research report on social issues

• Write my thesis
• Thesis writers
• Buy thesis papers
• Bachelor thesis
• Master's thesis
• Thesis editing services
• Thesis proofreading services
• Buy a thesis online
• Write my dissertation
• Dissertation proposal help
• Pay for dissertation
• Custom dissertation
• Dissertation help online
• Buy dissertation online
• Cheap dissertation
• Dissertation editing services
• Write my research paper
• Buy research paper online
• Pay for research paper
• Research paper help
• Order research paper
• Custom research paper
• Cheap research paper
• Research papers for sale
• Thesis subjects
• How It Works

100+ Social Issues Research Paper Topics

There are many issues in society to write about, making social issue essay topics some of the most fun. However, choosing a social topic for an essay isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when there are several social essay topics. The secret to choosing the best among the many social topics is knowing what makes the best social topics for an essay, the best.

This article will give you workable tips for choosing a great topic on specific social issues, argumentative essay topics , and social topics. We will also throw in 100 topics on social issues; they can serve as your social topic or inspiration for choosing.

What Are Top Tips for Choosing Social Topics to Write About?

What characterizes the best social issue topics, social issue topics list, fascinating research topics on social issues, interesting social commentary topics, interesting social issues on social media, ideas of social issues essay topics on health, socially significant topics to write on, social issues research topics for a professional paper on the environment, top-rated socially relevant topics, cool social issues to research on criminal justice, social problem topics for college students, issues in america to write about, argumentative essay topics on social issues, unique social issues to write a research paper on.

When it comes to social problems essay topics, the list is endless; there are so many social issues to talk about. However, not all social problem topics will make a great paper, and the wrong social issue topic can reduce your grade. Below are the top practical tips for choosing social issues topics for presentation.

• Choose easy social issues to write about – avoid trying to impress your professor by choosing complex social problems topics you can’t do justice to.
• Choose social problem topics or social media research topics that your audience can relate to and find interesting.
• When choosing from the myriads of social problems to write about, choose those with sufficient information. Also, you don’t want social problem essay topics you’ll have to walk miles to gather information on.
• Pick as many good social issues to write about as possible; chances are you will change issues essay topics midway. You don’t have to return to searching for current issues to write about.
• Source for articles that address problems in society to write about for an idea on how to write yours.

The “best” social topics, like social commentary essay topics, are those you’re passionate about. It would help if you cared about the social issue ideas you’ve decided to write on to do real justice to the paper. Writing an essay on them will be torture if you don’t care or know anything about social commentary ideas. Also, if your audience is clueless about a particular topic, consider omitting technical and social significance topics.

Interesting social topics are not hard to find if you know where to look. We will give you a social issues topics list here, but you can still find social issues ideas all over the internet. Find our social topics list below containing interesting and uncommon social issues for a distinction-worthy paper.

• Political polarization
• Racism in modern society’s healthcare
• Ageism: the new racism?
• The fairness of labor laws
• Fat-shaming in the corporate world
• Recovering addicts and social injustice
• Child pornography
• Prisoner rights violations: the types
• Making vaccinations mandatory
• Online education impact on obesity
• Increasing employment: the solution to poverty?
• Accessibility of healthcare in mobile clinics
• Women empowerment
• Social development in developing countries
• Overpopulation: a threat?
• How social networks impact friendship
• Age restriction on Instagram
• Social media effect on dependency
• Business Facebook accounts and digital ethics
• Cancel culture and mental health
• Restricting children from social media
• How to stay safe on the internet
• Freedom of speech on Twitter
• High cost of medical procedures
• Obesity in developed countries
• Abortion: legal or illegal?
• Drug addiction
• Hospices: should they be free?
• Why HIV in seniors remains unrecognized
• Dying with dignity
• Pro-life movement origins
• The social acceptance of autism
• Effect of malnourishment on children’s psyche
• Impact of fad diets
• Discrimination against older adults
• Acceptability of homeopathic treatment for children
• The scarcity of and state of available healthcare facilities in rural areas
• Poverty and health problems
• Ensuring global access to drinking water
• Implementing sustainable technology in agriculture
• Benefits of studying the environment
• Urban gardening and food security
• Deteriorating environment effect on labor conditions
• Religion and nature
• Global warming impact on South America
• Effect of racial profiling
• Prevalence of hate speech
• Discrimination against the LGBT community
• Modern feminism: the negative impact on society
• Pregnancy termination: morality vs. legality
• Food culture
• Emotional intelligence: impact on family life
• Harmful effects of financial illiteracy
• The perception of “Defund the police.”
• Evidence of structural racism
• The internet’s influence on human trafficking
• Legalizing prostitution
• Civil disobedience goals
• The consequences of restoring prisoners to society
• Influence of prejudices on criminal justice mechanics
• Prominent civil rights violations in developing countries
• Gender blindness
• Gender dysphoria
• The Khmer Rouge
• Social media and racist bias
• Justification of human rights limitations during a crisis
• How governments can secure freedom of speech
• Can satire be harmful?
• Protection of stateless persons
• Can illegal immigrants be pardoned?
• War on drugs: the negative side effects
• The importance of bipartisan cooperation
• College loans: are they worth it?
• Fake news: a severe problem?
• Charter schools vs. public schools
• The Great New Deal: pros and cons
• Gentrification in America
• Ableism effects in the US
• Death penalty: a just punishment?
• Healthcare: a fundamental human right?
• The right to own a gun
• Does history repeat itself?
• Commercials in kids’ programs
• Fiction vs. nonfiction: which is the better read?
• Video games should be a sport
• Hot dogs: have they caused more harm than good?
• Eating dessert before dinner
• Homework: is it too much?
• Should gym classes be required?
• The essentiality of feminism
• Free healthcare for everyone
• Exploring space: is it worth it?
• Parents’ role in childhood obesity
• Woman vs. man: who is more emotional?
• The effects of campaign finance reform
• Should illegal immigrants be granted residency?

