hypothesis examples of sociology

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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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Chapter 2. Sociological Research

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behaviour is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behaviour as people move through the world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened parents, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

Depending on the focus and the type of research conducted, sociological findings could be useful in addressing any of the three basic interests or purposes of sociological knowledge discussed in the last chapter: the positivist interest in quantitative evidence to determine effective social policy decisions, the interpretive interest in understanding the meanings of human behaviour to foster mutual understanding and consensus, and the critical interest in knowledge useful for dismantling power relations and building alternatives to conditions of servitude. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social phenomena — a bit like the contents of a petri dish examining themselves — but, as argued above, if the goal of sociology is to improve the operation of society, it is extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once a question is formed, a sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. Depending on the nature of the topic and the goals of the research, sociologists have a variety of methodologies to choose from. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a positivist methodology or an interpretive methodology . Both types of methodology can be useful for critical research strategies . The following sections describe these approaches to acquiring knowledge.

Science vs. Non-Science

Contemporary society is going through an interesting time in which the certitudes and authority of science are frequently challenged. In the context of the natural sciences, people doubt scientific claims about climate change and the safety of vaccines. In the context of the social sciences, people doubt scientific claims about the declining rate of violent crime or the effectiveness of needle exchange programs.  Sometimes there is a good reason to be skeptical about science, when scientific technologies prove to have adverse effects on the environment, for example. Sometimes skepticism has dangerous outcomes, when people act on conspiracy theories and misinformation or epidemics of diseases like measles suddenly break-out in schools due to low vaccination rates. In fact, skepticism is central to both natural and social sciences; but from a scientific point of view, the skeptical attitude needs to be combined with systematic research in order for knowledge to move forward.

In sociology, science provides the basis for being able to distinguish between everyday opinions or beliefs and propositions that can be sustained by evidence. In his paper, The Normative Structure of Science (1942/1973), the sociologist Robert Merton argued that science is a type of empirical knowledge organized around four key principles, often referred to by the acronym CUDOS :

• Communalism: The results of science must be made available to the public; science is freely available, shared knowledge, open to public discussion and debate.
• Universalism: The results of science must be evaluated based on universal criteria, not parochial criteria specific to the researchers themselves.
• Disinterestedness: Science must not be pursued for private interests or personal reward.
• Organized Skepticism: The scientist must abandon all prior intellectual commitments, critically evaluate claims, and postpone conclusions until sufficient evidence has been presented; scientific knowledge is provisional.

For Merton, therefore, non-scientific knowledge is knowledge that fails in various respects to meet these criteria. Types of esoteric or mystical knowledge, for example, might be valid for someone on a spiritual path, but because this knowledge is passed from teacher to student through direct transmission and it is not available to the public for open debate, or because the validity of this knowledge might be specific to the individual’s unique spiritual configuration, esoteric or mystical knowledge is not scientific per se . Claims that are presented to persuade (rhetoric), to achieve political goals (propaganda, of various sorts), or to make profits (advertising) are not scientific because these claims are structured to satisfy private interests. Propositions which fail to stand up to rigorous and systematic standards of evaluation are not scientific because they can not withstand the criteria of organized skepticism and scientific method.

The basic distinction between scientific and common, non-scientific claims about the world is that in science “seeing is believing” whereas in everyday life “believing is seeing” (Brym, Roberts, Lie, & Rytina, 2013). Science is, in crucial respects, based on systematic observation following the principles of CUDOS. Only on the basis of observation (or “seeing”) can a scientist believe that a proposition about the nature of the world is correct. Research methodologies are designed to reduce the chance that conclusions will be based on error. In everyday life, the order is typically reversed. People “see” what they already expect to see or what they already believe to be true. They do not systematically test what they believe to be true. Prior intellectual commitments or biases predetermine what people observe and the conclusions they draw.

Many people know things about the social world without having a background in sociology. Sometimes their knowledge is valid; sometimes it is not. It is important, therefore, to think about how people know what they know, and compare it to the scientific way of knowing. Four types of non-scientific reasoning are common in everyday life: knowledge based on casual observation, knowledge based on selective evidence, knowledge based on overgeneralization, and knowledge based on authority or tradition.

Many people know things simply because they have experienced them directly. Someone who has grown up in Manitoba has probably observed what plenty of kids learn each winter, that it really is true that one’s tongue will stick to metal when it is very cold outside. Direct experience may provide accurate information, but only if the observer is lucky. Unlike the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, in general, people are not very careful observers. In this example of the “winged ship” in Figure 2.4, the observation process is not deliberate or systematic. Instead, the observers come to know what they believe to be true through casual observation . The problem with casual observation is that sometimes it is right, and sometimes it is wrong. Without any systematic process for observing or assessing the accuracy of  observations, a person can never really be sure if their informal observations are accurate.

Many people know things because they overlook disconfirming evidence. Suppose a friend declared that all men are liars shortly after she had learned that her boyfriend had deceived her. The fact that one man happened to lie to her in one instance came to represent a quality inherent in all men. But do all men really lie all the time? Probably not. If the friend is prompted to think more broadly about her experiences with men, she would probably acknowledge that she knew many men who, to her knowledge, had never lied to her and that maybe even her boyfriend did not generally make a habit of lying. This friend committed what social scientists refer to as selective observation by noticing only the pattern that she wanted to find at the time. She ignored disconfirming evidence. If, on the other hand, the friend’s experience with her boyfriend had been her only experience with a man, then she would have been committing what social scientists refer to as overgeneralization , assuming that broad patterns exist based on very limited observations.

Another way that people claim to know what they know is by looking to what they have always known to be true. There is an urban legend about a woman who for years used to cut both ends off of a ham before putting it in the oven (Mikkelson, 2005). She baked ham that way because that is the way her mother did it, so clearly that was the way it was supposed to be done. Her knowledge was based on a family tradition or traditional knowledge . After years of tossing cuts of perfectly good ham into the trash, however, she finally asked her mother why she did it and learned that the only reason her mother cut the ends off ham before cooking it was that she did not have a pan large enough to accommodate the ham without trimming it.

Without questioning what one thinks one knows is true, one may wind up believing things that are actually false. This is most likely to occur when an authority tells us that something is true, a case of authoritative knowledge . Mothers are not the only possible authorities people might rely on as sources of knowledge. Other common authorities people might rely on are political figures, churches and ministers, media influencers and social media networks. Although it is understandable that someone might believe something to be true if they look up to, or respect the person who has said it is so, this way of knowing differs from the sociological way of knowing. Whether quantitative, qualitative, or critical in orientation, sociological research is based on the scientific method.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried-and-true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, field research, and textual analysis. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that they can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions, or about proving hypotheses about elementary particles right or wrong, rather than about exploring the nuances of human behaviour. However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behaviour. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results. This is the case for both positivist quantitative methodologies, which seek to translate observable phenomena into unambiguous numerical data, and interpretive qualitative methodologies, which seek to translate observable phenomena into definable units of meaning. The social scientific method in both cases involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical (i.e., observable) evidence. The social scientific method is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the social world, and it strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of established steps known as the research cycle .

No matter what research approach is used, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability and validity . Reliability refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what is true of one person will be true of all people in a group. Validity refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. If  the researcher wishes to examine people’s depth of religiosity — i.e., how strong is someone’s religious belief? How central is religious belief to their life? — does a measure like “frequency of church attendance” accurately measure that? Maybe not. People attend church for a variety of reasons and some religions are not organized on the basis of churches and congregations.

A subtopic in the field of political violence would be to examine the sources of homegrown radicalization: What are the conditions under which individuals in Canada move from a state of indifference or moderate concern with political issues to a state in which they are prepared to use violence to pursue political goals? The reliability of a study of radicalization reflects how well the social factors unearthed by the research apply to similar individuals who were not directly part of the research. Would another sociologist come up with the same results if they replicated the study? How well can the researcher extrapolate from the research subjects studied to individuals in the broader society? Does research on violent jihadi radicalization apply to violent neo-Nazi radicalization?

Validity ensures that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study. Do the concepts and measures of radicalization accurately represent the actual experience of political radicals? An exploration of an individual’s propensity to plan or engage in violent acts or to go abroad to join a terrorist organization should address those specific issues and not confuse them with other topics such as why an individual adopts a particular faith or espouses radical political views. There is a key difference between religiosity, radicalization, and violent radicalization. As research from the UK and United States on jihadism has in fact shown, while jihadi terrorists typically identify with an Islamic world view, a well-developed Islamic identity counteracts jihadism . Similarly, research has shown that while it intuitively makes sense that people with radical views would adopt radical means like violence to achieve them, there is in fact no consistent homegrown terrorist profile, meaning that it is not possible to predict whether someone who espouses radical views will move on to committing violent acts without taking into account the specific stages in the process (Patel, 2011).

To ensure validity, research on political violence should focus on individuals who engage in political violence and be able to distinguish between simply holding radical political beliefs and acting violently on radical political beliefs. Dalgaard-Nielsen (2010) distinguishes between radical, radicalization, and violent radicalization as follows:

a radical is understood as a person harboring a deep-felt desire for fundamental sociopolitical changes and radicalization is understood as a growing readiness to pursue and support far reaching changes in society that conflict with, or pose a direct threat to, the existing order. [V]iolent radicalization [is]a process in which radical ideas are accompanied by the development of a willingness to directly support or engage in violent acts.

The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. These steps provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps, which are described below: 1) ask a question; 2) research existing sources; and 3) formulate a hypothesis.

Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a specific geographical location and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study.

Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms. That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. Karl Popper (1902–1994) described the formulation of scientific propositions in terms of the concept of falsifiability (1963). He argued that the key demarcation between scientific and non-scientific propositions was not ultimately their factual truth, nor their verification, but simply whether or not they were stated in such a way as to be falsifiable; that is, whether a possible empirical observation could prove them wrong. If one claimed that evil spirits were the source of criminal behaviour, this would not be a scientific proposition because there is no possible way to definitively disprove it. Evil spirits cannot be observed. However, if one claimed that higher unemployment rates are the source of higher crime rates, this would be a scientific proposition because it is theoretically possible to find an instance where unemployment rates were not correlated to higher crime rates. As Popper said, “statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations” (Popper, 1963).

Once a proposition is formulated in a way that would permit it to be falsified, the variables to be observed need to be operationalized. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition ; that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The concept is translated into an observable variable , a measure that has different values. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept.

By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. The operational definition must be valid in the sense that it is an appropriate and meaningful measure of the concept being studied. It must also be reliable , meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, good drivers might be defined in many ways: Those who use their turn signals; those who do not speed; or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviours could be interpreted differently by different researchers, so they could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition. Asking the question, “how many traffic violations has a driver received?” turns the concepts of “good drivers” and “bad drivers” into variables which might be measured by the number of traffic violations a driver has received. Of course the sociologist has to be wary of the way the variables are operationalized. In this example we know that black drivers are subject to much higher levels of police scrutiny than white drivers, so the number of traffic violations a driver has received might reflect less on their driving ability and more on the crime of “driving while black.”

Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to a university library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. It allows them to sharpen the focus of their research question and avoid duplicating previous research. Researchers — including student researchers — are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or sources that inform their work. While it is fine to build on previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized. To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about childrearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviours, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. At the literature review stage it is important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates a researcher by showing what others have found relevant about a topic, and helps refine and improve a study’s design.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. It is an educated guess because it is not random but based on theory, observations, patterns of experience, or the existing literature. The hypothesis formulates this guess in the form of a testable or falsifiable proposition. However, how the hypothesis is handled differs between the positivist and interpretive approaches in sociology.

Hypothesis Formation in Positivist Research

Positivist methodologies are often referred to as hypothetico-deductive methodologies . A hypothesis is derived from a theoretical proposition. On the basis of the hypothesis, a prediction or generalization is logically deduced. If the prediction is confirmed by observation, the theoretical proposition is regarded as valid (at least provisionally). In positivist sociology, the hypothesis predicts how one form of human behaviour influences another. How does being a black driver affect the number of times the police will pull the driver over?

Successful prediction will determine the adequacy of the hypothesis and thereby test the theoretical proposition. Typically positivist approaches operationalize variables as quantitative data ; that is, by translating a social phenomenon like health into a quantifiable or numerically measurable variable like “number of visits to the hospital.” This permits sociologists to formulate their predictions using mathematical language, like regression formulas, to present research findings in graphs and tables, and to perform mathematical or statistical techniques to demonstrate the validity of relationships.

Variables are examined to see if there is a correlation between them. When a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable there is a correlation. This does not necessarily indicate that changes in one variable causes a change in another variable, however — just that they are associated. A key distinction here is between independent and dependent variables. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect, or thing that is changed. For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behaviour as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

For it to become possible to speak about causation , three criteria must be satisfied:

• There must be a relationship or correlation between the independent and dependent variables.
• The independent variable must be prior to the dependent variable.
• There must be no other intervening variable responsible for the causal relationship.

It is important to note that while there has to be a correlation between variables for there to be a causal relationship, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. The relationship between variables can be the product of a third intervening variable that is independently related to both. For example, there might be a positive relationship between wearing bikinis and eating ice cream, but wearing bikinis does not cause eating ice cream. It is more likely that the heat of summertime causes both an increase in bikini wearing and an increase in the consumption of ice cream.

The distinction between causation and correlation can have significant consequences. For example, Indigenous Canadians are overrepresented in prisons and arrest statistics. As noted in Chapter 1. An Introduction to Sociology , in 2020 Indigenous people accounted for about 5% of the Canadian population, but they made up 30% of the federal penitentiary population (Correctional Investigator Canada, 2020). There is a positive correlation between being an Indigenous person in Canada and being in jail. Is this because Indigenous people are racially or biologically predisposed to crime? No. In fact there are at least four intervening variables that explain the higher incarceration of Indigenous people (Hartnagel, 2004): Indigenous people are disproportionately poor and poverty is associated with higher arrest and incarceration rates; Indigenous lawbreakers tend to commit more detectable “street” crimes than the less detectable and actionable “white collar” crimes of other segments of the population; the criminal justice system disproportionately profiles and discriminates against Indigenous people; and the legacy of colonization has disrupted and weakened traditional sources of social control in Indigenous communities.

