secondary data are those that were previously been collected by some person/agency for one purpose and these were merely complied from that source for use in different research. For example, a person/agency conducting a research might use the findings and analysis of any other researcher to argue a point. In the chapter on Review of Literature, in particular, scholars writing a thesis or article use arguments/findings of other scholars to arrive at certain assessment of situation. These data/findings/analysis are secondary for any one carrying out research. It appears that primary data lose their ‘primary’ character when subjective assessment and analysis are carried out on them after their collection. All researchers collecting primary data through field research do so as they have to generalise on those and link those with the existing body of literature. It may be argued that even raw field data supplied by the Census, NSSO or NCRB officials may become ‘secondary’ if these are compiled again or reorganised for the purpose of any research. Such transformation of data signifies increasing use of primary data for the purpose of analysis and understanding of social situation.

5.1 Advantages for use of Primary data

It is preferable to make use of primary source wherever possible for the following reasons:

(i)   The secondary source may contain mistake due to errors in transcription made when the figures were copied from the primary source.

(ii)  The Primary source frequently includes definitions of terms and units used.

(iii)   Primary source often includes a copy of the schedule and a description of the procedure used in selecting and in collecting the data.

(iv)  Primary source usually shows data in greater detail.

(v)   Through Primary survey one can get any data to express the problem better and to find better correlation among certain factors or to notice change in field situation; but in secondary sources all relevant data may not be available. There is, therefore, every need to continuously collect primary data to assess the current field situation.

5.2 Advantage for use of Secondary data

(i)  It is highly convenient to use information which someone else has compiled. There is no need for printing data collection forms, hiring enumerators, editing and tabulating the result, etc. Researcher alone or with some clerical assistance may obtain information from published records complied by somebody else.

(ii)  If secondary data are available they are much quicker to obtain than primary data.

(iii)  Secondary data may be available on all most all subjects where it would be impossible to collect primary data. For example, census data cannot be collected by an individual or research organisation, but can only be obtained from Government publication.

(iv)   In almost all research, scholars have to take note of research findings that are already been done on the chosen theme. Such a review of literature is required to make assessment of “what is already being known” (for details on this read module RMS 4). We all know that research is not ‘reproduction’ of opinions of other scholars, yet, use of such literature to develop an argument or to develop a distinctive position on the subject is essential. This is because, the basic objective of any research endeavour is to a) reject an established explanation/theory, b) modify them, and/or c) strengthen them. A social research must also have relevance, a depth of concern for social issues. How would one prove the relevance of any research or the uniqueness of its objectives? It is mainly done by relating the research questions with the broad body of existing literature in the field. Hence, secondary data are useful for conducting any research.

5.3 Choice between Primary and Secondary Data

Selection of use of primary data and secondary data depends on following factors:

(i)  Nature and Scope of the enquiry: The nature and scope of a study dictates to a large extent whether the study would be based on primary or secondary data. As for example, if it is an evaluation study like the impact of MGNREGA for improving the standard of living of the population of a village, then the sources of data must be primary. On the other hand, if we are involved in assessing the increase in per capita income in India in the last one decade, then we have to rely mostly on secondary data.

(ii)   Availability of financial resources: As the financial involvement is high in the collection of primary data, one might prefer to conduct a secondary data based study with limited financial support.

(iii)  Availability of time: Availability of time is an important determinant. Collection of primary data requires much time. Contrarily, a review based on secondary literature may be done within a stipulated period. If we have to conduct a study to prepare the personal profile of the members of the SHGs formed under SGSY scheme in West Bengal within one month, then we have to depend on secondary sources of data.

(iv)  Degree of accuracy desired: The main barrier to the use of secondary data is degree of accuracy. As the society is changing very fast, a study based only on secondary data might not reflect the field reality.

(v)   The collecting agency: Sources of data for conducting any study also depends on the collecting agency. It is possible for Government body or reputed institutions to carry our large and extended field based project with proper budget, involvement of a team of researchers and time allocation. By comparison, an individual can collect field data only from a limited number of respondents.