With this list of social topics and others you’ll find on the internet, you can’t be short of social issues to talk about. Choosing the best social issues topics is essential for writing a great research paper,or write dissertation for me ranging from social change topics to social awareness topics. Considering the vast amount of community issues to write about, our tips on choosing from the best social relevance topics will come in handy. If you need professional writing services, you can contact our experts.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

• Search Menu
• Advance Articles
• The Authors' Attic: Interviews with Authors
• High Impact Articles

Award-Winning Articles

Virtual issues.

• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access Options
• Why Submit?
• About Social Problems
• About the Society for the Study of Social Problems
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Dispatch Dates
• Contact SSSP
• Contact Social Problems
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Annulla Linders

Earl Wright II

Derrick Brooms

About the journal

Social Problems is the official publication of The Society for the Study of Social Problems and has been has been an important forum for sociological thought for over six decades.

Latest articles

Latest posts on x, high-impact articles.

Access a selection of notable articles from Social Problems that offer a sample of the impressive body of research from the journal. The articles represent a selection of the most cited, most read, and most discussed articles from recent years.

Explore collection

Virtual issues from  Social Problems  are compiled by a special guest editor and include a selection of articles on a particular topic. Virtual issues typically are centered around timely events and significant trends.

Explore the virtual issues

Social Problems'  standing as a leading publication is reinforced by the articles published in its pages that go on to win a variety of awards and prizes. Articles that win awards are recognized on the Social Problems Awards page.

View awards

 The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois 

Explore this special issue from Social Problems,  which demonstrates the influence of Du Bois in the discipline and why the sociologist's work is still relevant today.  

Read the articles

Connect with Social Problems

Join the conversation! Never miss the latest news and updates from Social Problems by engaging with the journal on social media.

The Society for the Study of Social Problems

Social Problems is the official publication of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). SSSP is an interdisciplinary community of scholars, practitioners, advocates, and students interested in the application of critical, scientific, and humanistic perspectives to the study of vital social problems.

Learn more about SSSP

Publish in Social Problems

Want to publish in Social Problems? The journal brings to the forefront influential sociological findings and theories that have the ability to help us both better understand and better deal with our complex social environment.

View submission instructions

Why submit?

"The Authors' Attic"

"The Authors' Attic" is a forum that provides authors an opportunity to discuss pressing and relevant social issues of our time.

View all videos

stef m. shuster and Laurel Westbrook are the authors of “ Reducing the Joy Deficit in Sociology: A Study of Transgender Joy ”

Scott Duxbury is the author of " The Boys in Blue Are Watching You: The Shifting Metropolitan Landscape and Big Data Police Surveillance in the United States. "

Sarah Larissa Combellick is the author of " “My Baby Went Straight to Heaven”: Morality Work in Abortion Storytelling "

Developing countries initiative

Your institution could be eligible to free or deeply discounted online access to Social Problems through the Oxford Developing Countries Initiative.

Find out more

Email alerts

Register to receive table of contents email alerts as soon as new issues of Social Problems are published online.

Promote your work on Social Media

OUP actively engages with social media across a range of platforms and channels. We have put together guidelines to help you  promote your article on social media.

Related Titles

• Recommend to Your Librarian

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1533-8533
• Print ISSN 0037-7791
• Copyright © 2024 Society for the Study of Social Problems
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

300 Social Issues Research Topics to Impress Your Professor and Get A

Researching social issues holds immense importance in our quest for knowledge and progress. It allows us to delve deeper into the complexities of society, unraveling the underlying causes, impacts, and potential solutions. However, the significance of a good research topic must be considered, which sets the stage for a high-scoring and impactful research endeavor. If you have difficulty finding a good social issue research topic, check out these lists from the experts working with a professional  paper writing services  provider.