At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define “good” grades as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for good. Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points, ensuring consistency and replicability in a study. As the chart shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.

Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough: Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis. Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome does not mean data contradicting the hypothesis are not welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns.

In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding a rewarding career. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

Hypothesis Formation in Qualitative Research

While many sociologists rely on the positivist hypothetico-deductive method in their research, others operate from an interpretive approach . While still systematic, this approach typically does not follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to make generalizable predictions from quantitative variables. Instead, an interpretive framework seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, leading to in-depth knowledge. It focuses on qualitative data, or the meanings that guide people’s behaviour. Rather than relying on quantitative instruments, like fixed questionnaires or experiments, which can be artificial, the interpretive approach attempts to find ways to get closer to the informants’ lived experience and perceptions.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings than positivist research. It can begin from a deductive approach by deriving a hypothesis from theory and then seeking to confirm it through methodologies like in-depth interviews. However, it is ideally suited to an inductive approach in which the hypothesis emerges only after a substantial period of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of approach is exploratory in that the researcher also learns as they proceed, sometimes adjusting the research methods or processes midway to respond to new insights and findings as they evolve.

For example, Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) classic elaboration of grounded theory proposed that qualitative researchers working with rich sources of qualitative data from interviews or ethnographic observations need to go through several stages of coding the data before a strong theory of the social phenomenon under investigation can emerge. In the initial stage, the researcher is simply trying to listen carefully and to tentatively categorize and sort the data. The researchers do not predetermine what the relevant categories of the social experience are, but analyze carefully what their subjects actually say. For example, what are the working definitions of health and illness that hospital patients use to describe their situation? In the first stage, the researcher tries to distinguish and succinctly code or label the numerous themes emerging from the data: different ways of describing the experience of health and illness. In the second stage, the researcher takes a more analytical approach by organizing the initial interview data into a few key reoccurring themes: Perhaps these are key assumptions that lay people make about the physiological mechanisms of the body, or the metaphors they use to describe their relationship to illness (e.g., a random occurrence, a battle, a punishment, a message, etc.). In the third stage, the researcher returns to the interview subjects with a new set of questions that would seek to either affirm, modify, or discard the analytical themes derived from the initial categorization of the interview material. This process can then be repeated back and forth until a thoroughly grounded theory is ready to be proposed. At every stage of the research, the researchers are obliged to follow the emerging data by revising their conceptions as new material is gathered, contradictions accounted for, commonalities categorized, and themes re-examined with further interviews.

Once the preliminary work is done and the hypothesis defined, it is time for the next research steps: choosing a research methodology, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. These research steps are discussed below.

Making Connections: Classic Sociologists

Harriet martineau: the first woman sociologist.

As was noted in Chapter 1. An Introduction to Sociology , Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was one of the first women sociologists in the 19th century. She was a British sociologist known at the time especially for her translation of August Comte’s sociological works. Particularly innovative was her early work on sociological methodology, How to Observe Manners and Morals (1838) . In this volume she developed the ground work for a systematic social-scientific approach to studying human behaviour. She recognized that the issues of the researcher-subject relationship would have to be addressed differently in a social science   as opposed to a natural science.

The observer, or “traveler,” as she put it, needed to respect three criteria to obtain valid research: impartiality, critique, and sympathy. The impartial observer could not allow herself to be “perplexed or disgusted” by foreign practices that she could not personally reconcile herself with. Yet at the same time she saw the goal of sociology to be the fair but critical assessment of the moral status of a culture. In particular, the goal of sociology was to challenge forms of racial, sexual, or class domination in the name of autonomy: the right of every person to be a “self-directing moral being.” Finally, what distinguished the science of social observation from the natural sciences was that the researcher had to have unqualified sympathy for the subjects being studied (Lengermann & Niebrugge, 2007). This later became a central principle of Max Weber’s interpretive sociology, although it is not clear whether Weber read Martineau’s work.

A large part of her research in the United States analyzed the situations of contradiction between stated public morality and actual moral practices. For example, she was fascinated with the way that the formal democratic right to free speech enabled slavery abolitionists to hold public meetings, but when the meetings were violently attacked by mobs, the abolitionists and not the mobs were accused of inciting the violence (Zeitlin, 1997). This emphasis on studying contradictions followed from the distinction she drew between morals — society’s collective ideas of permitted and forbidden behaviour — and manners — the actual patterns of social action and association in society. As she realized the difficulty in getting an accurate representation of an entire society based on a limited number of interviews, she developed the idea that one could identify key “Things” experienced by all people — age, gender, illness, death, etc. — and examine how they were experienced differently by a sample of people from different walks of life (Lengermann & Niebrugge, 2007). Martineau’s pioneering sociology, therefore, focused on surveying different attitudes toward “Things,” and studying the anomalies that emerged when manners toward them contradicted a society’s formal morals.

Critical Research Strategies

As Karl Marx (1977 /1845) said: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Critical research strategies build on positivist and interpretive methodologies but bring the focus of research to the problems of social transformation and emancipation. Critical sociologists emphasize that the social world is not simply given or natural. It is the ongoing product of human actions and is therefore transformable. Domination and injustice are not inevitable. In this context, critical sociologists note that in a world characterized by extreme inequities and injustices, knowledge and ways of knowing can be caught up and implicated in power relations. “In a socially unjust world, knowledge of the social that does not challenge injustice is likely to play a role in reproducing it” (Carroll, 2004). Critical research strategies are therefore approaches that utilize positivist, interpretive, and critical methods to produce knowledge that maximizes the human potential for freedom and equality.

Paulo Freire’s (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed  is a key reference point for critical research. Working with the illiterate poor in North-Eastern Brazil in the 1940s and 1950s, Freire recognized that effective education and knowledge were not simply about things, but were emancipatory practices themselves. Through the development of critical consciousness, people could understand the circumstances in which they were living and act effectively to change the conditions of oppression they experienced. This was the basis of critical pedagogy , an approach to teaching and learning based on fostering the agency of marginalized communities, and empowering learners to emancipate themselves from oppressive social structures.

Carroll (2004) describes three types of critical research strategy: Oppositional or activist strategies investigate and oppose visible structures and practices of domination by taking up the standpoint of the oppressed; Radical strategies focus on analyzing deeper systematic bases of domination at the roots of societal structures; Subversive strategies subvert or deconstruct received notions of reality/identity and everyday, common sense binary oppositions (man/woman, culture/nature, self/other, reason/emotion, Black/white, etc.), which opens the door to alternatives and new political spaces of contestation.

One contemporary application of critical research strategies is in the critique of colonial structures. Decolonization , or the process of dismantling colonial power structures, also involves a process of decolonizing knowledge and research methods. Eurocentric patterns of thinking are often embedded in the concepts and methods used in sociology and other disciplines. In the 19th century, for example, social hierarchies and evolutionary schemes were central to the understanding of Indigenous people in Canada as alternately “savage” and “childlike,” in need of suppressing, civilizing and assimilating. Decolonizing research “means centering concerns and world views of non-Western individuals, and respectfully knowing and understanding theory and research from previously ‘Other(ed)’ perspectives” (Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021). Thambinathan & Kinsella (2021) outline four practices of decolonization:

• Exercising Critical Reflexivity: Critical reflexivity in research is about the researcher’s awareness of their own methodological assumptions — what they consider valid knowledge and proper ways of knowing — as well as of their social position (often as privileged outsiders) with respect to the research and the research subjects.
• Reciprocity and Respect for Self-Determination: Research should be practiced as an ongoing collaboration with research subjects to establish collective ownership over the entire research process, and to make accountable the researchers to the research subjects.
• Embracing Other(ed) Ways of Knowing:   Research methods should be expanded to integrate traditional knowledge, theories and frameworks used by the research subjects.

Embodying a Transformative Praxis: Along the lines of Freire’s critical pedagogy, the goal of the research is to enable research subjects to transform the colonial conditions of their existence, to bring to light historically silenced voices, and to build capacities and agency in colonized peoples.

Image Descriptions

Figure 2.5 Long Description: The Scientific Method has a series of steps which can form a repeating cycle.

• Ask a question.
• Research existing sources
• Formulate a hypothesis.
• Design and conduct a study
• Draw conclusions.
• Report results. [Return to Figure 2.5]

Media Attributions

• Figure 2.3   Cover of The Strand Magazine featuring the publication of the last Sherlock Holmes story written by Arthur Conan Doyle from The Strand Magazine , vol. 73, April 1927, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.4   “Mystery Airship” – Headline  by The San Francisco Call, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.5 The Scientific Method , by Heather Griffiths and Nathan Keirns, via OpenStax, is used under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
• Figure 2.6   Karl Popper in the 1980’s  by LSE Library, via Wikimedia Commons, has no known copyright restrictions .
• Figure 2.7 Mistaking Correlation for Causation  by Altimeter, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0  licence .
• Figure 2.8   Harriet Martineau by Richard Evans, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.9   Photo of Paulo Freire (1977)  by Slobodan Dimitrov, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 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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• How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples

How to Write a Strong Hypothesis | Steps & Examples

Published on May 6, 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A hypothesis is a statement that can be tested by scientific research. If you want to test a relationship between two or more variables, you need to write hypotheses before you start your experiment or data collection .

Example: Hypothesis

Daily apple consumption leads to fewer doctor’s visits.

Table of contents

What is a hypothesis, developing a hypothesis (with example), hypothesis examples, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing hypotheses.

A hypothesis states your predictions about what your research will find. It is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. For some research projects, you might have to write several hypotheses that address different aspects of your research question.

A hypothesis is not just a guess – it should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

Variables in hypotheses

Hypotheses propose a relationship between two or more types of variables .

• An independent variable is something the researcher changes or controls.
• A dependent variable is something the researcher observes and measures.

If there are any control variables , extraneous variables , or confounding variables , be sure to jot those down as you go to minimize the chances that research bias  will affect your results.

In this example, the independent variable is exposure to the sun – the assumed cause . The dependent variable is the level of happiness – the assumed effect .

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Step 1. Ask a question

Writing a hypothesis begins with a research question that you want to answer. The question should be focused, specific, and researchable within the constraints of your project.

Step 2. Do some preliminary research

Your initial answer to the question should be based on what is already known about the topic. Look for theories and previous studies to help you form educated assumptions about what your research will find.

At this stage, you might construct a conceptual framework to ensure that you’re embarking on a relevant topic . This can also help you identify which variables you will study and what you think the relationships are between them. Sometimes, you’ll have to operationalize more complex constructs.

Step 3. Formulate your hypothesis

Now you should have some idea of what you expect to find. Write your initial answer to the question in a clear, concise sentence.

4. Refine your hypothesis

You need to make sure your hypothesis is specific and testable. There are various ways of phrasing a hypothesis, but all the terms you use should have clear definitions, and the hypothesis should contain:

• The relevant variables
• The specific group being studied
• The predicted outcome of the experiment or analysis

5. Phrase your hypothesis in three ways

To identify the variables, you can write a simple prediction in  if…then form. The first part of the sentence states the independent variable and the second part states the dependent variable.

In academic research, hypotheses are more commonly phrased in terms of correlations or effects, where you directly state the predicted relationship between variables.

If you are comparing two groups, the hypothesis can state what difference you expect to find between them.

6. Write a null hypothesis

If your research involves statistical hypothesis testing , you will also have to write a null hypothesis . The null hypothesis is the default position that there is no association between the variables. The null hypothesis is written as H 0 , while the alternative hypothesis is H 1 or H a .

• H 0 : The number of lectures attended by first-year students has no effect on their final exam scores.
• H 1 : The number of lectures attended by first-year students has a positive effect on their final exam scores.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

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A hypothesis is not just a guess — it should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

Null and alternative hypotheses are used in statistical hypothesis testing . The null hypothesis of a test always predicts no effect or no relationship between variables, while the alternative hypothesis states your research prediction of an effect or relationship.

Hypothesis testing is a formal procedure for investigating our ideas about the world using statistics. It is used by scientists to test specific predictions, called hypotheses , by calculating how likely it is that a pattern or relationship between variables could have arisen by chance.

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A hypothesis is a statement that is then tested through research. A hypothesis usually consists of what the researcher thinks to be the case, and the purpose of the research is to discover whether she/he was correct. It is a feature of scientific research methodology . Some interpretivist sociologists prefer to use an aim rather than a hypothesis as they are not interested in replicating scientific research methods as they don't believe sociology is, or should try to be, a science.

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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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Home » What is a Hypothesis – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

What is a Hypothesis – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

Table of Contents

Definition:

Hypothesis is an educated guess or proposed explanation for a phenomenon, based on some initial observations or data. It is a tentative statement that can be tested and potentially proven or disproven through further investigation and experimentation.

Hypothesis is often used in scientific research to guide the design of experiments and the collection and analysis of data. It is an essential element of the scientific method, as it allows researchers to make predictions about the outcome of their experiments and to test those predictions to determine their accuracy.

Types of Hypothesis

Types of Hypothesis are as follows:

Research Hypothesis

A research hypothesis is a statement that predicts a relationship between variables. It is usually formulated as a specific statement that can be tested through research, and it is often used in scientific research to guide the design of experiments.

Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis is a statement that assumes there is no significant difference or relationship between variables. It is often used as a starting point for testing the research hypothesis, and if the results of the study reject the null hypothesis, it suggests that there is a significant difference or relationship between variables.

Alternative Hypothesis

An alternative hypothesis is a statement that assumes there is a significant difference or relationship between variables. It is often used as an alternative to the null hypothesis and is tested against the null hypothesis to determine which statement is more accurate.

Directional Hypothesis

A directional hypothesis is a statement that predicts the direction of the relationship between variables. For example, a researcher might predict that increasing the amount of exercise will result in a decrease in body weight.

Non-directional Hypothesis

A non-directional hypothesis is a statement that predicts the relationship between variables but does not specify the direction. For example, a researcher might predict that there is a relationship between the amount of exercise and body weight, but they do not specify whether increasing or decreasing exercise will affect body weight.

Statistical Hypothesis

A statistical hypothesis is a statement that assumes a particular statistical model or distribution for the data. It is often used in statistical analysis to test the significance of a particular result.