5.4 Publications containing Primary and Secondary data

The following lists of primary and secondary data would allow one to look for appropriate sources of data most easily. It should however be noted that these lists are inconclusive.

a)  Primary data

(i)   “Census of India” published by the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Ministry of Home Affairs ( censusindia.gov.in/)

(ii)     Report Published by National Sample Survey Organisation, Government of India, Kolkata (mospi.nic.in)

(iii)   “Reserve Bank of India Bulletin” issued monthly by Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai ( https://m.rbi.org.in)

(iv)   “Indian   Textile   Bulletin”,   issued   monthly   by   the   Textile   Commissioner,   Mumbai

( www.textileconnect.com)

(v) “Crime in India” published by National Crime record Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs ( ncrb.gov.in/).

(vi) Central Statistical Organisation, New Delhi (mospi.nic.in)

(viii)     Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India ( eands.dacnet.nic.in)

b ) Secondary Data

(i)   Official documents like “Statistical Abstract of the Indian Union” issued by the Central Statistical Organisation (C.S.O), New Delhi or “Monthly Abstract of Statistics” issued by C.S.O.

(ii)   Doctoral Thesis made available by University Grants Commission (UGC) at Shodhganga website ( shodhgangotri.inflibnet.ac.in) . Interestingly, keeping pace with advances in the electronic world, many reputed universities across the globe have allowed awarded doctoral thesis to be read and used by other researcher as “unpublished manuscripts”.

(iii)  Research articles available at several journals many of which are available on line (find a list of social science journal in Module no RMS 4).

(iv)  Books (even though most important source of secondary data is library, some online libraries like Library Genesis: Scientific Articles ( libgen.org/scimag ), Libgen ( libgen.info ), JSTOR ( www.jstor.org ), Bookzz.org; booksfi.org are helpful to locate books).

(v)  Mass Media Output (all newspapers do publish their online versions).

(vi)  Encyclopaedia and Dictionaries (also available on line).

c)  Issues Concerning Use of Secondary Data

Any scholar using secondary literature should also be aware of certain important issues. Thus, to begin with, scholars should be aware of the theoretical framework used to arrive at any conclusion at a particular document. Second, the methodological tool used to collect data might also generate a particular variety of responses. Hence the data source and type should be clearly mentioned while stating the findings of a research. Third, the time-frame of any data used and analysed in any document should be noticed. It is expected that a document based on data collected 15 or 20 years ago may be different from the one published recently. Fourth, a literature may express the personal opinion or interpretation of the author(s) instead of any broad based findings. This should be clearly stated. Fifth, the usefulness of any document for any particular research should also be determined before using it. Finally, all secondary (and primary) sources used in any work should be cited properly to avoid the crime of plagiarism (read Module RMS 4 for details).

6. Methods of Collection of Primary Data

Like secondary data, students should also take serious note of various issues concerning the collection and use of primary data. We all know that different methods are adopted mainly to collect the primary data to fulfil the objective of the study. The following are the most widely used methods2.

(a)    Direct personal observation or interview,

(b)   Indirect oral interview/investigation

(c)    Questionnaire sent by post or mail,

(d)   Schedules filled up by investigators

(e)    Case Study method

(f)    Participatory Rural Appraisal method

(a) Direct Personal Interview

In this method the investigator (or interviewer) collects the required information in a face-to-face contact with the respondent. The investigator asks them questions pertaining to the survey and collects the desired information. Thus, in order to study the infrastructural facilities available for the delivery of quality education in the department of Sociology, University of Burdwan, the investigator has to meet the students of the department of Sociology, University of Burdwan personally and has to collect necessary information. The information is first hand or original in character.

When the researcher and the respondent are present in the same location, they face each other, the interview is called face-to-face interview . But in some cases the researcher and the respondents are separated by the distance and the researcher uses telephone for communication. It is called telephone interview.

Focus group interview or focus group discussion (FDG) is a type of interview that facilitates collection of qualitative data. Even though FGD is a form of ‘group interview’, the difference between the focus group method and the group interview is by no means clear and the two are frequently employed interchangeably. In focus group interview, the researcher interviews a group of respondents at the same time. Focus groups typically emphasize a specific theme that is explored in depth in an unstructured setting as compared to any formal individual interview. Alan Bryman (2009: 346) argues that the focus group is a form of group interview in which a) there are several participants in addition to the moderator/facilitator, b) there is emphasis in the questioning on a particular fairly/tightly defined topic, c) the accent is upon interaction within the group, and d) joint construction of meaning as individuals discuss a certain issue as members of a group, rather than simply as individuals. In other words, FGD allows the participants to respond to each other’s views to build up a view out of interaction within the group.