Table of Contents

Comprehensive list of Unique Social Issue Research Topics

Scroll down and go through our list of unique topics and pick one that sparks your interest. Here you go with the first one: 

Women’s Social Issues Research Topics 

It’s crucial to look into the various aspects of women’s social issues if we want to get a better understanding of gender inequality. Here are some ideas to help you dig deeper into this topic.

• Prejudice against women in corporate culture
• Problems of pregnant women working in the corporate
• Harassment in educational institutes against women
• What strategies can governments adopt to ensure equal rights for women?
• Raising awareness of the problems of pregnant women
• How to develop a respectful attitude towards women and gender minorities in companies?
• Ill-treatment of women in the government sector
• Writing on essay topics related to problems with Syrian female immigrants
• The Role of Women in economic life and the World of Work
• Women’s political and electoral training
• Women in old homes: Research and Interviews for Problems and Concerns
• Toxic Masculinity in the Workplace: what can women do?
• Developing a workplace culture for fair treatment of every gender
• Role of Government in solving problems related to Women
• The economy of the United States: Income inequality in the U.S.
• Building a world where women have equal opportunities and fair treatment
• Essay Topics Related to Problems of Women in New York
• Financial problems for single mothers
• Women dealing with social issues in New Mexico
• Condition of Mexican immigrant women in the United States
• Women’s health: Key performance indicators, problems and obstacles
• Securing Women’s Rights with the Help of international law
• Education of women: The rights and responsibilities
• Better living conditions for older women
• A research study of the problems of pregnant women in California
• Health and welfare of older people, especially women
• Improving the quality of life for single mothers with better opportunities

Children’s Social Issues Research Topics 

It’s important to tackle the social issues that affect kids to create a better, more nurturing future for the next generation. Here are some interesting topics on this subject to get started with  writing your research paper . 

• School Bullying and social networks
• Problems and issues with children with a single parent
• A research study on the problems of children in foster homes
• How can we make foster care better and safer for children?
• Delinquency trends in children among marginalized communities
• modernity and technology at the cost of the destruction of childhood
• Issues that children from Mexican households in America have to face
• What are the advantages of multiculturalism in kindergarten?
• Problems of Assault and Molestation of Children
• Why Are Young People Committing Crimes These Days?
• Cyberbullying and Toxicity on social media
• Violence among children and young people
• Rehabilitation of juvenile offenders and improving their lives
• Illness and disability among kids living in developing countries
• The lack of tolerance among the teenagers
• Child labor in developing countries
• Psychology of kindergarten education
• School is a chance for every kid to learn tolerance and harmony
• Children facing with lack of empathy and bullying on social media
• The use of new technologies in education and adaptability in children
• Problems of immigrant children
• Child development and behavior

Social Issues Research Topics About Labor Rights

It’s essential to look into the social issues surrounding workers’ rights and fight for their well-being. Labor rights are the foundation of having fair and decent working conditions. Here are some topics if you want to research such subjects.

• The legal responsibility of entrepreneurs
• Workplace accident management
• Increased flexibility via remote working options
• Mental health problems caused by workers after the COVID pandemic
• The principle of equality today is related to labor rights
• Change wages or salaries
• Labor problems caused by the Covid pandemic
• Employees having to deal with additional work pressures
• Role of labor unions in social justice for Laborers
• Mental health problems in the Workplace
• What can we do to offer ideas for improvements in labor laws
• The desire to maintain a healthy work-life balance
• Hate speech and domestic violence against marginalized groups in large companies
• Academic paper for immigration disruptions in Canada and USA
• The employer’s right to manage employees and the abuse of it
• Role of human resources in identifying and solving problems of labor
• The job of the government and schools is to offer their members better career prospects
• Problems and issues related to a minimum period of employment
• The technology skills gap leads to problems with the laborers
• Improving the well-being of the company for its members
• Change wages or salaries impact and consequences
• How the global pandemic and Working from home changed the World
• Recruiting methods from passive to active: how to prepare
• Global labor shortages: problems and consequences
• What are the reasons for the labor shortage?
• Writing assignment about laborers dealing with the effects of long Covid
• Why is it essential for companies to take a public stand for social issues
• Mental health problems for workers in the field
• Relevant examples of social issues related to labor and employment
• How to empower workers against social injustice?

Social Issues Research Topics for the Environment

It’s important to dig into how social issues and the environment are connected when we’re trying to handle big problems like climate change, running out of resources, etc. Here are some  research topics  to think about.