Composite Hypothesis

A composite hypothesis is a statement that assumes more than one condition or outcome. It can be divided into several sub-hypotheses, each of which represents a different possible outcome.

Empirical Hypothesis

An empirical hypothesis is a statement that is based on observed phenomena or data. It is often used in scientific research to develop theories or models that explain the observed phenomena.

Simple Hypothesis

A simple hypothesis is a statement that assumes only one outcome or condition. It is often used in scientific research to test a single variable or factor.

Complex Hypothesis

A complex hypothesis is a statement that assumes multiple outcomes or conditions. It is often used in scientific research to test the effects of multiple variables or factors on a particular outcome.

Applications of Hypothesis

Hypotheses are used in various fields to guide research and make predictions about the outcomes of experiments or observations. Here are some examples of how hypotheses are applied in different fields:

• Science : In scientific research, hypotheses are used to test the validity of theories and models that explain natural phenomena. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the effects of a particular variable on a natural system, such as the effects of climate change on an ecosystem.
• Medicine : In medical research, hypotheses are used to test the effectiveness of treatments and therapies for specific conditions. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the effects of a new drug on a particular disease.
• Psychology : In psychology, hypotheses are used to test theories and models of human behavior and cognition. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the effects of a particular stimulus on the brain or behavior.
• Sociology : In sociology, hypotheses are used to test theories and models of social phenomena, such as the effects of social structures or institutions on human behavior. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the effects of income inequality on crime rates.
• Business : In business research, hypotheses are used to test the validity of theories and models that explain business phenomena, such as consumer behavior or market trends. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the effects of a new marketing campaign on consumer buying behavior.
• Engineering : In engineering, hypotheses are used to test the effectiveness of new technologies or designs. For example, a hypothesis might be formulated to test the efficiency of a new solar panel design.

How to write a Hypothesis

Here are the steps to follow when writing a hypothesis:

Identify the Research Question

The first step is to identify the research question that you want to answer through your study. This question should be clear, specific, and focused. It should be something that can be investigated empirically and that has some relevance or significance in the field.

Conduct a Literature Review

Before writing your hypothesis, it’s essential to conduct a thorough literature review to understand what is already known about the topic. This will help you to identify the research gap and formulate a hypothesis that builds on existing knowledge.

Determine the Variables

The next step is to identify the variables involved in the research question. A variable is any characteristic or factor that can vary or change. There are two types of variables: independent and dependent. The independent variable is the one that is manipulated or changed by the researcher, while the dependent variable is the one that is measured or observed as a result of the independent variable.

Formulate the Hypothesis

Based on the research question and the variables involved, you can now formulate your hypothesis. A hypothesis should be a clear and concise statement that predicts the relationship between the variables. It should be testable through empirical research and based on existing theory or evidence.

Write the Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis is the opposite of the alternative hypothesis, which is the hypothesis that you are testing. The null hypothesis states that there is no significant difference or relationship between the variables. It is important to write the null hypothesis because it allows you to compare your results with what would be expected by chance.

Refine the Hypothesis

After formulating the hypothesis, it’s important to refine it and make it more precise. This may involve clarifying the variables, specifying the direction of the relationship, or making the hypothesis more testable.

Examples of Hypothesis

Here are a few examples of hypotheses in different fields:

• Psychology : “Increased exposure to violent video games leads to increased aggressive behavior in adolescents.”
• Biology : “Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to increased plant growth.”
• Sociology : “Individuals who grow up in households with higher socioeconomic status will have higher levels of education and income as adults.”
• Education : “Implementing a new teaching method will result in higher student achievement scores.”
• Marketing : “Customers who receive a personalized email will be more likely to make a purchase than those who receive a generic email.”
• Physics : “An increase in temperature will cause an increase in the volume of a gas, assuming all other variables remain constant.”
• Medicine : “Consuming a diet high in saturated fats will increase the risk of developing heart disease.”

Purpose of Hypothesis

The purpose of a hypothesis is to provide a testable explanation for an observed phenomenon or a prediction of a future outcome based on existing knowledge or theories. A hypothesis is an essential part of the scientific method and helps to guide the research process by providing a clear focus for investigation. It enables scientists to design experiments or studies to gather evidence and data that can support or refute the proposed explanation or prediction.

The formulation of a hypothesis is based on existing knowledge, observations, and theories, and it should be specific, testable, and falsifiable. A specific hypothesis helps to define the research question, which is important in the research process as it guides the selection of an appropriate research design and methodology. Testability of the hypothesis means that it can be proven or disproven through empirical data collection and analysis. Falsifiability means that the hypothesis should be formulated in such a way that it can be proven wrong if it is incorrect.

In addition to guiding the research process, the testing of hypotheses can lead to new discoveries and advancements in scientific knowledge. When a hypothesis is supported by the data, it can be used to develop new theories or models to explain the observed phenomenon. When a hypothesis is not supported by the data, it can help to refine existing theories or prompt the development of new hypotheses to explain the phenomenon.

When to use Hypothesis

Here are some common situations in which hypotheses are used:

• In scientific research , hypotheses are used to guide the design of experiments and to help researchers make predictions about the outcomes of those experiments.
• In social science research , hypotheses are used to test theories about human behavior, social relationships, and other phenomena.
• I n business , hypotheses can be used to guide decisions about marketing, product development, and other areas. For example, a hypothesis might be that a new product will sell well in a particular market, and this hypothesis can be tested through market research.

Characteristics of Hypothesis

Here are some common characteristics of a hypothesis:

• Testable : A hypothesis must be able to be tested through observation or experimentation. This means that it must be possible to collect data that will either support or refute the hypothesis.
• Falsifiable : A hypothesis must be able to be proven false if it is not supported by the data. If a hypothesis cannot be falsified, then it is not a scientific hypothesis.
• Clear and concise : A hypothesis should be stated in a clear and concise manner so that it can be easily understood and tested.
• Based on existing knowledge : A hypothesis should be based on existing knowledge and research in the field. It should not be based on personal beliefs or opinions.
• Specific : A hypothesis should be specific in terms of the variables being tested and the predicted outcome. This will help to ensure that the research is focused and well-designed.
• Tentative: A hypothesis is a tentative statement or assumption that requires further testing and evidence to be confirmed or refuted. It is not a final conclusion or assertion.
• Relevant : A hypothesis should be relevant to the research question or problem being studied. It should address a gap in knowledge or provide a new perspective on the issue.

Advantages of Hypothesis

Hypotheses have several advantages in scientific research and experimentation:

• Guides research: A hypothesis provides a clear and specific direction for research. It helps to focus the research question, select appropriate methods and variables, and interpret the results.
• Predictive powe r: A hypothesis makes predictions about the outcome of research, which can be tested through experimentation. This allows researchers to evaluate the validity of the hypothesis and make new discoveries.
• Facilitates communication: A hypothesis provides a common language and framework for scientists to communicate with one another about their research. This helps to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promotes collaboration.
• Efficient use of resources: A hypothesis helps researchers to use their time, resources, and funding efficiently by directing them towards specific research questions and methods that are most likely to yield results.
• Provides a basis for further research: A hypothesis that is supported by data provides a basis for further research and exploration. It can lead to new hypotheses, theories, and discoveries.
• Increases objectivity: A hypothesis can help to increase objectivity in research by providing a clear and specific framework for testing and interpreting results. This can reduce bias and increase the reliability of research findings.

Limitations of Hypothesis

Some Limitations of the Hypothesis are as follows:

• Limited to observable phenomena: Hypotheses are limited to observable phenomena and cannot account for unobservable or intangible factors. This means that some research questions may not be amenable to hypothesis testing.
• May be inaccurate or incomplete: Hypotheses are based on existing knowledge and research, which may be incomplete or inaccurate. This can lead to flawed hypotheses and erroneous conclusions.
• May be biased: Hypotheses may be biased by the researcher’s own beliefs, values, or assumptions. This can lead to selective interpretation of data and a lack of objectivity in research.
• Cannot prove causation: A hypothesis can only show a correlation between variables, but it cannot prove causation. This requires further experimentation and analysis.
• Limited to specific contexts: Hypotheses are limited to specific contexts and may not be generalizable to other situations or populations. This means that results may not be applicable in other contexts or may require further testing.
• May be affected by chance : Hypotheses may be affected by chance or random variation, which can obscure or distort the true relationship between variables.

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Hypothesis: Functions, Problems, Types, Characteristics, Examples

Basic Elements of the Scientific Method: Hypotheses

The Function of the Hypotheses

A hypothesis states what one is looking for in an experiment. When facts are assembled, ordered, and seen in a relationship, they build up to become a theory. This theory needs to be deduced for further confirmation of the facts, this formulation of the deductions constitutes of a hypothesis. As a theory states a logical relationship between facts and from this, the propositions which are deduced should be true. Hence, these deduced prepositions are called hypotheses.

Problems in Formulating the Hypothesis

As difficult as the process may be, it is very essential to understand the need of a hypothesis. The research would be much unfocused and a random empirical wandering without it. The hypothesis provides a necessary link between the theory and investigation which often leads to the discovery of additions to knowledge.

There are three major difficulties in the formulation of a hypothesis, they are as follows:

• Absence of a clear theoretical framework
• Lack of ability to utilize that theoretical framework logically
• Failure to be acquainted with available research techniques so as to phrase the hypothesis properly.

Sometimes the deduction of a hypothesis may be difficult as there would be many variables and the necessity to take them all into consideration becomes a challenge. For instance, observing two cases:

• Principle: A socially recognized relationship with built-in strains also governed by the institutional controls has to ensure conformity of the participants with implicit or explicit norms.

Deduction: This situation holds much more sense to the people who are in professions such as psychotherapy, psychiatry and law to some extent. They possess a very intimate relationship with their clients, thus are more susceptible to issues regarding emotional strains in the client-practitioner relationship and more implicit and explicit controls over both participants in comparison to other professions.

The above-mentioned case has variable hypotheses, so the need is to break them down into sub hypotheses, they are as follows:

• Specification of the degree of difference
• Specification of profession and problem
• Specification of kinds of controls.

2. Principle: Extensive but relatively systematized data show the correlation between members of the upper occupational class and less unhappiness and worry. Also, they are subjected to more formal controls than members of the lower strata.

Deduction: There can numerous ways to approach this principle, one could go with the comparison applying to martial relationships of the members and further argue that such differential pressures could be observed through divorce rates. This hypothesis would show inverse correlations between class position and divorce rates. There would be a very strong need to define the terms carefully to show the deduction from the principle problem.

The reference of these examples showcases a major issue in the hypothesis formulations procedures. One needs to keep the lines set for the deductions and one should be focusing on having a hypothesis at the beginning of the experiment, that hypothesis may be subject to change in the later stages and it is referred to as a „working hypothesis. Hence, the devising and utilization of a hypothesis is essential for the success of the experiment.

Types of Hypothesis

There are many ways to classify hypotheses, but it seems adequate to distinguish to separate them on the basis of their level of abstraction. They can be divided into three broad levels which will be increasing in abstractness.

• The existence of empirical uniformities : These hypotheses are made from problems which usually have a very high percentage of representing scientific examination of common–sense proportions. These studies may show a variety of things such as the distribution of business establishments in a city, behavior patterns of specific groups, etc. and they tend to show no irregularities in their data collection or review. There have been arguments which say that these aren’t hypothesis as they represent what everyone knows. This can be counter argued on the basis of two things that, “what everyone knows” isn’t always in coherence with the framework of science and it may also be incorrect. Hence, testing these hypotheses is necessary too.
• Complex ideal types: These hypotheses aim at testing the existence of logically derived relationships between empirical uniformities. This can be understood with an example, to observe ecology one should take in many factors and see the relationship between and how they affect the greater issue. A theory by Ernest W. Burgess gave out the statement that concentric growth circles are the one which characterize the city. Hence, all issues such as land values, industrial growth, ethnic groups, etc. are needed to be analyzed for forming a correct and reasonable hypothesis.
• Relations of analytic variables: These hypotheses are a bit more complex as they focus on they lead to the formulation of a relationship between the changes in one property with respect to another. For instance, taking the example of human fertility in diverse regions, religions, wealth gap, etc. may not always affect the end result but it doesn’t mean that the variables need not be accounted for. This level of hypothesizing is one of the most effective and sophisticated and thus is only limited by theory itself.

Science and Hypothesis

“The general culture in which a science develops furnishes many of its basic hypotheses” holds true as science has developed more in the West and is no accident that it is a function of culture itself. This is quite evident with the culture of the West as they read for morals, science and happiness. After the examination of a bunch of variables, it is quite easy to say that the cultural emphasis upon happiness has been productive of an almost limitless range.

The hypotheses originate from science; a key example in the form of “socialization” may be taken. The socialization process in learning science involves a feedback mechanism between the scientist and the student. The student learns from the scientist and then tests for results with his own experience, and the scientist in turn has to do the same with his colleagues.

Analogies are a source of useful hypotheses but not without its dangers as all variables may not be accounted for it as no civilization has a perfect system.

Hypotheses are also the consequence of personal, idiosyncratic experience as the manner in which the individual reacts to the hypotheses is also important and should be accounted for in the experiment.

The Characteristics for Usable Hypotheses

The criteria for judging a hypothesis as mentioned below:

• Complete Clarity : A good hypothesis should have two main elements, the concepts should be clearly defined and they should be definitions which are communicable and accepted by a larger section of the public. A lot of sources may be used and fellow associates may be used to help with the cause.
• Empirical Referents : A great hypothesis should have scientific concepts with the ultimate empirical referent. It can‟t be based on moral judgment though it can explore them but the goal should be separated from moral preachment and the acceptance of values. A good start could be analyzing the concepts which express attitudes rather than describing or referring to empirical phenomena.
• Specific Goal : The goal and procedure of the hypothesis should be tangible as grand experiments are harder to carry out. All operations and predictions should be mapped and in turn the possibility of testing the hypothesis increases. This not only enables the conceptual clarity but also the description of any indexes used. These indexes are used as variables for testing hypotheses on a larger scale. A general prediction isn’t as reliable as a specific prediction as the specific prediction provides a better result.
• Relation to Available Techniques : The technique with which a hypothesis is tested is of the utmost importance and so thorough research should be carried out before the experiment in order to find the best possible way to go about it. The example of Karl Marx may be given regarding his renowned theories; he formulated his hypothesis by observing individuals and thus proving his hypothesis. So, finding the right technique may be the key to a successful test.
• Relation to a Body of Theory: Theories on social relations can never be developed in isolation but they are a further extension of already developed or developing theories. For instance, if the “intelligence quotient” of a member of the society is to be measured, certain variables such as caste, ethnicity, nationality, etc. are chosen thus deductions are made from time to time to eventually find out what is the factor that influences intelligence.