 (b) Indirect oral interview/investigation

In this method, the investigator contacts third parties to get information. The method is generally adopted in those cases where the information to be obtained is of complex nature and the informants are not inclined to respond if approached directly. For example, drugs addicts may be reluctant to provide correct information about their own habit. As a corollary, most of the Commissions of Enquiry or committees appointed by the Government collect primary data by this method. The accuracy of the method depends largely upon the type of persons interviewed and hence these persons have to be selected very carefully.

(c) Questionnaire sent by post or mail

Under this method questionnaire is sent to different respondents by post or mail. A request is made to the respondents through a covering letter and possible guideline for how to fill up the questionnaire and send it back within a given time period. This method can be adopted where the field of investigation is very large and the respondents are distributed over a wide geographical area. It is also relatively cheap.

But this method can be adopted where only all respondents are well educated. It involves some uncertainty. Cooperation on the part of respondents may be difficult to presume. It is also very difficult to verify the accuracy.

(d) Schedules filled up by investigators

It is most widely used method of collection of primary data. Here investigators are employed for data collection. The investigators carry with them printed schedules specially developed for the purpose. They fill up these schedules themselves on spot based on answers received from the respondents. The method is very popular and many a time it yields satisfactory result. Much of the accuracy of the collected data however depends on the ability and tactfulness of the investigators, who are given special training as to how they should elicit the correct information by developing rapport and through friendly discussions. This method is adopted during the decennial census of population in this country.

(e) Case Study method

Case study method enables a researcher to closely examine the data within a specific context. In most cases, a case study method selects a small geographical area or a very limited number of individuals as the subjects of study. Case studies, in their true essence, explore and investigate contemporary real-life phenomenon through detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions, and their relationships. Yin (1984) defines the case study research method as an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.

Yin (1994) has mentioned that the case study design must have five components:

(i)  The research question(s),

(ii)  The research propositions,

(iii)  Unit of analysis,

(iv)  How the data are linked to the propositions, and

(v) Criteria to interpret the findings

According to Stake (1994), types of case studies depend upon the purpose of the inquiry: an instrumental case study is used to provide insight into the issue; an intrinsic case study is conducted to get in-depth knowledge regarding the case; and the collective case study is the study of a number of cases in order to inquire into a particular phenomenon. Stake has also put emphasis that many other types of case studies based on their specific purpose, such as the teaching case study or the biography. Yin (1994) points out that case studies are the preferred strategy when “how” and “why” questions are posed.

According to Yin, a good case study report must have following components:

(i)  The report itself should make sufficient citation to the relevant portions of the case study database,

(ii) The database, upon inspection, should reveal the actual evidence and also indicate the circumstances under which the evidence was collected,

(iii)  It should be consistent that the specific procedures and questions contained in the case study protocol, to show that the data collection followed the procedures stipulated by the protocol,

(iv)  A reading of the protocol should indicate the link between the content of the protocol and the initial study questions.

Again Yin has mentioned that one can move from one part of the case study process to another, with clear cross-referencing to methodological procedures and to the resulting evidence. This is the ultimate “chain of evidence” that is desired (see chart below).

(f) Participatory Rural Appraisal Method

Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) approaches have become increasingly popular among qualitative researchers in recent times. Such approaches are based on post-positivism and combine the strengths of “constructivist” paradigm and that of “critical realism”. From the “constructivist” paradigm, PRA approaches seek to understand human experience as it is lived and felt by the participants, the context of such experience in an interdisciplinary framework. PRA as a methodology puts emphasis on the people’s capabilities, field-based learning and innovations.

According to Kumar (2002), there are four pillars of PRA: methods and tools, process, sharing and attitude and behaviour. Again, he considers that attitude and behaviour in PRA is the most important pillars and it is central to PRA and more important than methods. The attitude and behaviour in PRA includes:

·         Self-awareness of one’s behaviour

·         Accountability to the poor

·         Self-respect and respecting others

·         Good Listeners

·         Ability to ‘handing over the stick’

PRA as a tool or a method, or a tool and method is very useful to collect primary data from the field in a very short period of time with the active participation of local people of the area. Initially to apply this method and tools, the researcher has to build up a sound rapport with the participants. Then she/he has to explain the purpose of the exercise to the participants. PRA is conducted mostly during the leisure time of the respondents.