• Health risks associated with the general environment and their perception and representation
• Climate change knowledge and expertise on health risks
• Health inequalities resulting from environmental and social factors
• What Role can environmental law play in protecting the environment at sea?
• Deforestation and chronic pollution are destroying biodiversity
• Importance of green energy conversion
• The Law of the Environment and sustainable development
• The Management of Pollution in Environmental Law
• Toward a better understanding of atmospheric pollution
• Utilizing environmental technologies and learning about them
• Waste and material resources of the World
• The destruction of ozone affects the environment and health
• Nature’s resources are being destroyed. What can we do as researchers to prevent this?
• Is it still imperative to preserve the environment during wartime?
• Combating armed conflict while preserving the environment
• The tourism industry and pollution management
• Environmental factors that affect cancer risk
• Cost-benefit analysis of the action based on legal or socioeconomic criteria
• Analyzing how different environmental factors contribute to the risk
• Investigating a variety of environmental issues and sectors
• Regions and specific areas of environmental perception
• The effects of climate change and global warming
• Factors contributing to a healthy environment
• The relationship between human rights and environmental law
• In environmental law, pollution management is a constant
• Worldwide implementation of sustainable development
• How consumption trends and international news can help the environmental cause

Social Issues Research Topics Related to Covid Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed how we live and has spotlighted all kinds of social issues that need to be looked into and solved. So, if you would like to research social issues related to the recent pandemic, check out this list for current social issues for research paper:

• Social panic caused after the COVID-19 breakdown
• Problems and social issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic
• COVID-19 and financial problems on the rise
• Impact of COVID-19 on the people with middle class
• Police Procedure and criminal justice during the COVID-19
• The aftermath of COVID-19 has resulted in a social dilemma and economic disruption
• An influential aspect of the pandemic is mental health
• The Impact of social and territorial inequalities on health
• The ethical issues raised by the pandemic
• Writing research papers on social media’s Role during COVID-19
• Children and adolescents’ mental condition during the pandemic
• Problems in healthcare and Management of chronic diseases
• Disruption in modern society by the COVID-19
• How our social media accounts helped us during the darkest hours of covid
• Ensuring the delivery of criminal justice during covid
• Impact of COVID-19 on family life
• Role of the Pandemic in the Promotion of remote education
• Avoiding social media addiction during the quarantine

Social Issue Topics Related to American Society

Checking out the social problems in the U.S. gives us a great understanding of how complicated, varied and hard they can be for people and different communities. Here is another list of topics on social issues. 

• Environment perception in specific areas and regions
• Climate change and global warming effects
• The factors that contribute to a healthy environment
• Cancer risk factors in the environment
• Workplace toxic masculinity: what can women do?
• The global labor shortage: problems and consequences
• Why does the U.S. have a shortage of labor?
• Workers dealing with the effects of Covid
• Problems related to mental issues among field workers
• Law and human rights concerning the environment
• Management of pollution is a constant concern in environmental law
• Impacts and consequences of changes in wages or salaries
• How to prepare for passive to active recruitment
• The problem of child labor in developing countries
• Kindergarten Education and Psychology
• Tolerance and harmony can be learned in school by every child
• Lack of empathy and bullying on social media among children
• Technology in Education and Children’s Adaptability
• Legal or socioeconomic cost-benefit analysis of the action
• A major social issue in the modern age is poverty
• Government’s Role in solving social problems
• Sustainable Development of the World
• Trafficking in drugs and Mexican cartels
• A culture of fair treatment for all genders in the Workplace
• Nature’s resources are being depleted.
• Management of pollution in the tourism industry
• How can we use social media to improve society and resolve social problems?
• A lack of respect for marginalized communities in the professional environment can be seen in several ways.
• Understanding social issues and the problems associated with them
• Materials and waste from around the World and the Impact they have on the environment
• The depletion of ozone is detrimental to the environment and human health
• Insights into the political and electoral training of women
• Taking a closer look at Women’s Problems and Concerns in old homes: Research and Interviews
• Issues and problems related to the minimum period of employment and the minimum wage
• The technological skills gap is causing labor shortages shortly
• Enhancing the well-being of the members of the company as a whole

Interesting Social Injustice Topics for College Students

As college students, exploring and engaging with interesting social issues topics expands our intellectual horizons and empowers us to become agents of change in our communities and beyond. Particularly when you include social problems examples. Here is another list of interesting topics.