The Conclusion

The formulation of a hypothesis is probably the most necessary step in good research practice and it is very essential to get the thought process started. It helps the researcher to have a specific goal in mind and deduce the end result of an experiment with ease and efficiency. History is evident that asking the right questions always works out fine.

Also Read: Research Methods – Basics

Goode, W. E. and P. K. Hatt. 1952. Methods in Social Research.New York: McGraw Hill. Chapters 5 and 6. Pp. 41-73

Kartik is studying BA in International Relations at Amity and Dropped out of engineering from NIT Hamirpur and he lived in over 5 different countries.

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• Dependent Variables
• Empirical Evidence
• Independent Variables

Interpretive Framework

• Literature Review
• Operational Definitions
• Reliability
• Scientific Method

Approaches to Sociological Research

• Define and describe the scientific method
• Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research
• Understand the function and importance of an interpretive framework
• Define what reliability and validity mean in a research study

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened family members, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

The crime during a full moon discussion put forth a few loosely stated opinions. If the human behaviors around those claims were tested systematically, a police officer, for example, could write a report and offer the findings to sociologists and the world in general. The new perspective could help people understand themselves and their neighbors and help people make better decisions about their lives. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social trends, but, as we shall see, it’s extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the sociologist forms the question, he or she proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.

However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.

The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scholarship.

But just because sociological studies use scientific methods does not make the results less human. Sociological topics are not reduced to right or wrong facts. In this field, results of studies tend to provide people with access to knowledge they did not have before—knowledge of other cultures, knowledge of rituals and beliefs, or knowledge of trends and attitudes. No matter what research approach they use, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability , which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group. Researchers also strive for validity , which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. Returning to the crime rate during a full moon topic, reliability of a study would reflect how well the resulting experience represents the average adult crime rate during a full moon. Validity would ensure that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study, so an exploration of adult criminal behaviors during a full moon should address that issue and not veer into other age groups’ crimes, for example.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze the data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This doesn’t mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in a particular study.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963).

Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps—1) ask a question, 2) research existing sources, 3) formulate a hypothesis—described below.

Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geography and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study. Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms.

That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition , that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner.

The operational definition must be valid, appropriate, and meaningful. And it must be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good drivers” might be defined in many ways: those who use their turn signals, those who don’t speed, or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviors could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.

Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about child-rearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve studies' designs.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect , or thing that is changed.

For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.

As the table shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.

Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough; their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis aren’t welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

Once the preliminary work is done, it’s time for the next research steps: designing and conducting a study and drawing conclusions. These research methods are discussed below.

While many sociologists rely on the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework . While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework , sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective, seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of researcher also learns as he or she proceeds and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

Using the scientific method, a researcher conducts a study in five phases: asking a question, researching existing sources, formulating a hypothesis, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. The scientific method is useful in that it provides a clear method of organizing a study. Some sociologists conduct research through an interpretive framework rather than employing the scientific method.

Scientific sociological studies often observe relationships between variables. Researchers study how one variable changes another. Prior to conducting a study, researchers are careful to apply operational definitions to their terms and to establish dependent and independent variables.

Section Quiz

A measurement is considered ______­ if it actually measures what it is intended to measure, according to the topic of the study.

• sociological
• quantitative

Sociological studies test relationships in which change in one ______ causes change in another.

• test subject
• operational definition

In a study, a group of ten-year-old boys are fed doughnuts every morning for a week and then weighed to see how much weight they gained. Which factor is the dependent variable?

• The doughnuts
• The duration of a week
• The weight gained

Which statement provides the best operational definition of “childhood obesity”?

• Children who eat unhealthy foods and spend too much time watching television and playing video games
• A distressing trend that can lead to health issues including type 2 diabetes and heart disease
• Body weight at least 20 percent higher than a healthy weight for a child of that height
• The tendency of children today to weigh more than children of earlier generations

Short Answer

Write down the first three steps of the scientific method. Think of a broad topic that you are interested in and which would make a good sociological study—for example, ethnic diversity in a college, homecoming rituals, athletic scholarships, or teen driving. Now, take that topic through the first steps of the process. For each step, write a few sentences or a paragraph: 1) Ask a question about the topic. 2) Do some research and write down the titles of some articles or books you’d want to read about the topic. 3) Formulate a hypothesis.

Further Research

For a historical perspective on the scientific method in sociology, read “The Elements of Scientific Method in Sociology” by F. Stuart Chapin (1914) in the American Journal of Sociology : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Method-in-Sociology

Arkowitz, Hal, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. 2009. "Lunacy and the Full Moon: Does a full moon really trigger strange behavior?" Scientific American. Retrieved October 20, 2014 ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lunacy-and-the-full-moon ).

Berger, Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective . New York: Anchor Books.

Merton, Robert. 1968 [1949]. Social Theory and Social Structure . New York: Free Press.

“Scientific Method Lab,” the University of Utah, http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/scientific_method/sci_method_main.html .

Open Education Sociology Dictionary

Table of Contents

Definition of Hypothesis

( noun ) A proposed and testable explanation between two or more variables that predicts an outcome or explains a phenomenon.

Examples of Hypothesis

• Note : The  variables are the students, the time spent studying, and the test grades. To test the hypothesis, collect information from each student about how much time they spent studying prior to the test and compare that to the the testing outcomes.
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

Types of Hypothesis

• asymmetry hypothesis
• null hypothesis
• substantive hypothesis

Hypothesis Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification : hy·poth·e·sis

Audio Pronunciation

Phonetic Spelling

• American English – /hie-pAHth-uh-suhs/
• British English – /hie-pOth-i-sis/

International Phonetic Alphabet

• American English – /haɪˈpɑθəsəs/
• British English – /hʌɪˈpɒθᵻsᵻs/

Usage Notes

• Plural: hypotheses
• A hypothesis must have the capacity to be disconfirmed or proven false to have meaning. For example, “criminals” commit more crimes than “non-criminals” cannot be proven wrong.
• A hypothesis can either come from theory ( deduction ) or lead to theory ( induction ).
• A working hypothesis refers to a hypothesis that has not been thoroughly tested and verified.
• Hypothesis testing is the process of testing a hypothesis in a scientific manner that requires a link between the concepts or  variables under investigation and rigorous testing methodology .
• An ( noun ) hypothesist ( verb ) hypothesizes ( adverb ) hypothetically about social issues to create an ( adjective ) hypothetical explanation.

Related Videos

Additional Information

• Quantitative Research Resources – Books, Journals, and Helpful Links
• Word origin of “hypothesis” – Online Etymology Dictionary: etymonline.com
• Gauch, Hugh G., Jr. 2003. Scientific Method in Practice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lehmann, E. L., and Joseph P. Romano. 2010. Testing Statistical Hypotheses . 3rd ed. New York: Springer.
• Poletiek, Fenna. 2001. Hypothesis-testing Behaviour . Philadelphia: Psychology.
• Popper, Karl R. 1959.  The Logic of Scientific Discovery . New York: Basic Books.

Related Terms

• correlation
• dependent variable
• hypothetico-deductive model
• independent variable
• inferential statistics
• statistical analysis

Contributor: C. E. Seaman

Works Consulted

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Babbie, Earl. 2013. The Practice of Social Research . 13th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Bilton, Tony, Kevin Bonnett, Pip Jones, David Skinner, Michelle Stanworth, and Andrew Webster. 1996. Introductory Sociology . 3rd ed. London: Macmillan.

Branscombe, Nyla R., and Robert A. Baron. 2017. Social Psychology . 14th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson.

Brinkerhoff, David, Lynn White, Suzanne Ortega, and Rose Weitz. 2011.  Essentials of Sociology . 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Brym, Robert J., and John Lie. 2007.  Sociology: Your Compass for a New World . 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Bryman, Alan. 2012. Social Research Methods . 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

Burdess, Neil. 2010. Starting Statistics: A Short, Clear Guide . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

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Ferrante, Joan. 2011a. Seeing Sociology: An Introduction . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Ferrante, Joan. 2011b.  Sociology: A Global Perspective . 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Ferris, Kerry, and Jill Stein. 2010.  The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology . 2nd ed. New York: Norton.

Fioramonti, Lorenzo. 2014. How Numbers Rule the World: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Global Politics . London: Zed Books.

Griffiths, Heather, Nathan Keirns, Eric Strayer, Susan Cody-Rydzewski, Gail Scaramuzzo, Tommy Sadler, Sally Vyain, Jeff Bry, Faye Jones. 2016. Introduction to Sociology 2e . Houston, TX: OpenStax.

Henslin, James M. 2012.  Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach . 10th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Hughes, Michael, and Carolyn J. Kroehler. 2011.  Sociology: The Core . 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kendall, Diana. 2011.  Sociology in Our Times . 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Kimmel, Michael S., and Amy Aronson. 2012. Sociology Now . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Kornblum, William. 2008. Sociology in a Changing World . 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Larson, Ron, and Elizabeth Farber. 2015. Elementary Statistics: Picturing the World . 6th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Macionis, John. 2012.  Sociology . 14th ed. Boston: Pearson.

Macionis, John, and Kenneth Plummer. 2012.  Sociology: A Global Introduction . 4th ed. Harlow, England: Pearson Education.

O’Leary, Zina. 2007. The Social Science Jargon Buster: The Key Terms You Need to Know . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Oxford University Press. (N.d.) Oxford Dictionaries . ( https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ ).

Ravelli, Bruce, and Michelle Webber. 2016. Exploring Sociology: A Canadian Perspective . 3rd ed. Toronto: Pearson.

Salkind, Neil J., ed. 2007. Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Schaefer, Richard. 2013.  Sociology: A Brief Introduction . 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Shepard, Jon M. 2010.  Sociology . 11th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Shepard, Jon M., and Robert W. Greene. 2003.  Sociology and You . New York: Glencoe.

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Cite the Definition of Hypothesis

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Seaman, C. E. 2015. “hypothesis.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary , edited by Kenton Bell. Retrieved April 18, 2024 ( https://sociologydictionary.org/hypothesis/ ).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

Seaman, C. E. (2015). hypothesis. In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary . Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/hypothesis/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Seaman, C. E. 2015. “hypothesis.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary , edited by Kenton Bell. Accessed April 18, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/hypothesis/ .

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

Seaman, C. E. “hypothesis.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary . Ed. Kenton Bell. 2015. Web. 18 Apr. 2024. < https://sociologydictionary.org/hypothesis/ >.

Major Sociological Theories

A List of Sociological Theories, Concepts and Frameworks

• Key Concepts
• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology

Much of what we know about societies, relationships, and social behavior has emerged thanks to various sociology theories. Sociology students typically spend a great deal of time studying these different theories. Some theories have fallen out of favor, while others remain widely accepted, but all have contributed tremendously to our understanding of society, relationships, and social behavior. By learning more about these theories, you can gain a deeper and richer understanding of sociology's past, present, and future.

Symbolic Interaction Theory

The symbolic interaction perspective, also called symbolic interactionism, is a major framework of ​sociology theory. This perspective focuses on the symbolic meaning that people develop and rely upon in the process of social interaction.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory emphasizes the role of coercion and power in producing social order . This perspective is derived from the works of Karl Marx , who saw society as fragmented into groups that compete for social and economic resources. Social order is maintained by domination, with power in the hands of those with the greatest political, economic, and social resources.

Functionalist Theory

Bettmann/Getty Images

The functionalist perspective, also called functionalism, is one of the major theoretical perspectives in sociology. It has its origins in the works of Emile Durkheim , who was especially interested in how social order is possible and how society remains relatively stable.

Feminist Theory

Feminist theory is one of the major contemporary sociological theories, which analyzes the status of women and men in society with the purpose of using that knowledge to better women's lives. Feminist theory is most concerned with giving a voice to women and highlighting the various ways women have contributed to society.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory is a type of theory that aims to critique society, social structures, and systems of power, and to foster egalitarian social change.

Labeling Theory

Labeling theory is one of the most important approaches to understanding deviant and criminal behavior . It begins with the assumption that no act is intrinsically criminal. Definitions of criminality are established by those in power through the formulation of laws and the interpretation of those laws by police, courts, and correctional institutions.

Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory is a theory that attempts to explain socialization and its effect on the development of the self. It looks at the individual learning process, the formation of self, and the influence of society in socializing individuals. Social learning theory is commonly used by sociologists to explain deviance and crime.

Structural Strain Theory

Robert K. Merton developed structural strain theory as an extension of the functionalist perspective on deviance. This theory traces the origins of deviance to the tensions that are caused by the gap between cultural goals and the means people have available to achieve those goals.

Rational Choice Theory

Economics plays a huge role in human behavior. That is, people are often motivated by money and the possibility of making a profit, calculating the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do. This way of thinking is called rational choice theory.

Game Theory

Game theory is a theory of social interaction, which attempts to explain the interaction people have with one another. As the name of the theory suggests, game theory sees human interaction as just that: a game.

Sociobiology

Sociobiology is the application of evolutionary theory to social behavior. It is based on the premise that some behaviors are at least partly inherited and can be affected by natural selection.

Social Exchange Theory

Social exchange theory interprets society as a series of interactions that are based on estimates of rewards and punishments. According to this view, our interactions are determined by the rewards or punishments that we receive from others, and all human relationships are formed by the use of subjective cost-benefit analysis.

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, however, it has applications in several disciplines, including sociology and other social sciences. In the social sciences, chaos theory is the study of complex nonlinear systems of social complexity. It is not about disorder, but rather is about very complicated systems of order.

• Social Phenomenology

Social phenomenology is an approach within the field of sociology that aims to reveal what role human awareness plays in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds. In essence, phenomenology is the belief that society is a human construction.