A wide range of applications of PRA have evolved and still is it continuing. According to Chambers (1997), most application of PRA are in three areas, namely a) topical investigation, b) research, training, and c) an empowering process of appraisal, analysis, planning, action, monitoring and evaluation. Five sectors like, natural resources management; agriculture; people poverty and livelihood; health and nutrition; and urban attracted more PRA.

As per the need of the application of tools it is categorised under sectors, like, Space-related PRA methods, Time-related PRA methods and PRA relation methods.

Here we would cite one example of a Venn Diagram under PRA relation methods.

Venn Diagram

Venn diagram is one of the commonly used methods in PRA to study institutional relationships and is sometimes also referred to as institutional diagram. It is, however, popularly known as chapati diagram as this method uses circles of various sizes to represent institutions or individuals. The bigger the circle, the more important is the institution or individual. The distance between circles represents, for example, the degree of influence or contact between institutions or individuals. Overlapping circles indicate interactions and the extent of overlap can indicate the level of interaction.

Applications

The Venn diagram method in PRA has been found very useful to study and understand local people’s perceptions about local institutions, individuals, programmes, etc. The method provides valuable insights into and analyses of the power structure, the decision-making process, etc. The need to strengthen the community’s institutions can also be ascertained. The relative importance of services and programmes has also been studied using the Venn diagram.

The suggested steps in the process of doing a Venn diagram are as follows:

·         Explain the purpose of the exercise to the participants.

·         Ask them to list the various institutions, individuals, etc., as per the objectives of the exercise.

·         Ask them to write and/or depict them on small cards. Visual depiction becomes necessary if there are non-literate participants.

·         Ask the participants to place the cards on one of the variables of study, e.g., perceived importance of the institutions, in a descending order. Once the cards are arranged in an order, confirm the order. Encourage them to make changes, if they are interested.

·         Ask them to assign paper circles of different sizes (cut and kept ready) to the institutions or individuals in such a way that the bigger the circle, the higher that institution or individual ranks on that variable. Paste on the circles the cards with names of institutions or individuals. If you want, you can simply note down or depict the institutions or individuals on the circles.

·         After placing all the cards, confirm the placement. Encourage them to make changes, if needed.

·         In case, there are certain institutions/individuals who interact or work closely, they could be placed with an overlap. The degree of overlap indicates the degree of interaction.

·         Ask them to discuss and explain why they placed the cards in such a manner. Note down the points of discussion and explanation.

·         Copy the output onto a sheet of paper. Record the name of the village, participants, date, legends, what the size of the circle represents and what the distance represents.

·         Triangulate the diagram and the major findings with others knowledgeable about the situation to ensure that your information is correct.

In order to facilitate easy making of this diagram, you should follow a step by step approach and need not explain the whole process to the participants at the outset. For instance, ask the participants first to list the institutions. Once the list has been made, ask them to put them in descending order based on each variable. Next, ask them to assign paper circles of different sizes and so on. Also ask them what they mean by the two variables. Make sure that the participants are clear on which dimension represents what variable. One simple way is to write it down legibly in bold letters and keep it in front when the exercise is on.

Materials Required

Paper circles are the most frequently used materials in Venn diagramming. It can also be drawn directly on the ground or on paper, but that does not allow the size or location of circles to be changed. Sometimes, after the circles are drawn, participants discuss the diagram and want to change the size or location. They hesitate to do so if the Venn diagram has been drawn, but if the circles are cut from paper, they find making modifications easy at any point in the process.

Time Required

Time required for a Venn diagram may vary considerably depending upon the details that are being represented. However, you should plan to spend 2-3 hours on the Venn diagram and the subsequent discussion.

Limitations of Venn Diagram

There are certain limitations of this method. Venn diagram generally becomes difficult and complex when the number of items increases. Relatively inexperienced facilitators find it difficult to explain the Venn diagram process to the participants. Another practical problem with Venn diagramming is that sometimes it can become sensitive. In the presence of some of the individuals or representatives of institutions that are being rated in the Venn diagram, the participants may play safe. Hence the output in such cases may not reflect the realities.

7. Steps for Collection of Primary Data

The different steps of collection of primary data are as follows:

(1)  Planning the Study: The planning is an essential component to conduct any research study without which the data collected may not be found suitable. The following points should be considered at the planning stage:

(a)  Objective of the study should be clearly mentioned.