• Developing better relationships with public institutions to solve problems
• The Role of social work in the Management of health problems
• Corporations discriminate against marginalized communities in the U.S.
• Sociology of the popular classes
• The reasons for the low human development index in African countries
• Social issues caused by class differences
• Drugs and anarchist behaviors
• Religious Differences and biased approaches to employment strategies
• Mexican cartels and the problem of drug trafficking
• Poverty is one of the most significant social issues in the Modern World
• Role of the Government in solving social issues
• How can we use social media to improve society and solve social issues?
• Prejudice against marginalized communities in the professional environment
• Understanding the problems related to social issues
• Role of problem-solving and understanding the root cause of social issues
• Major social issues in developing countries
• Role of Education in ending violence in Society
• Class Differences and the Impact on the human development index
• Differences in health facilities for different classes
• Social Norms and the Role of the Community
• Causes and solutions to human trafficking on the Mexican borders
• Human development index in India
• How to solve the poverty problem?
• What is the problem of social media bullying, and how to avoid it?
• How does financial illiteracy lead to a lack of development in developing countries?
• Impact of Terrorism on Society
• How to solve the terrorism problem?
• Mafia problems in the USA and how to deal with them
• Biased treatment of marginalized communities in the government sector
• The increasing problem of drug addiction
• Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Emerging social issues
• Role of social media in increasing social issues

Police and Social Justice Research Papers Topics

Let’s unveil a curated collection of current social issues for a research paper. Here’s the list:

• Children’s safety and protection: The security job is of the utmost importance
• School bullying is a serious issue that needs to be addressed
• A few heartrending social issues examples 
• Using the Internet to disseminate terrorist content: a serious issue related to Cybersecurity
• Digital Platform Security Certification – A Guide to Cybersecurity Certifications
• The protection of minors in alcohol-serving establishments
• Concerns regarding cyber security in the United States
• An analysis of the spatial pattern of terrorism in the USA over the past two decades
• New York crime analysis, a look at the crime situation in the City
• Security technologies face several obstacles when it comes to their implementation
• Having the versatility to specialize and the specialization to be versatile in security matters
• Investigative requisitions from the judicial police
• Relationships between the police and the public: The need for improvement
• Conflict Management and Prevention in Communities
• The principle of secularism in sports must be respected
• Stopping the illicit trade in tobacco products
• Towns with small populations and cybersecurity
• Taking care of historical monuments
• Providing support to victims of aggression
• An analysis of the roadside check system in developing countries
• The challenges of reception at a police station for public security
• A system for protecting housing from illegal encroachment
• Anti-abuse and anti-fraud measures
• A diversity of expectations and feedback from the inhabitants
• Taking public security work seriously in terms of its relational dimension
• The issue of external assistance in the area of internal security
• Putting social networks to the test in terms of police ethics

As you have reached the conclusion paragraph of the blog post, you must have picked a topic or two to work for your social issue research paper. Most of the lists have focused on social issues today as they could be very interesting for the readers. Plus, there are a plethora of good topics for you to count on. Just remember that a good research subject must be able to answer, what is a social problem, what is a social issue, and more. Still if you are struggling with picking up a good topic, feel free to count on the expertise of  our writers .

Order Original Papers & Essays

Your First Custom Paper Sample is on Us!

Timely Deliveries

No Plagiarism & AI

100% Refund

Try Our Free Paper Writing Service

Related blogs.

Connections with Writers and support

Privacy and Confidentiality Guarantee

Average Quality Score

The Biggest 15 Social Issues We Are Facing Today

No matter where we live, what communities we belong to or what we care about, we are affected by social issues. It’s the price of living in a society, and while challenges like poverty, climate change and discrimination can feel overwhelming, we have the power to take action. The first step is understanding what issues we’re up against. In this article, we’ll explore 15 of the biggest social issues facing the world today.

#1. The global housing crisis

Shelter is a human right, but hundreds of millions of people lack adequate, affordable housing. According to the World Bank, the housing crisis is global, and it could impact as many as 1.6 billion people by 2025. That number will only grow with time. By 2030, the world needs to build 96,000 new affordable homes per day to meet the needs of 3 billion people. What’s driving the global housing crisis? According to Albert Saiz in a paper for the MIT Center for Real Estate, economic factors like rising costs and income inequality are prevalent. Addressing these issues now is critical to protecting people in the future.

#2. Gender inequality

Societies have been working to improve gender inequality for centuries, but we still have a long way to go. Globally, women still make less money than men, have poorer health outcomes, have fewer opportunities and endure more gender–based violence. According to 2023 data, the global gender gap won’t close until 2154 . Even the most gender-equal country, which is Iceland , still has social issues to address. Some of the issues are recognized – women are still being subjected to physical and sexual violence – while there are gaps in data related to things like unpaid care, domestic work, gender and the environment, and so on.

#3. Climate crisis

The climate crisis is one of today’s most urgent social issues. Earth.org outlines a list of major climate events in 2023 , including severe droughts, wildfires, higher ocean surface temperatures and storms. That same year, the IPCC released a summary of its previous five reports, showing how human activity is causing severe damage to the planet, and, if trends continue, parts of the earth will become unlivable in just a few decades. The world can fight the climate crisis, but we have to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and turn to renewable energy sources.