Disengagement Theory

Disengagement theory, which has many critics, suggests that people slowly disengage from social life as they age and enter the elderly stage.

• The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology
• Sociology of Deviance and Crime
• Famous Sociologists
• What Is Social Learning Theory?
• What Is Social Order in Sociology?
• Deviance and Strain Theory in Sociology
• Symbolic Interaction Theory: History, Development, and Examples
• Understanding Functionalist Theory
• What Is Symbolic Interactionism?
• The Sociology of Education
• Understanding Social Exchange Theory
• A Biography of Erving Goffman
• An Overview of Labeling Theory
• Sociology Of Religion
• Sutherland's Differential Association Theory Explained

25 Famous Sociology Theories: Examples and Applications

Sociological theory refers to the conceptual frameworks sociologists use to understand, explain, and predict human behavior within the context of social structures and systems.

We can generally divide sociological theories into two rough buckets. The two buckets are:

• Macrosociology : Macrosociology explores large-scale social structures, long-term processes, and societal trends. For instance, conflict theory posits that social life is a struggle between groups to gain control of resources, thus causing social inequalities (Robinson, 2014). Theorists such as Marx and Weber elaborate on how overarching structures like the economy drive social behaviors and patterns. 
• Microsociology : Microsociology studies the intimate social interactions and everyday behaviors of individuals and small groups, with an intrest in individual agency. For instance, symbolic interactionism, a micro sociological theory, explicates how people use symbols (like words or gestures) to create meaning and communicate with each other (Jeon, 2017).
• Mesosociology: Mesosociology examines the in-between social forces and factors, such as examining local communities, ageism, race and ethnicity, and so on, on regional levels, without the explicit focus on only social institutions (e.g. educational institutions) or specific individuals.

Below are the 25 most famous sociological theories from both macro and micro perspectives.

Sociology Theory Examples

1. conflict theory.

Type of Theory: Macrosociology

Conflict Theory proposes that society is marked by ongoing struggles for resources and power, resulting in social inequalities.

This theory, originally formulated by Karl Marx, asserts that social life is fundamentally about contestations between groups with differing interests (Robinson, 2014).

It highlights how those with more resources often wield greater power, having the ability to shape society to maintain their privileges.

Consequently, it posits that conflicts may arise because of power dynamics and these disagreements drive social change . 

Example of Conflict Theory The persistent wage gap between men and women in many societies can be seen as an illustration of conflict theory, showcasing how power plays maintain social disparities (Blau & Kahn, 2017). It suggests that the gender wage gap is a reflection not solely of individuals’ choices but also of broader societal structures and power dynamics.

2. Functionalism

Definition: Functionalism considers society as a complex system of interdependent parts, each having a function fulfilling societal stability.

This sociological perspective, rooted in the works of Emile Durkheim , perceives each segment of society as vital for its overall functioning — much akin to the organs in a body (Parsons, 2010).

Maintaining harmony is crucial, as per this paradigm, with every part, be it family, education, or law, contributing towards societal equilibrium. Disruptions to this balance, such as social changes or conflicts, are seen as temporary disturbances that society works to resolve.

Example of Functionalism An example from functionalism could be the educational system, which not only provides knowledge (manifest function) but also serves to integrate individuals into societal norms and expectations (latent function) (Meyer, 2011). Here, education is vital for maintaining societal stability and ensuring societal continuity.

3. Symbolic Interactionism

Type of Theory: Microsociology

Symbolic Interactionism emphasizes how individuals use symbols to navigate social interactions and create social worlds.

This theory, developed by George Herbert Mead and further expanded by Herbert Blumer, highlights the subjective meaning of human actions and interactions (Jeon, 2017).

It propounds that people act based on the meanings objects, behaviors, or words have for them, and these meanings emerge from social interactions.

Therefore, society is viewed as being actively and continually constructed and reconstructed through these interactions and the meanings derived from them. 

Example of Symbolic Interactionism An everyday illustration of symbolic interactionism is the use of language, a system of symbols, to convey our thoughts or feelings (Stryker, 2017). The meaning assigned to words isn’t inherent but constructed through our social interactions, and this plays a crucial role in determining our subsequent actions and reactions.

4. Social Exchange Theory

Social Exchange Theory postulates that human relationships and interactions are guided by a cost-benefit analysis and the pursuit of rewards.

Driven by the principles of economics, this theory suggests that individuals engage in social interactions akin to transactions, aiming to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs (Cook, 2013).

Impressions of past exchanges and expectations of future returns inform the decisions to pursue or withdraw from interactions.

The balance of rewards against costs can contribute significantly to the stability of social relationships, or conversely, their dissolution. 

Example of Social Exchange Theory The dynamics of friendships can be viewed through this lens (Molm, 2010), where individuals continue the friendship so long as the perceived emotional support, companionship, and other benefits outweigh the costs, such as time commitment and emotional energy.

5. Feminist Theory

Type of Theory: Macrosociology, Microsociology, and Mesosociology

Feminist Theory is concerned with understanding and challenging the social inequalities and injustices faced by women.

This multidisciplinary set of theories emphasizes the diverse experiences of women, often overlooked in traditional sociological paradigms , shedding light on the interconnectedness of gender with other social structures like race, class, and sexuality (Risman, 2017).

It critically examines the ways in which societal institutions perpetuate gender disparities, seeking to dismantle patriarchal structures.

Feminist theorists assert that meaningful societal change necessitates a paradigm shift in gender relations and the deconstruction of problematic norms and stereotypes. 

Example of Feminist Theory The gender pay gap is an instance where feminist theorists have highlighted systemic injustice (Bobbitt-Zeher, 2011), pointing to discriminatory employment practices and societal norms that value certain types of work over others.

6. Structural Strain Theory

Structural Strain Theory posits that social dysfunctions and deviant behavior arise when there is a discrepancy between societal goals and the means to achieve those goals.

This theory, formulated by Robert K. Merton, suggests that when individuals have limited resources or opportunities to reach socially-approved goals, they might resort to socially unacceptable means, leading to deviance (Agnew, 2011).

Merton conceptualized five adaptation modes to this strain – conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion, each reflecting different responses to the experienced disconnection between goals and means.

Example of Structural Strain Theory The incidence of property crime in economically disadvantaged communities reflects this theory (Chamlin & Cochran, 2012), where limited legitimate means to achieve financial success might pressure individuals towards unlawful ways.

7. Labeling Theory

Labeling Theory argues that individuals become deviant not merely due to their actions but rather due to societal reactions and labels attached to their behavior.

It suggests that once a deviant label is applied, it becomes part of the individual’s self-concept, shaping their actions and leading to a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Tannenbaum, 2019).

Individuals might internalize the label, causing them to act in ways that confirm the societal stereotype.

Hence, this theory challenges the simplistic perception of deviance as an inherent characteristic and instead, underscores the role of social definitions and reactions. 

Example of Labeling Theory Stigmatization of ex-offenders and the subsequent difficulty in reintegrating into society highlight the power of negative labels (Moore, 2016). This societal response often leads to recidivism, validating the label and perpetuating a cycle of deviance.

8. Rational Choice Theory

Rational Choice Theory assumes that individuals make decisions based on their rational calculations, aiming to maximize personal benefit.

This theory applies economic theory to social interactions, suggesting that people behave as rational actors, weighing the costs and benefits of potential actions (Becker, 2013).

While initially focused on economic behavior, the theory has been expanded to understand a broad range of social phenomena, from politics to crime.

Critics, however, question the assumption of perfect rationality, pointing out that humans’ decision-making can often be influenced by emotions, biases, and other non-rational factors.

Example of Rational Choice Theory Choosing whether or not to attend college can be considered in terms of this theory (Dominitz & Manski, 1996) – individuals weigh the immediate costs (tuition fees, loss of potential income from working) and the potential long-term benefits (higher earnings, better employment prospects).

9. Social Disorganization Theory

Social Disorganization Theory suggests that crime rates are higher in neighborhoods where social institutions (like schools and families) are unable to maintain control.

According to Shaw and McKay’s pioneering work in the early 20th century, social disorganization arises due to certain characteristics such as poverty, residential instability, and ethnic diversity (Sampson & Groves, 1989).

These factors hinder the formation of close-knit, cohesive communities, leading to social disorganization.

As a result, these communities struggle to maintain social control , providing fertile ground for criminal behavior.

Example of Social Disorganization Theory High rates of juvenile delinquency in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods exemplify this theory (Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003) – without stable social structures, young people may turn to crime as a means of navigation through disorganized social environments .

10. Social Learning Theory

Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from observing others, with the environment, cognition, and behavior all interplaying to influence learning.

Developed primarily by Albert Bandura, this theory suggests that indirect or vicarious experiences, such as observing others’ behavior and the consequences of such behavior, play a crucial role in human learning (Bandura, 2011).

It posits that individuals are more likely to adopt behaviors if they observe similar people being rewarded for these behaviors.

Conversely, they are less likely to replicate behaviors if they see others being punished for them.

Example of Social Learning Theory The influence of media violence on aggressive behavior is often discussed within this theoretical framework (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) – individuals, particularly children, may replicate aggressive behaviors observed in media, especially when such behavior appears to be rewarded.

11. Critical Theory

Critical Theory seeks to challenge and change society as a whole, rather than simply understand or explain it.

This theory, developed by the Frankfurt School scholars, aims to critique and change society, often seeking to emancipate social groups oppressed by a capitalist, hegemonic society (Horkheimer, 2012).

It is an extension of conflict theory, by inserting a more political and ideological perspective, explicitly advocating for class-based social change.

Critical theorists focus on the role of power in society and how dominant social structures and processes maintain power disparities.

Therefore, it not only aims towards understanding the societal dynamics but also advocates for social justice and equality.

Example of Critical Theory The civil rights movement in the United States exemplified the application of critical theory (Roth, 2019), challenging racial segregation and discrimination laws and advocating for equal rights and social transformation.

12. Postmodern Theory

Postmodern theory in sociology critiques grand theories and ideologies, focusing on the role of language, power relations, and motivations in shaping our understanding of reality. 

Founded in the mid to late 20th century among thinkers like Foucault and Lyotard, Postmodern Theory challenges universal metanarratives, instead advocating for a respect for difference, contradiction, and the indeterminate nature of knowledge. 

It insists that society is too diverse, fragmented, and complex to be fully captured by broad, sweeping theories. 

Therefore, it encourages a more interpretive, localized, and deconstructive approach to understand social realities. 

Example of Postmodernism The questioning of established scientific knowledge and the inclusion of marginalized voices and perspectives can be understood through the Postmodern lens, as in Feminist epistemologies (Harding, 2013).

13. Network Theory

Type of Theory: Mesosociology

Network Theory posits that social actors and their actions are best understood through their relations to one another rather than their individual attributes. 

According to this theory, social patterns and phenomena emerge from the complex web of relations among social actors (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011). 

Whether these actors are individuals, groups, organizations, or even societies, their network connections largely influence their behavior, roles, and opportunities. 

The theory emphasizes the importance of ties and relationships, making it crucial in areas like social networking, organizational studies, and public health. 

Example of Network Theory An example of this theory can be seen in the spread of diseases in epidemiology, such as how HIV/AIDS dissemination was mapped through patients’ social relations (Rothenberg, 2001).

14. Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology suggests that individuals use their knowledge of social norms to construct a sense of order and make sense of the world around them. 

Developed by Harold Garfinkel in the 1960s, this approach focuses on the ways people make sense of their everyday world by creating shared understandings of symbols and actions (Rawls, 2013). 

In essence, it attempts to uncover the hidden rules and structures that individuals subconsciously agree upon to coordinate their interactions smoothly. 

These common-sense knowledge rules allow individuals to interpret and predict the behavior of others, thereby facilitating social interactions. 

Example of Ethnomethodology The everyday conversations between friends and how they navigate misunderstandings showcases Ethnomethodology in action, reflecting how we use shared understandings to communicate effectively (Sacks, 1995).

15. Structural Functionalism

Structural Functionalism views society as a complex system, wherein each part works together to promote the stability and survival of the entire system. 

Built upon the works of Émile Durkheim, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer, this theoretical perspective perceives every aspect of society, be it an institution like family or an act like crime, as serving specific functions to maintain societal balance (Turner, 2013). 

This notion of social equilibrium argues that disruptions, like social change or conflict, are typically rectified by society’s compensatory mechanisms. 

However, critics suggest this perspective overlooks social inequalities, ignoring the disadvantages of certain social arrangements. 

Example of Structural Functionalism The way different parts of the educational system from schools to universities serve to maintain social order and ensure the smooth functioning of society reflects principles of Structural Functionalism (Ballantine & Hammack, 2013).

16. Social Phenomenology

Social Phenomenology emphasizes understanding the subjective experiences and interpretations that individuals have of the world. 

Derived from the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, social phenomenologists, like Alfred Schutz, suggest the social world is a human construct, experienced and interpreted through the conscious individuals who inhabit it (Natanson, 2017). 

It is concerned with exploring how individuals ascribe meanings to their experiences, thereby creating their own subjective realities. 

This focus on individual perceptions and interpretations provides a valuable framework for understanding the complexities of social life. 

Example of Social Phenomenology Individual interpretations of a contentious political event could be explored using social phenomenology, revealing how political orientation, social background, and personal experiences shape subjective perceptions and interpretations (Ku, 2016).

17. Cultural Theory

Cultural Theory investigates how culture and societal structures influence individual behaviors, beliefs, and identity.

Central to this perspective is an understanding that culture, as a shared system of meanings, guides human behavior and societal operations (Couldry, 2012). 

These shared meanings, symbols, and practices enable communication and cooperation, foster social cohesion, and influence identity formation.

Culture, therefore, is seen as a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes one group or society from another.

Example of Cultural Theory Cross-cultural differences in general behaviors or business practices could be considered under this theory, highlighting how cultural norms and values shape behaviors (Hofstede, 2011).

18. World Systems Theory

World Systems Theory suggests that societies function within a world economic system that inherently promotes disparity and inequality.

Immanuel Wallerstein, who developed the theory, argued that the world system is characterized by a division of labor leading to the development of core, semi-peripheral, and peripheral nations (Wallerstein, 2011). 

Acknowledging that these differing positions affect societies’ economic and political development, this theory challenges the view that all societies go through similar linear stages of development. 