(b)  Sources of data, whether primary or secondary, should be identified.

(c)  Type of study, whether census or sample survey.

(d)  Definition of the unit of the study, whether individual or household.

(e)  Degree of accuracy.

(2)    Collection of Data: The collection of accurate data is the most important part in the whole investigation. The method of collection depends to a large extant on the nature, objective and scope of the study and the availability of time and money. We have already discussed several methods that can be applied singularly or in mixed form to collect field data.

(3)  Editing the data and its tabulation: Soon after the collection of data, arrangements should be made to scrutinise them. If they are available in written form, those should be checked to limit inconsistency, errors and omission. After such check, the numerical data should be classified and tabulated, if required. Qualitative researchers also carefully read their diary or notebook to organise and classify their material under certain themes.

(4)  Analysis of data and Interpretation of Result : Data analysis is a method of abstracting significant facts from the large mass of data collected during the field work. If the given sets of data are numerical, then it involved determination of various statistical measures, the estimation of statistical constants and subsequent test of significance. The results of analysis are then interpreted and conclusions are drawn. Ethnographers also follow certain standard practice to organise their field data. Availability of computer aided qualitative programmes has made such analysis very easy these days (read module RMS 30 for details).

(5)  Preparation of Report: After completion of the total process, it is necessary that a detail report is to be published. It should contain a detail description of all the stages of the survey. Charts and tables are also included in the report to represent/classify data rationally and consistently.

Self Check Exercise 2 :

Q 1. What is the importance of secondary data?

It is highly convenient to use. There is no need for printing data collection forms, hiring enumerators, editing and tabulating the result, etc. Researcher alone or with some clerical assistance may obtain information from published records complied by somebody else. They are also used to justify the primary data that has been collected from the field.

Q 2. What are the differences between schedule and questionnaire?

Questionnaire refers to a device for securing answers to questions by using a form which the respondents themselves fill. Schedule is a set of questions which are asked and filled up in a face-to-face situation by the interviewer.

Q 3. Why planning is essential to conduct any research study?

Planning is essential to collect reliable and valid data. It would be complete wastage of time and money if a study fails to generate useful conclusions. Hence, in the planning process the following units of a study should be clearly defined and linked to one another:

(a)    Objective of the study

(b)   Sources of data

(c)    Type of the study

(d)   Definition of statistical unit

(e)    Degree of accuracy

The quality of any research report depends on the quality of data collected and analysed. In fact, all research endeavours uniformly rely on collection of suitable data for proper analysis. In social science research, however, the stress is primarily put on collection of primary data and link them with the existing body of secondary literature. Obviously, a mixture of both primary and secondary sources of data makes a study perfect and much more reliable. This is not to deny the fact that research can also be done by just  reviewing secondary literature. Such a review very often is essential to identify trend in research and develop general arguments. But in contemporary times, change is ubiquitous and we can’t deny that each and every aspect of our social life is changing very fast. Hence, there is every need to upgrade our knowledge base by going to the field. There is no denying the fact that it is the field that dictates the contours of social science research. It should also be recognised that both quantitative and qualitative types of data are required to analyse social life and hence we often prefer to triangulate them. Conducting research, therefore, requires knowledge, sensitivity and training. It is, therefore, prescribed that before beginning any research, a student should try to focus on the types of data that are to be explored, the methods that are most appropriate for their collection and steps to be followed in completing the study successfully. While, there are several methods or tools available for such an endeavour, the epistemological and ontological concerns become crucial to select the appropriate one or mix them.