#4. Overconsumption

Greenhouse gas emissions are a primary driver of climate change, but overconsumption is hurting the planet, too. Unfathomable amounts of food, clothing, plastic and other things are thrown into landfills and the ocean every day. However, it’s not a problem for everyone. According to research, just 20% of the world’s population is responsible for consuming 80% of the globe’s natural resources. The richest 500 million people release half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. To break it down even further, if every person in the world consumed resources at the rate as people in Canada and the United States did, we would need at least five earths .

#5. Global hunger

Global food insecurity is a serious problem. According to data, about 735 million people endured chronic hunger in 2022, and with issues like climate change, the lingering effects of the pandemic and conflict, it will be very challenging to end hunger by 2030. Children typically suffer the most. When kids don’t get enough to eat, they become more vulnerable to diseases like measles, malaria and diarrhea. According to the World Food Programme, “hotspots” for hunger include Burkina Faso, Mali, South Sudan and Palestine.

#6. Threats to LGBTQ+ rights

At the same time as LGBTQ+ rights have expanded, certain countries have pushed back. In the summer of 2023, the first Ugandan was charged with “aggravated homosexuality,” a crime punishable by death. In its 2023 review, the Electronic Frontier Foundation also found an increase in anti-LGBTQ sentiment , including more laws that restrict privacy and freedom of expression, and censorship of LGBTQ+ websites. Even in places like the United States, which is seen by many as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community, legislative threats are on the rise .

#7. Reproductive justice

Reproductive justice, which includes things like abortion access and maternal health, is a social issue affecting every corner of the world. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, most countries are expanding abortion rights, while just four – the United States, Poland, Nicaragua, and El Salvador – rolled back abortion rights . Globally, about 40% of women live in places with “restrictive” abortion laws. Related social issues include menstrual health, prenatal and maternal health, access to contraception and so on.

#8. Educational disparities

When people get a good education, they’re more likely to have higher incomes, better health, healthier children and other benefits. On a larger scale, education also helps countries achieve overall wealth and health. There’s been significant progress on closing the gender gap in education. According to a blog on the World Bank, boys and girls complete primary school at almost an equal rate . However, around 130 million girls are still being denied an education. Wealth also plays a role in educational disparities. In the United States, one study found that wealth affects a student’s chances of finishing college. On a global scale, wealth also impacts where a family lives and what school options are available, as well as tutoring opportunities, whether a student needs a job and much more.

#9. Health and healthcare

Health and the ability (or inability) to access good healthcare are major social issues. Unfortunately, healthcare systems around the world are struggling. COVID-19 continues to be a problem, but hospitals are also facing staff shortages and competition . Not everyone is affected equally. According to the World Health Organization, refugees and migrants experience worse health outcomes due to language barriers, cultural differences, discrimination and legal restrictions on what services they can access.

#10. Income inequality

Global income inequality fluctuates, but according to a 2023 Oxfam study , the world’s richest 1% took almost ⅔ of all the new wealth created since 2020. That gave them almost twice the amount of money held by the bottom 99%. Income inequality can cause serious problems , such as lower economic growth, worse social cohesion and political polarization. There are also ethical consequences to income inequality, which human rights and social justice advocates often discuss. Can society ever be truly good or free when only a handful of people hold all the wealth?

#11. Global unemployment (and underemployment)

High unemployment rates – and low-paying jobs – drive income inequality and poverty. In a 2023 report, the International Labour Organization found that the world is still experiencing slow employment growth . There was a slight recovery in 2021, but as the economy slows again, people are forced to take jobs that pay less, provide fewer hours and/or offer poor working conditions. South Africa, which is the most industrialized economy in Africa, also has one of the highest unemployment rates. According to Reuters, reasons include structural issues related to the shadows of colonialism and apartheid. To fight issues like poverty and gender inequality, countries need to address unemployment and low-paying jobs.

#12. Increased migration

People move all the time, but issues like war and climate change force people to leave their homes. Sometimes, they move within the borders of one country, but other times, they’re forced to take long, dangerous journeys to countries they’ve never visited. According to the Migration Policy Institute, “humanitarian migration” increased in 2023, while policies could impact elections in 2024. The social issues related to migration, such as the rights of migrants, affordable housing, health services and more, will all be relevant for the foreseeable future.

#13. Artificial intelligence

The presence of artificial intelligence has exploded in recent years, but the technology has several issues. Ethics is just one of them. According to a guide on UMA Libraries, AI has problems with gender and racial bias, plagiarism, generating fake news and supporting scams. It also takes a lot of energy to train and run AI programs, so as the use of AI increases, so will its carbon footprint . As the technology continues to develop, new regulations, legislation and guidelines will need to be created, as well.