Instead, it underscores how the interconnected global ecosphere shapes and is shaped by national economies. 

Example of World Systems Theory The persistent economic disparity between developed and developing nations is illustrative of World Systems Theory, revealing how global economic systems contribute to uneven resource distribution (Arrighi, 2010).

19. Social Constructionism

Social Constructionism posits that social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into tradition by humans.

Contrary to theories that view social phenomena as objective facts, social constructionists argue that aspects of the social world – such as social roles, symbols, and institutions – are not inherent or static, but are instead constructed and reconstructed by social actors (Berger & Luckmann, 2011). 

Social Constructionism highlights how these constructed realities can have real, tangible effects on human interaction, social structure, and personal identity . 

Example of Social Constructionism Gender roles and expectations serve as a compelling illustration of Social Constructionism, emphasizing how society, not biology, dictates these roles and norms (West & Zimmerman, 2009).

20. Dependency Theory

Dependency Theory argues that global inequality is due to the exploitation of peripheral and semi-peripheral nations by core nations.

This theory originated as a response to modernization theory, offering a critique of the existing capitalist world system and arguing that underdevelopment was fostered by the historical development of the world economic system (Frank, 2011). 

In this view, periphery nations exporting raw materials to the core nations are left in a state of dependency, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.

Example of Dependency Theory Dependence on commodity exports by many African countries illustrates Dependency Theory, demonstrating how reliance on export earnings from primary commodities can facilitate an exploitative dynamic with more developed nations (Nwoke, 2015).

21. Neo-Marxist Theory

Neo-Marxist Theory extends the classical Marxist theory by incorporating factors such as culture, ideology, and state power into the analysis of societal dynamics. 

Neo-Marxists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, placed much emphasis on the cultural and ideological superstructure that influences and solidifies the capitalist mode of production (Levitsky, 2013). 

This perspective asserts that power resides not just in economic structures, but also in ideological systems which influence and control societal thought and behavior. 

While upholding the fundamental Marxist tenet of economic determinism, Neo-Marxist theory also recognized the independent impacts of politics, social forces, and ideas in shaping societal relations. 

Example of Neo-Marxist Theory Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, which explains how the dominant class maintains control by shaping cultural norms and values to their advantage, can be considered an application of Neo-Marxist thought (Jones, 2006).

22. Queer Theory

Queer Theory explores identities and experiences that deviate from the normative understandings of sexuality and gender, advocating for the deconstruction of such binaries. 

Rooted in the intellectual traditions of feminist criticism and gay and lesbian studies, Queer Theory critically interrogates the socio-cultural constructs of gender and sexuality, challenging the conceptual rigidity of these categories (Jagose, 2012). 

It posits that identities are not fixed but fluid and questions the societal stigmatization of non-normative sexual identities and practices.

Example of Queer Theory The exploration of non-binary gender identities and the critique of heteronormative structures in society exemplify the application of Queer Theory (Butler, 2011).

23. Intersectionality Theory

Intersectionality Theory examines how various social categories such as race, class, and gender interact to shape individual experiences and systemic inequality.

Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberlé Crenshaw, key contributors to this theory, argue that systems of oppression are interconnected and cannot be examined independently from one another (Crenshaw, 1989).

This multi-faceted approach to social identities underscores that individuals experience discrimination and privilege in varying degrees, depending on their conjoint identities.

Example of Intersectionality Theory The unique challenges faced by women of colour, who contend with both racial and gender discrimination, can be understood through the lens of Intersectionality Theory (Choo & Ferree, 2010).

24. Actor-Network Theory

Type of Theory: Microsociology, Macrosociology

Actor-Network Theory suggests that both human and non-human elements contribute equally to the function of social networks and should be treated as actors or agents within a network.

Developed by sociologists such as Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, Actor-Network Theory illustrates the idea that society is constructed through complex networks of interaction between various actors (Latour, 2005). 

It thus dissolves the boundaries between the social and natural world, viewing both human and non-human entities as possessing agency.

Example of Actor-Network Theory The role of technology in modern social life can be viewed through Actor-Network Theory, reflecting how tech devices shape human behavior and social interaction (Akrich, 1992).

25. Social Identity Theory

Type of Theory: Microsociology, Mesosociology

Social Identity Theory posits that a person’s sense of self is shaped by their membership in social groups and categories.

Developed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, this theory argues that individuals seek to maintain or enhance their self-esteem by identifying with specific social groups and perceiving these groups in a positive light (Tajfel, 1974).

This identification with in-groups and differentiation from out-groups can lead to bias and discrimination, thereby driving societal dynamics.

Example of Social Identity Theory Football fan behavior, where loyalty to one’s team often involves devaluing rival teams, illustrates the principles of Social Identity Theory (Brown, 2000).

Sociological theories, ranging from macro to micro levels, provide a lens through which you can examine and understand various societal phenomena. These theories indeed facilitate predictive and explanatory capabilities, thus aiding in gaining a more profound, sharper understanding of the complex environ of human society.

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1.3: Social Theories

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• Ron J. Hammond & Paul Cheney
• Utah Valley Unviersity

Making Sense of Abstract Theories

Sociological theories are the core and underlying strength of the discipline. They guide researchers in their studies. They also guide practitioners in their intervention strategies. And they will provide you with a basic understanding of how to see the larger social picture in your own personal life. A Theory is a set of interrelated concepts used to describe, explain, and predict how society and its parts are related to each other . The metaphor I've used for many years to illustrate the usefulness of a theory is what I call the "goggles metaphor." Goggles are a set of inter-related parts that help us see things more clearly. Goggles work because the best scientific components work together to magnify, enlarge, clarify, and expand to our view of the thing we are studying.

Theories are sets of inter-related concepts and ideas that have been scientifically tested and combined to magnify, enlarge, clarify, and expand our understanding of people, their behaviors, and their societies. Without theories, science would be a futile exercise in statistics. In the diagram below you can see the process by which a theory leads sociologist to perform a certain type of study with certain types of questions that can test the assumptions of the theory. Once the study is administered the findings and generalizations can be considered to see if they support the theory. If they do, similar studies will be performed to repeat and fine-tune the process. If the findings and generalizations do not support the theory, the sociologist rethinks and revisits the assumptions they made.

Here's a real-life scientific example. In the 1960's two researchers named Cumming and Henry studied the processes of aging. They devised a theory on aging that had assumptions built into it. These were simply put, that all elderly people realize the inevitability of death and begin to systematically disengage from their previous youthful roles while at the same time society prepares to disengage from them (see Maddox et al. 1987 The Encyclopedia of Aging, Springer Pub. NY for much more detail. Cumming and Henry tested their theory on a large number of elderly persons. Findings and generalization consistently yielded a "no" in terms of support for this theory. For all intents and purposes this theory was abandoned and is only used in references such as these (for a more scientifically supported theory on aging Google "Activity Theory and/or Continuity Theory"). Theories have to be supported by research and they also provide a framework for how specific research should be conducted.

By the way, theories can be used to study society-millions of people in a state, country, or even at the world level. When theories are used at this level they are referred to as Macro Theories, theories which best fit the study of massive numbers of people (typically Conflict and Functional theories). When theories are used to study small groups or individuals, say a couple, family, or team, they are referred to as being Micro Theories, theories which best fit the study of small groups and their members (typically Symbolic Interactionism or Social Exchange theories). In many cases, any of the four main theories can be applied at either the macro or micro levels.

There are really two distinct types of theories: first, Grand Theory, which is a theory which deals with the universal aspects of social processes or problems and is based on abstract ideas and concepts rather than on case specific evidence . These include Conflict, Functionalism, Symbolic Interactionism, and Social Exchange Theories; second, Middle-Range Theory, which is a theory derived from specific scientific findings and focuses on the interrelation of two or more concepts applied to a very specific social process or problem. Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) was a functional theory-based sociologist who taught the value of using smaller more specifically precise theories in trying to explain smaller and more specific social phenomena. These theories include: Continuity, Activity, Differential Association, and Labeling theories. (see American Sociology Association, Theory http://www.asatheory.org/ ).

Let's consider the four grand theories one at a time. The Conflict Theory is a macro theory. A Macro Theory is a sociological theory designed to study the larger social, global, and societal level of sociological phenomena . This theory was founded by a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, and revolutionary (1818-1883). Marx was a witness to oppression perpetrated by society's elite members against the masses of poor. He had very little patience for the capitalistic ideals that undergirded these powerful acts of inhumane exploitation of the average person. To him struggle was innate to all human societies. Later another German named Max Weber (1864-1920; pronounced "Veybur") further developed this sociological theory and refined it to a more moderate position. Weber studied capitalism further but argued against Marx's outright rejection of it.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory is especially useful in understanding: war, wealth and poverty, the haves and the have nots, revolutions, political strife, exploitation, divorce, ghettos, discrimination and prejudice, domestic violence, rape, child abuse, slavery, and more conflict-related social phenomena. Conflict Theory claims that society is in a state of perpetual conflict and competition for limited resources . Marx and Weber, were they alive today, would likely use Conflict Theory to study the unprecedented bail outs by the US government which have proven to be a rich-to-rich wealth transfer.

Conflict Theory assumes that those who have perpetually try to increase their wealth at the expense and suffering of those who have not. It is a power struggle which is most often won by wealthy elite and lost by the common person of common means. Power is the ability to get what one wants even in the presence of opposition. Authority is the institutionalized legitimate power . By far the Bourgeoisie, or wealthy elite (royalty, political, and corporate leaders), have the most power. Bourgeoisie are the "Goliaths" in society who often bully their wishes into outcomes. The Proletariat are the common working class, lower class, and poor members of society. According to Marx (see diagram below) the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat cannot both have it their way and in order to offset the wealth and power of the Bourgeoisie the proletariat often rise up and revolt against their oppressors (The French, Bolshevik, United States, Mexican, and other revolutions are examples).

In fact Marx and Weber realized long ago that society does have different classes and a similar pattern of relatively few rich persons in comparison to the majority who are poor. The rich call the shots. Look below at the photographic montage of homes in one US neighborhood which were run down, poor, trashy, and worth very little. They were on the West side of this gully and frustrated many who lived on the East side who were forced to drive through these "slums" to reach their own mansions.

Figure 3. Photo Montage of Haves and Have Nots in a US Neighborhood

© 2009 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.

The Conflict Theory has been repeatedly tested against scientifically derived data and it repeatedly proves to have a wide application among many different levels of sociological study. That is not to say that all sociological phenomena are conflict-based. But, most Conflict theorists would argue that more often than not Conflict assumptions do apply. Feminist theory is a theoretical perspective that is couched primarily in Conflict Theory assumptions.

Functionalism or Structural Functionalism Theory

The next grand theory is called Functionalism or Structural Functionalism. The Functionalist Theory claims that society is in a state of balance and kept that way through the function of society's component parts. This theory has underpinnings in biological and ecological concepts (see diagram below). Society can be studied the same way the human body can be studied - by analyzing what specific systems are working or not working, diagnosing problems, and devising solutions to restore balance. Socialization, religious involvement, friendship, health care, economic recovery, peace, justice and injustice, population growth or decline, community, romantic relationships, marriage and divorce, and normal and abnormal family experiences are just a few of the evidences of functional processes in our society.

Sure, Functionalists would agree with Conflict Theorists that things break down in society and that unfair treatment of others is common. These break downs are called Dysfunctions, which are breakdowns or disruptions in society and its parts that threaten social stability. Enron's collapse, the ruination of 14,000 employees' retirement funds, the loss of millions in shareholder investments, and the serious doubt it left in the mind of US investors about the Stock Market's credibility and reliability which lasted for nearly a decade are examples of dysfunctions in the economic sector of the economy. But, Functionalists also look at two types of functions: manifest and latent functions. Manifest Functions are the apparent and intended functions of institutions in society. Latent Functions are the less apparent, unintended, and often unrecognized functions in social institutions and processes .

Back to Enron, the government's manifest function includes regulation of investment rules and laws in the Stock market to ensure credibility and reliability. After the Enron collapse, every company offering stocks for trade underwent a government supervised audit of its accounting processes in order to restore the public trust. For the most part balance was restored in the Stock Market (to a certain degree at least). There are still many imbalances in the investment, mortgage, and banking sectors which have to be readjusted; but, that's the point - society does readjust and eventually recover some degree of function.

Does the government also provide latent or accidental functions to society? Yes. Take for example the US military bases. Of all the currently open US military bases, all are economic boons for the local communities surrounding them. All provide jobs, taxes, tourism, retail, and government contract monies that would otherwise go somewhere else. When the discussion about closing military bases comes up in Washington DC, Senators and members of Congress go to work trying to keep their community's bases open.

As you can already tell, Functionalism is more positive and optimistic that Conflict Theory (the basis for much criticism by many Conflict Theorists). Functionalists realize that just like the body, societies get "sick" or dysfunction. By studying society's parts and processes, Functionalists can better understand how society remains stable or adjust to destabilizing forces when unwanted change is threatened. According to this theory most societies find that healthy balance and maintain it (unless they don't and collapse as many have in the history of the world. Equilibrium is the state of balance maintained by social processes that help society adjust and compensate for forces that might tilt it onto a path of destruction.

Getting back to the Conflict example of the gully separating extremely wealthy and poor neighborhoods, look at this Habitat for Humanity picture below. I took this close to my own home, because it represents what Functional Theorists claim happens - component parts of society respond to dysfunctions in ways that help to resolve problems. In this house the foundation was dug, poured, and dried within a week. From the foundation to this point was three working days. This house is now finished and lived in, thanks mostly to the Habitat non-profit process and the work of many volunteers. From the Functionalism perspective, optimism is appropriate and fits the empirical data gathered in society.

Figure 2. Photo of a Recently Finished Habitat for Humanity Home

Symbolic Interactionism Theory

Interactionism comes in two theoretical forms: Symbolic Interaction and Social Exchange. By far, my favorite sociological theory is Symbolic Interactionism. Symbolic Interaction claims that society is composed of ever-present interactions among individuals who share symbols and their meanings . This is a very useful theory for: understanding other people; improving communications; learning and teaching skills in cross-cultural relations; and generally speaking, "not doing harm to your roommates" as many of my students often say after understanding this theory. Values, communication, witch hunting, crisis management, fear from crime, fads, love and all that comes with it, "evil and sin," what's hot and what's not, alien abduction beliefs, "who I am," litigation, mate selection, arbitration, dating joys and woes, and both personal and national meanings and definitions (September 1, 2001-WTC) can all be better understood using Symbolic Interactionism.