• The category of ‘third sex’ is also legally recognised today.
• Scholars conducting research particularly on secondary literature (content or documentary research) might not look for field data. Hence, for them, these documents may serve as primary source of data. For instance, a scholar working on Rabindranath Tagore or Mahatma Gandhi would consider the personal writings of these scholars as primary data. Similarly, a scholar working on newspaper advertisements would consider such newspaper as his/her primary source of data though there might be secondary literature by others on the topic.
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• Das, Lal, D.K and Vanila Bhaskaran (Eds.). Research Methods for Social Work.Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 2008.
• ——-.Statistical Methods (Volume Two). McGraw Hill Education (India) Private Limited, New Delhi, 2014.
• Feagsin, J.R., Orum, A.M., and Sjoberg, G. (Eds). A Case for the Case Study.University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
• Glesne, C and Peshkin, A. Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An Introduction.Sage Publication, 1992. Gun M.A, M.K Gupta, B. Dasgupta. Fundamentals of Statistics (Volume One and Two). World Press Private Limited, Kolkata, 2014.
• Gupta, P.S. Statistical Methods.Sultan Chand & Sons Publishers, New Delhi, 1991.
• Hicks, J. O. Management Information Systems: A New perspectives. West Publishing, 1993.
• Kothari C.R. Research Methodology (Second Edition).New Delhi, 1998.
• Kumar, S. Methods for Community Participation. Vistaar Publication, New Delhi, 2002.
• Singh, Jaspal. Instruments of social Research. Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 2011.
• Singh, P.S. Research Methods in Social Sciences.Kanishka Publishers, New Delhi, 2002.
• Stake, R.E. “Case Studies”, in Denzin, N.K. and Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds), Hand Book of Qualitative Research.Sage Publication, 1994.
• V.V. Khanzode. Research Methodology. APH Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 1995.
• Yin, R.K. Case Study Research: Design and Methods (2nded).Sage Publication, 1984, 1994.
• Young, V. Pauline. Scientific social surveys and research (4th Edition). Prentice Hall of India Limited, New Delhi, 1992.

Research Methodology

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research. Developing your methodology involves studying the research methods used in your field and the theories or principles that underpin them, in order to choose the approach that best matches your research objectives. Methodology is the first step in planning a research project.

Qualitative Data Coding

What Is a Focus Group?

Reviewed by Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Cross-Cultural Research Methodology In Psychology

What is internal validity in research.

Reviewed by Saul Mcleod, PhD

Scientific Method

Qualitative research, experiments.

The scientific method is a step-by-step process used by researchers and scientists to determine if there is a relationship between two or more variables. Psychologists use this method to conduct psychological research, gather data, process information, and describe behaviors.

Learn More: Steps of the Scientific Method

Variables apply to experimental investigations. The independent variable is the variable the experimenter manipulates or changes. The dependent variable is the variable being tested and measured in an experiment, and is 'dependent' on the independent variable.

Learn More: Independent and Dependent Variables

When you perform a statistical test a p-value helps you determine the significance of your results in relation to the null hypothesis. A p-value less than 0.05 (typically ≤ 0.05) is statistically significant.

Learn More: P-Value and Statistical Significance

Qualitative research is a process used for the systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of non-numerical data. Qualitative research can be used to gain a deep contextual understanding of the subjective social reality of individuals.

The experimental method involves the manipulation of variables to establish cause-and-effect relationships. The key features are controlled methods and the random allocation of participants into controlled and experimental groups.

Learn More: How the Experimental Method Works in Psychology

Frequent Asked Questions

What does p-value of 0.05 mean?

A p-value less than 0.05 (typically ≤ 0.05) is statistically significant. It indicates strong evidence against the null hypothesis, as there is less than a 5% probability the results have occurred by random chance rather than a real effect. Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis.

However, it is important to note that the p-value is not the only factor that should be considered when interpreting the results of a hypothesis test. Other factors, such as effect size, should also be considered.

Learn More: What A p-Value Tells You About Statistical Significance

What does z-score tell you?

A  z-score  describes the position of a raw score in terms of its distance from the mean when measured in standard deviation units. It is also known as a standard score because it allows the comparison of scores on different variables by standardizing the distribution. The z-score is positive if the value lies above the mean and negative if it lies below the mean.

Learn More: Z-Score: Definition, Calculation, Formula, & Interpretation

What is an independent vs dependent variable?

The independent variable is the variable the experimenter manipulates or changes and is assumed to have a direct effect on the dependent variable. For example, allocating participants to either drug or placebo conditions (independent variable) to measure any changes in the intensity of their anxiety (dependent variable).

Learn More : What are Independent and Dependent Variables?

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative?

Quantitative data is numerical information about quantities and qualitative data is descriptive and regards phenomena that can be observed but not measured, such as language.

Learn More: What’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Explore Research Methodology

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Sampling Bias: Types, Examples & How to Avoid It

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Control Group vs Experimental Group

Controlled Experiment

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Ethical Considerations In Psychology Research