#14. Debt bondage

Rates of labor trafficking have been increasing over the years. According to research, about ⅕ of those in forced labor trafficking are in debt bondage . Debt bondage is a very common type of trafficking where a person is forced to work off a loan. However, because the debt is often so high and they are paid so little, it’s impossible to escape the situation. Perpetrators also often have no intention of freeing the people they’re exploiting; debt bondage can even pass on to children. While bonded labor is technically illegal in some places, like India, it persists , especially in rural areas. Because trafficking is an illicit practice, it’s very difficult to get accurate numbers, but it’s most likely worse than what’s reported.

#15. Threats to journalism

By providing vital information to the public, journalists are essential to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, democracy and the protection of other human rights. In recent years, journalism has been under threat. According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index , the environment for journalism was “bad” in seven out of 10 countries, while it was “satisfactory” in just three out of 10 countries. The reasons include a surge in fake news and propaganda. Journalists also face threats to their lives. UNESCO found that in 2023, there was a near doubling of deaths of journalists working in conflict zones. As conflicts in Ukraine, Palestine and other countries continue, the safety of journalism will remain a social issue.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

1.4 Doing Research on Social Problems

Learning objectives.

• List the major advantages and disadvantages of surveys, observational studies, and experiments.
• Explain why scholars who study social problems often rely on existing data.

Sound research is an essential tool for understanding the sources, dynamics, and consequences of social problems and possible solutions to them. This section briefly describes the major ways in which sociologists gather information about social problems. Table 1.2 “Major Sociological Research Methods” summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Table 1.2 Major Sociological Research Methods

The survey is the most common method by which sociologists gather their data. The Gallup poll is perhaps the most well-known example of a survey and, like all surveys, gathers its data with the help of a questionnaire that is given to a group of respondents . The Gallup poll is an example of a survey conducted by a private organization, but sociologists do their own surveys, as does the government and many organizations in addition to Gallup. Many surveys are administered to respondents who are randomly chosen and thus constitute a random sample . In a random sample, everyone in the population (whether it be the whole US population or just the population of a state or city, all the college students in a state or city or all the students at just one college, etc.) has the same chance of being included in the survey. The beauty of a random sample is that it allows us to generalize the results of the sample to the population from which the sample comes. This means that we can be fairly sure of the behavior and attitudes of the whole US population by knowing the behavior and attitudes of just four hundred people randomly chosen from that population.

Some surveys are face-to-face surveys, in which interviewers meet with respondents to ask them questions. This type of survey can yield much information, because interviewers typically will spend at least an hour asking their questions, and a high response rate (the percentage of all people in the sample who agree to be interviewed), which is important to be able to generalize the survey’s results to the entire population. On the downside, this type of survey can be very expensive and time consuming to conduct.

Surveys are very useful for gathering various kinds of information relevant to social problems. Advances in technology have made telephone surveys involving random-digit dialing perhaps the most popular way of conducting a survey.

plantronicsgermany – Encore520 call center man standing – CC BY-ND 2.0.

Because of these drawbacks, sociologists and other researchers have turned to telephone surveys. Most Gallup polls are conducted over the telephone. Computers do random-digit dialing, which results in a random sample of all telephone numbers being selected. Although the response rate and the number of questions asked are both lower than in face-to-face surveys (people can just hang up the phone at the outset or let their answering machine take the call), the ease and low expense of telephone surveys are making them increasingly popular. Surveys done over the Internet are also becoming more popular, as they can reach many people at very low expense. A major problem with web surveys is that their results cannot necessarily be generalized to the entire population because not everyone has access to the Internet.

Surveys are used in the study of social problems to gather information about the behavior and attitudes of people regarding one or more problems. For example, many surveys ask people about their use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs or about their experiences of being unemployed or in poor health. Many of the chapters in this book will present evidence gathered by surveys carried out by sociologists and other social scientists, various governmental agencies, and private research and public interest firms.

Experiments

Experiments are the primary form of research in the natural and physical sciences, but in the social sciences they are for the most part found only in psychology. Some sociologists still use experiments, however, and they remain a powerful tool of social research.

The major advantage of experiments, whether they are done in the natural and physical sciences or in the social sciences, is that the researcher can be fairly sure of a cause-and-effect relationship because of the way the experiment is set up. Although many different experimental designs exist, the typical experiment consists of an experimental group and a control group , with subjects randomly assigned to either group. The researcher does something to the experimental group that is not done to the control group. If the two groups differ later in some variable, then it is safe to say that the condition to which the experimental group was subjected was responsible for the difference that resulted.