Once you realize that individuals are, by their social natures, very symbolic with one another, then you begin to understand how to persuade your friends and family, how to understand others' points of view, and how to resolve misunderstandings. This theory magnifies the concepts of meanings. Think about these three words, LOVE, LUST, and LARD. Each letter is a symbol. When combined in specific order, each word can be defined. Because we memorize words and their meanings we know that there is a striking difference between LOVE and LUST. We also know that LARD has nothing to do with either of these two terms. Contrast these word pairs: hate versus hope; help versus hurt; advise versus abuse; and connect versus corrupt. These words, like many others carry immense meaning and when juxtaposed sound like the beginning of philosophical ideas.

Symbolic Interactionism makes it possible for you to be a college student. It makes it so you understand your professors' expectations and know how to step up to them. Our daily interactions are filled with symbols and an ongoing process of interactions with other people based on the meanings of these symbols. "How's it going?" Ever had anyone you've greeted actually answer that question? Most of us never have. It's a greeting, not a question in the US culture (see culture chapter).

If you want to surprise someone, answer them next time they say "How's it going?" If they have a sense of humor, they might get a kick out of it. If not, you may have to explain yourself. Symbolic Interactionism Theory explores the way we communicate and helps us to understand how we grow up with our self-concept (see socialization chapter). It helps you to know what the expectations of your roles are and if you perceive yourself as doing a good job or not in meeting those expectations.

There are many other Symbolic Interactionism concepts out there to study, let's just talk about one more-The Thomas Theorem or Definition of the Situation. The Thomas Theorem is often called the "Definition of the situation" which is basically if people perceive or define something as being real then it is real in its consequences. I give a few examples from the media: a woman was diagnosed as HIV positive. She made her funeral plans, made sure her children would be cared for then prepared to die. Two-years later she was retested. It turned out her first test results were a false positive, yet she acted as though she had AIDS and was certainly going to die soon from it.

In a hypothetical case, a famous athlete (you pick the sport) defines himself as invincible and too famous to be held legally accountable for his criminal behavior. He is subsequently found guilty. A politician (you pick the party and level of governance) believes that his/her constituents will tolerate anything. When he/she doesn't get reelected no one is surprised. The point is that when we define our situation as being real, we act as though it is real (regardless of the objective facts in the matter).

Symbolic Interactionism is very powerful in helping people to understand each other. Newlyweds, roommates, life-long friends, young adult children and their parents, and teammates can all utilize the principles to "walk a mile in the other's shoes;" "see the world through their glasses;" and/or simply "get it." One of the major realization that comes with Symbolic Interactionism is that you begin to understand the other people in your life and come to know that they are neither right nor wrong, just of a different point of view. They just define social symbols with varying meanings.

To understand the other person's symbols and meanings, is to approach common ground. Listen to this statement by Rosa Parks (1913-2005), "All I was doing was trying to get home from work." In 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a White person, it proved to be a spark for the Civil Rights Movement that involved the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. and many other notable leaders. It was Rosa Parks' simple and honest statement that made her act of defiance so meaningful. The lion share of the nation was collectively tired and sick of the mistreatment of Blacks. Many Whites joined the protests while others quietly sympathized. After all that was written in the history books about it, a simple yet symbolic gesture by Rosa Parks symbolically started the healing process for the United States.

Social Exchange Theory

The remaining theory and second interactionist theory is Social Exchange. Social Exchange claims that society is composed of ever present interactions among individuals who attempt to maximize rewards while minimizing costs. Assumptions in this theory are similar to Conflict theory assumptions yet have their interactistic underpinnings. Basically, human beings are rational creatures, capable of making sound choices once the pros and cons of the choice are understood. This theory uses a formula to measure the choice making processes.

(REWARDS-COSTS)=OUTCOMES

("What I get out of it"-"What I lose by doing it")="My decision "

We look at the options available to us and weigh as best we can how to maximize our rewards and minimize our losses. Sometimes we get it right and other times we make a bad choice. One of the powerful aspects of this theory is the concept of Equity. Equity is a sense that the interactions are fair to us and fair to others involved by the consequences of our choices . For example, why is it that women who work 40 hours a week and have husbands who work 40 hours per week do not perform the same number of weekly hours of housework and childcare? Scientists have surveyed many couples to find the answer. Most often, it boils down to a sense of fairness or equity. Because she defines it as her role to do housework and childcare, while he doesn't; because they tend to fight when she does try to get him to perform housework, and because she may think he's incompetent, they live with an inequitable arrangement as though it were equitable (don't get me started on the evidence that supports men sharing the actual roles of housekeepers and childcare providers-see Joseph Pleck, "Working Wives/ Working Husbands" Sage Pub, CA).

Each of us tries constantly to weigh pros and cons and to maximize the outcomes of our choices. I often provide a rhetorical challenge to my students when I ask them to go down to the cafeteria, pick the least attractive person they can find, take them on a date where they drive and they pay for everything, then give the person a 7 second kiss at the end of the date. "Why would we do that?" they typically ask. "That's my point," I typically reply, having increased a bit of their understanding of the Social Exchange Theory.

Any of the four theories can be used to study any individual and collective behaviors. But, some do work better than others because their assumptions more precisely match the issue of interest. Divorce might be studied from the Conflict Theory to understand how things become adversarial and how and why contested divorces sometimes become violent. Divorce might be studied from the Functionalism Theory to understand how divorce is a means to resolving untenable social circumstance-it is a gesture designed to restore balance and equilibrium. Divorce might be studied using the Symbolic Interactionism Theory to identify how people define their roles before, during, and after the divorce and how they reestablish new roles as unmarried adults. Divorce might also be studied using the Social Exchange Theory to understand the processes and choices that lead to the final divorce decision, distribution of assets, child custody decrees and the final legal change of status (see Levinger and Moles, "Divorce and Separation: Context, Causes, and Consequences" 1979, Basic Books).

I've enclosed a simple summary sheet of the four basic theories used most by sociologists. It serves well as a reference guide, but can't really replace your efforts to study sociological theories in more detail. On the next page I've enclosed a self-assessment that may help you to assess your leanings towards these four main theories and two others that are often used by sociologists. On the self-assessment don't be surprised if you find that all four theories fit your world-view. Keep in mind they have been extensively studied for a very long time.

Comparing the Four Sociological Theories

Prepared by Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D. 20008

Class Experience Mobility through Consumption, Work, and Relationships by Taylor Laemmli (2024)

Sociological Theory

Sociological analyses of class mobility focus on enduring class movement. How might we reconceptualize class mobility to capture more shifting experiences of class? I propose a new way to theorize class mobility that is oriented toward the analysis of short-term class mobility. Class experience mobility (CEM) is a form of class mobility in which people temporarily access a class lifestyle that does not correspond to their class position, tasting another life before returning to their own. In this theory-building article, I first conceptualize CEM, situating it relative to mainstream class analysis. I then describe six class experience processes that enable temporary upward class mobility through consumption, work, and relationships. Finally, I show how the processes by which people engage in CEM can serve as mechanisms shaping long-term class mobility and people’s classed self-understandings.

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Terron, X and the Two-Year Theory

The Miami Dolphins aren’t strictly looking at their current roster when making draft decisions

• Author: Alain Poupart

In this story:

While the Miami Dolphins favor the BPA (best player available) approach over going for need in the 2024 NFL draft, there will be another factor at work.

Call it the two-year theory, if you will.

What that means for General Manager Chris Grier and the Dolphins organization is making decisions based not only on what the roster looks right now but also what it’s likely to look like in 2025.

That approach just might lead to the selection of an offensive tackle in an early round next week, just like it likely played a not-insignificant role in the decision to draft Cam Smith in Round 2 last year.

THE TERRON ARMSTEAD SITUATION

The Dolphins are pretty set at offensive tackle for the upcoming season after veteran Kendall Lamm re-signed to return as the backup to Terron Armstead and Austin Jackson.

But Lamm already has said this will be his last season and more importantly the same could wind up being true for Armstead after he said this offseason he’s contemplated retirement for a few years now.

So maybe, just maybe, the Dolphins will be inclined to get their left tackle of the future in this draft if they find somebody to their liking in one of the first two rounds, particulary if that prospect could help out at guard as a rookie — the way Laremy Tunsil did as a rookie first-round pick in 2016 when the Dolphins still had veteran Branden Albert as their starting left tackle.

Maybe that player ends up being J.C. Latham or Graham Barton or Troy Fautanu if the Dolphins want to go that route.

“I think you’re always looking at your roster," Grier said. "You’re always trying to take a two-year look into the future, what it could be. We always knew that (retirement) possibility could be with him. We’re very respectful of his time and to his credit, he is an incredible communicator. I’ve gotten to know him over the last couple years – he is a fantastic person. So I’m very glad he is coming back, because he has impacted that room so much with those young guys and helped Austin and all those guys grow and Liam (Eichenberg), so having him back is important. But you always look at every position when you kind of go through it and try and look and try and anticipate what some of the issues could be in the future.”

THE XAVIEN HOWARD EXAMPLE

Going into the 2023 draft, cornerback certainly wasn’t at the top of the priority list for the Dolphins after they had acquired former All-Pro Jalen Ramsey in a trade with the Los Angeles Rams to team up with four-time Pro Bowl selection Xavien Howard.

But the Dolphins obviously were aware of Howard’s contract situation, which featured a large cap savings this year if they were to move on from him.

As it turned out, Smith got the last snaps from scrimmage of any second-round pick in the NFL in 2024 and that was very disappointing, but this clearly was a pick made with the future — a future without Howard — in mind.

And while Smith not contributing as a rookie was a letdown for a team that ended up going through a lot of cornerbacks, the real payoff for this pick will come when (if?) Smith becomes an eventual successor to Howard at cornerback.

It's the same line of thinking that applies with Armstead.

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2. Sociological Research

Approaches to sociological research, learning objectives.

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

• Define and describe the scientific method
• Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research
• Understand the function and importance of an interpretive framework
• Define what reliability and validity mean in a research study

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened family members, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

The crime during a full moon discussion put forth a few loosely stated opinions. If the human behaviors around those claims were tested systematically, a police officer, for example, could write a report and offer the findings to sociologists and the world in general. The new perspective could help people understand themselves and their neighbors and help people make better decisions about their lives. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social trends, but, as we shall see, it’s extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the sociologist forms the question, he or she proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.

However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.

The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scholarship.

The scientific method is an essential tool in research.

But just because sociological studies use scientific methods does not make the results less human. Sociological topics are not reduced to right or wrong facts. In this field, results of studies tend to provide people with access to knowledge they did not have before—knowledge of other cultures, knowledge of rituals and beliefs, or knowledge of trends and attitudes. No matter what research approach they use, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability , which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group. Researchers also strive for validity , which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. Returning to the crime rate during a full moon topic, reliability of a study would reflect how well the resulting experience represents the average adult crime rate during a full moon. Validity would ensure that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study, so an exploration of adult criminal behaviors during a full moon should address that issue and not veer into other age groups’ crimes, for example.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze the data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This doesn’t mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in a particular study.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963).

Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps—1) ask a question, 2) research existing sources, 3) formulate a hypothesis—described below.

Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geography and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study. Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms.

That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition , that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner.

The operational definition must be valid, appropriate, and meaningful. And it must be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good drivers” might be defined in many ways: those who use their turn signals, those who don’t speed, or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviors could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.

Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about child-rearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve studies’ designs.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect , or thing that is changed.

For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.

As the table shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.

Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough; their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis aren’t welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

Once the preliminary work is done, it’s time for the next research steps: designing and conducting a study and drawing conclusions. These research methods are discussed below.

Interpretive Framework

While many sociologists rely on the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework . While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework , sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective, seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of researcher also learns as he or she proceeds and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

Using the scientific method, a researcher conducts a study in five phases: asking a question, researching existing sources, formulating a hypothesis, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. The scientific method is useful in that it provides a clear method of organizing a study. Some sociologists conduct research through an interpretive framework rather than employing the scientific method.

Scientific sociological studies often observe relationships between variables. Researchers study how one variable changes another. Prior to conducting a study, researchers are careful to apply operational definitions to their terms and to establish dependent and independent variables.

Short Answer Questions

Write down the first three steps of the scientific method. Think of a broad topic that you are interested in and which would make a good sociological study—for example, ethnic diversity in a college, homecoming rituals, athletic scholarships, or teen driving. Now, take that topic through the first steps of the process. For each step, write a few sentences or a paragraph: 1) Ask a question about the topic. 2) Do some research and write down the titles of some articles or books you’d want to read about the topic. 3) Formulate a hypothesis.

Further Research

For a historical perspective on the scientific method in sociology, read “The Elements of Scientific Method in Sociology” by F. Stuart Chapin (1914) in the American Journal of Sociology : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Method-in-Sociology

Arkowitz, Hal, and Scott O. Lilienfeld. 2009. “Lunacy and the Full Moon: Does a full moon really trigger strange behavior?” Scientific American. Retrieved October 20, 2014 ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lunacy-and-the-full-moon ).

Berger, Peter L. 1963. Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective . New York: Anchor Books.

Merton, Robert. 1968 [1949]. Social Theory and Social Structure . New York: Free Press.

“Scientific Method Lab,” the University of Utah, http://aspire.cosmic-ray.org/labs/scientific_method/sci_method_main.html .

• Introduction to Sociology 2e. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/02040312-72c8-441e-a685-20e9333f3e1d/Introduction_to_Sociology_2e . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

Shaping Kinder Kids Through Parental Example

• Child Development

Children absorb much from their environments. Although the impact of parental conflicts and fights on children has been greatly studied, the impact of positivity has yet to fully be explored. 

In this episode, Under the Cortex features Brian Don from the University of Auckland who recently published an article on this topic in APS’s journal Perspectives on Psychological Science . 

APS’s Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum chats with Don about his new theory, the Interparental Positivity Spillover theory. Don shares his thoughts on how this theory suggests that when kids witness their parents engaging in warm and positive interactions, it could have a positive effect on the children themselves. 

Send us your thoughts and questions at  [email protected] .

Unedited transcript

[00:00:00.000] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

The behavior of parents greatly influences their children. While discussions often center around the negative consequences of parental conflicts, it is equally important to consider the positive effects of family dynamics on children. What are the ways in which children thrive and benefit from healthy parental behaviors and positive family interactions? This is Under the Cortex. I am Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with the Association for Psychological Science. To speak about the new approach to how we study family dynamics and the Influence of parental positive behavior on children’s wellbeing and behavior, I have with me Brian Don from University of Auckland. He is the author of an article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science examining the relationship between Interparental positivity and well-being of children. Brian, thank you for joining me today. Welcome to Under the Cortex. 

[00:01:11.710] – Brian Don  

Thank you very much for having me. 

[00:01:13.560] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

I want to start right away. I’m curious, what got you into studying family dynamics in the first place? 

[00:01:21.860] – Brian Don  

When I attended graduate school, I was really interested in studying relationships. I’ve always been fascinated by intimate relationships in particular and just studying the dyadic processes that make intimate relationships healthy. But I attended graduate school at Kent State University with Dr. Kristin Mickelson. She studied the transition of parenthood. Really, what that’s all about is about this two-person relationship, adding a third member in the form of a child, and how did two people navigate that transition. While I wasn’t as focused on parenthood when I started graduate school, doing graduate school with Kristin really got me interested in how does having a third member of the family influence the dynamics of that dyad and of that relationship. 

[00:02:12.980] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

When we hear stories about how children get affected by their parents’ behavior. The focus is generally on negative behavior. In your paper, you shift the focus to positive behavior. What was your motivation for this choice? 

[00:02:29.760] – Brian Don  

Well, we know that parents’ negative interactions have maladaptive consequences for their kid. This is especially true based on research on emotional security theory. This theory basically specifies that interparental conflict threatens kids’ fundamental need to feel safe, secure, and protected within their family unit. But what we felt with this theory was that if you only focus on that need for safety, security, and protection, you’re actually missing something critical about what the kid needs to grow into being healthy, secure, and develop into what they truly can be. And so there’s multiple theories within psychology that suggests that kids need more than just to be safe from threat. So there’s theories like attachment theory, self-determination theory, and even broad net build theory, which all suggests that people in general and not just kids, need more than to just be safe and secure. And the way we were thinking about this, and a metaphor that I like to use is that if you think about what do you need to do if you were trying to encourage the healthy development of a plant, if you were a gardener, and if you were to focus solely on protecting your garden or protecting your plant from threat, you just kept the garden safe from bad weather or you kept the garden safe from pests, but you didn’t focus at all on nourishing the garden. 

[00:04:06.890] – Brian Don  

You didn’t give it water, you didn’t give it soil, you didn’t give it sunlight. All you did was protect it from threats, then the garden would fail to thrive because it didn’t have the nourishment that it needed to actually grow. When we looked at this literature and saw that it was really focused on conflict, to me, that left out a really critical piece, which was kids need nourishing environments in order to thrive and in order to develop in a healthy manner. That was really the impetus for shifting the conversation and shifting the focus to these potential interparencial positive interactions that could help nourish kids. 

[00:04:51.530] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah. We will go into the details, but in your paper, you discuss your theory titled Interparencial Positivity Spillover Theory. What led you developing this idea? I know you gave me a brief answer in the passing, but I would like to delve into the details of your theory a little bit. 

[00:05:13.700] – Brian Don  

It started with me working in graduate school, as I mentioned. I started working on the transition to Parenthood there. That’s how I got on to the Parenthood stuff. But then I worked in my postdoctoral fellowship with Sarah Aljo and Barb Fredrickson, who are two of my co-authors on the paper. What they were really focused on, Sarah Aljo in particular, is focused on positive interactions in adult relationships. She studies interactions like gratitude interactions, capitalization interactions, which is sharing good news in relationships or sharing positive events. How does that influence partners beneficially in the context of relationships? She studies things like shared laughter. Then Barb Fredrickson is really focused on positive emotions and the function of positive emotions. I had not been exposed to any of that work before. I started thinking about these relationship and parenting dynamics combined with these positive interpersonal processes dynamics. Finally, when I went to my second postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF, I started working a little bit on some of this interparental conflict and kids’ work. I put all of that stuff together and said, Wait a second, I think that there’s this gap in the literature, which is using some of this stuff on positive dynamics and positive emotions and melding that together with what’s been done on the conflict stuff. 

[00:06:45.620] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

What are the key tenets of your theory? 

[00:06:50.860] – Brian Don  

There’s a number of key tenets. I think the very first one is that parent interactions have an influence on kids. We are similar to the conflict literature in that we say, it’s not just about the parent-child interaction. What happens between parents has an important influence on kids. But second, we say that these positive interparental interactions have a unique influence on the children above and beyond the influence of conflict. One of the reasons we say that is because we know that conflict and positive interactions are not one-to-one in these relationships, that actually parents could have a decent amount of conflict but still have a high degree of positivity. And also we know that parents could have little to know of either of these interactions in their relationships. So we say that these are unique in terms of influencing kids. One of the third, and this is really the key point of the theory or one of the key ideas in the theory, is that when parents engage in positive interactions, it spills over into kids in three ways. So when parents engage in these interactions, it spills over in the form of positive emotions, it spills over in the form of enhanced perceptions of the parents, and it spills over in the form of social learning, especially in the form of imitation or emulation of the parents’ behavior. 

[00:08:25.540] – Brian Don  

Those three things together, those are collectively constitutive interparental positivity spillover. 

[00:08:34.080] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah, I would like to repeat it for our listeners one more time. Children get affected in three ways. One is positive emotion, second, social learning. The third, enhanced perception of the parents, which I am personally interested in. I have a pre-teen at home, and it’s good to know that I can change your perception. 

[00:08:57.810] – Brian Don  

Absolutely. That’s what we’re theorizing. It is important to note that we haven’t tested this yet, so we hope that it’s the case. We’re actually in the process of testing this now, or I’m starting a study to test this. But based on a lot of theory and a lot of prior work, we do think that this is likely the case. 

[00:09:18.620] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

One can hope, right, as a parent? 

[00:09:22.200] – Brian Don  

Absolutely. Based on the conflict literature, too, we know that that has some important influences on kids. We strongly suspect that this will be true in the positive case as well. 

[00:09:34.410] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Can you give us an example then? How this might play out for a child, a child who has parents who engage in more positive interactions compared to a child who sees more conflict? 

[00:09:47.440] – Brian Don  

I’ll start with the child who sees more conflict. When children are in families who are frequently engaging in destructive forms of conflict. Actually, what’s really important about the conflict literature is that there is a lot of good research showing that there are more destructive forms of conflict as opposed to more constructive forms of conflict. Destructive forms of conflict are things like anger and hostility, even verbal and physical aggression. Those are obviously really harmful, both for the individuals in the relationship and for the child. If we have a child who is seeing a great degree of conflict in their parents’ relationship, their feelings of safety, security, and protection within their family is going to be threatened. That’s going to result in these response processes, things like their negative emotional reactivity, their internal representations of their family are going to be threatened. So they’re going to feel like their parents’ relationships and the family relationship is really insecure. And then they’re going to try to either get away from the conflict or try to solve the conflict between their parents. All of this is going to result in negative behavioral, social, physical zoological outcomes for the child. 

[00:11:18.720] – Brian Don  

And so what we can see is this is really maladaptive for kids to be embedded in this environment where parents have this hostile, angry, destructive conflict. So we could compare a child who is experiencing or who is seeing a great degree of positivity in their relationship. So we use the example of a child named Jamal in our paper. Let’s say that Jamal’s parents are frequently engaging in gratitude interactions. They express their appreciation to each other a lot. When they have something good that happens in their life, they They really effusively express their joy to each other, and the partner responds really enthusiastically. That’s a capitalization interaction. They share laughter a lot with each other. Jamal is going to, according to our theory, frequently experience positive emotions. He’s going to view his parents in a positive light as a result of that. He might actually imitate his parents, so he might start expressing gratitude more. He might share his good news with his friends in his daily life as a result of those seeing his parents do that. What that is going to do, according to the theory, is result in his improved mental health and emotional outcomes. 

[00:12:45.070] – Brian Don  

It’s going to improve his social outcomes. It will improve his physiological and his cognitive outcomes because he has this accumulated spillover that occurs across the course of everyday life. 

[00:12:58.430] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Following up on that, you already mentioned it, but your theory clearly predicts widespread positive impacts of witnessing parental positive interactions from things that might be more directly expected, like the child’s well-being, to more conceptual Actually, different outcomes, like physical health and academic success. Your paper talks about it. My question to you is, what makes emotions and not even their own direct emotions, such a powerful catalyst in this equation? 

[00:13:32.010] – Brian Don  

Yeah. This is a basic tenet of what’s called family systems theory, which is what happens between any two people within a family system is going to influence any other individual within that family system. When parents engage in an interaction, what happens in that interaction, according to the family systems theory, will then have spillover effects influence any other people within that family system. And that’s just a fundamental idea from family science. Now, why emotions in particular? Well, there’s a lot of theory and evidence suggesting that positive emotions have important effects for cognition. They have important effects for social behavior. They have important effects for coping with stress and for mental health. And they have important influences for physical health. So positive emotions really have these profound influences for lots of different domains. The one other thing I would add to that is this positive perceptions of the parents that are being generated from this interaction. This is also, we think, an attachment security prime. It’s telling the child, Oh, my parents are probably safe to interact with in the future. My parents are warm and loving and caring. We know that priming attachment security also has these really widespread effects on social well-being, on emotional well-being, even on cognition. 

[00:15:16.990] – Brian Don  

Especially if you repeatedly do this across the course of time, we think that this is going to accumulate into that warm and nourishing environment that is critical for a lot of child outcomes. 

[00:15:29.830] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah. I want to take the discussion to a different point slightly. Culturally, not everyone engages in positivity in the same way, right? There could be vast cultural differences in not only how positivity is expressed, but the degree of positivity that is deemed to be appropriate, especially with children, with younger people. How would your theories stand against these cultural differences? 

[00:16:00.630] – Brian Don  

Yeah. So I think this is one of the most fascinating and most important directions for our theory to go and to test and to explore, because there’s no doubt that culture plays a huge part in how emotion is constructed and expressed and experienced, especially in the context of families and interpersonal relationships more generally. So we take a broad stance, a very, very broad stance in the paper that we believe that the form of positive interparental interactions is probably different, differently expressed across different cultures, and is even different across different families within particular countries and cultures. And this is because we know things about display rules and affective ideals and numerous other cultural constructions and norms that influence how and why and when positivity is expressed in these interparental relationships all across the world. But having said that, I do think that interparental positivity is expressed in some form or another in most cultures across the world. Because kids will tend to be raised within a cultural milieu that they understand and can probably interpret, that the ideas of our theory that there should be spillover, and that spillover should have benefits for the kid, should largely be generally true, even if the form or the particular amount is different across the different cultures. 

[00:17:55.160] – Brian Don  

So I think that’s one of our exciting things to test is, how does interparental positivity look different? And are the basic tenets of the theory pretty much the same, even if the form is looking different across different cultures? 

[00:18:12.860] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah. And also, Children are very culturally and socially perspective, so they will know what is positive, what is negative in their own culture. What might seem as not a clearly positive behavior from another culture’s perspective might be very clear for the child. 

[00:18:32.780] – Brian Don  

Exactly. I will just say, really importantly is that a lot of the research that has been done on positive interpersonal interactions has been done in the Western industrialized rich democratic societies that is very problematic for existing research. We need to do more research in more diverse, more globalized cultures so that we can understand the question that you’re asking about. 

[00:18:59.890] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah. What are your first steps that you will take to test your theory? Because now we are excited, and I’m sure our audience is excited about that, too. What is coming up? 

[00:19:15.610] – Brian Don  

I’m currently seeking funding and looking to test the first laboratory-based test of the theory. What I think we need to do first is to test does an initial viewing of an interparental positive interaction spill over into the kids’ positive emotions, positive perceptions of the parents, and imitation of parents’ positive behavior? To do that, I’m planning to conduct a triatic study of a parent dyad and their child, and have the parents engage in a positive interaction versus a control interaction, and to examine whether those positive interactions are stimulating that spillover that we believe is there. And then by first examining that short term interaction and seeing if that interaction spills over into the children, we can then move into the field, to the longitudinal space, and see across the course of time if frequent spillover in parents’ relationships does result in that long term accumulated benefits that we believe is so important for children. 

[00:20:30.290] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

When you have your results, when you get to test these great ideas, how do you think practitioners might make best use of your findings? 

[00:20:42.710] – Brian Don  

What has been so successful in the emotional security theory literature, and I’ll just say we’re so lucky to have the emotional security theory literature be so developed and so just excellent in terms of they They’ve taken this large body of work on interparencial conflict and translated it into useful and practical implications. What they did with their findings is they translated it into a psychoeducational intervention. And what they did was they created essentially a series of educational materials, trainings, and brought couples in to teach them about the importance of interparencial conflict the importance of communication, and taught them how to effectively engage in conflict over the course of, basically, I think it was an eight-week training. And what they found was that this successfully helped couples engage in conflict and improved family outcomes across the course of time. So what we hope to do is create a similar psychoeducational intervention where you’re essentially teaching couples and parents how to engage in these types of positive interaction, and you’re also teaching them just about the importance of the interaction. While we need the data first to show that this really is valuable for parents, I don’t think that it hurts to learn about gratitude interactions and capitalization interactions and shared laughter and to emphasize the importance of positivity in the context of parenting relationships. 

[00:22:27.910] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

Yeah, Brian, thank you Thank you very much. This was a great conversation. 

[00:22:32.680] – Brian Don  

Thank you very much. 

[00:22:34.560] – APS’s Özge G. Fischer Baum  

This is Özge Gürcanlı Fischer Baum with APS, and I have been speaking to Brian Don from University of Auckland. If you want to know more about this research, visit psychologicalscience.org. 

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