Most experiments take place in the laboratory, which for psychologists may be a room with a one-way mirror, but some experiments occur in the field, or in a natural setting ( field experiments ). In Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1980s, sociologists were involved in a much-discussed field experiment sponsored by the federal government. The researchers wanted to see whether arresting men for domestic violence made it less likely that they would commit such violence again. To test this hypothesis, the researchers had police do one of the following after arriving at the scene of a domestic dispute: They either arrested the suspect, separated him from his wife or partner for several hours, or warned him to stop but did not arrest or separate him. The researchers then determined the percentage of men in each group who committed repeated domestic violence during the next six months and found that those who were arrested had the lowest rate of recidivism, or repeat offending (Sherman & Berk, 1984). This finding led many jurisdictions across the United States to adopt a policy of mandatory arrest for domestic violence suspects. However, replications of the Minneapolis experiment in other cities found that arrest sometimes reduced recidivism for domestic violence but also sometimes increased it, depending on which city was being studied and on certain characteristics of the suspects, including whether they were employed at the time of their arrest (Sherman, 1992).

As the Minneapolis study suggests, perhaps the most important problem with experiments is that their results are not generalizable beyond the specific subjects studied. The subjects in most psychology experiments, for example, are college students, who obviously are not typical of average Americans: They are younger, more educated, and more likely to be middle class. Despite this problem, experiments in psychology and other social sciences have given us very valuable insights into the sources of attitudes and behavior. Scholars of social problems are increasingly using field experiments to study the effectiveness of various policies and programs aimed at addressing social problems. We will examine the results of several such experiments in the chapters ahead.

Observational Studies

Observational research, also called field research , is a staple of sociology. Sociologists have long gone into the field to observe people and social settings, and the result has been many rich descriptions and analyses of behavior in juvenile gangs, bars, urban street corners, and even whole communities.

Observational studies consist of both participant observation and nonparticipant observation . Their names describe how they differ. In participant observation, the researcher is part of the group that she or he is studying, spends time with the group, and might even live with people in the group. Several classical social problems studies of this type exist, many of them involving people in urban neighborhoods (Liebow, 1967; Liebow, 1993; Whyte, 1943). In nonparticipant observation, the researcher observes a group of people but does not otherwise interact with them. If you went to your local shopping mall to observe, say, whether people walking with children looked happier than people without children, you would be engaging in nonparticipant observation.

Similar to experiments, observational studies cannot automatically be generalized to other settings or members of the population. But in many ways they provide a richer account of people’s lives than surveys do, and they remain an important method of research on social problems.

Existing Data

Sometimes sociologists do not gather their own data but instead analyze existing data that someone else has gathered. The US Census Bureau, for example, gathers data on all kinds of areas relevant to the lives of Americans, and many sociologists analyze census data on such social problems as poverty, unemployment, and illness. Sociologists interested in crime and the criminal justice system may analyze data from court records, while medical sociologists often analyze data from patient records at hospitals. Analysis of existing data such as these is called secondary data analysis . Its advantage to sociologists is that someone else has already spent the time and money to gather the data. A disadvantage is that the data set being analyzed may not contain data on all the topics in which a sociologist may be interested or may contain data on topics that are not measured in ways the sociologist might prefer.

The Scientific Method and Objectivity

This section began by stressing the need for sound research in the study of social problems. But what are the elements of sound research? At a minimum, such research should follow the rules of the scientific method . As you probably learned in high school and/or college science classes, these rules—formulating hypotheses, gathering and testing data, drawing conclusions, and so forth—help guarantee that research yields the most accurate and reliable conclusions possible.

An overriding principle of the scientific method is that research should be conducted as objectively as possible. Researchers are often passionate about their work, but they must take care not to let the findings they expect and even hope to uncover affect how they do their research. This in turn means that they must not conduct their research in a manner that helps achieve the results they expect to find. Such bias can happen unconsciously, and the scientific method helps reduce the potential for this bias as much as possible.

This potential is arguably greater in the social sciences than in the natural and physical sciences. The political views of chemists and physicists typically do not affect how an experiment is performed and how the outcome of the experiment is interpreted. In contrast, researchers in the social sciences, and perhaps particularly in sociology, often have strong feelings about the topics they are studying. Their social and political beliefs may thus influence how they perform their research on these topics and how they interpret the results of this research. Following the scientific method helps reduce this possible influence.

Key Takeaways

• The major types of research on social problems include surveys, experiments, observational studies, and the use of existing data.
• Surveys are the most common method, and the results of surveys of random samples may be generalized to the populations from which the samples come.
• Observation studies and existing data are also common methods in social problems research. Observation studies enable the gathering of rich, detailed information, but their results cannot necessarily be generalized beyond the people studied.
• Research on social problems should follow the scientific method to yield the most accurate and objective conclusions possible.

For Your Review

• Have you ever been a respondent or subject in any type of sociological or psychological research project? If so, how did it feel to be studied?
• Which type of social problems research method sounds most interesting to you? Why?

Liebow, E. (1967). Tally’s corner . Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Liebow, E. (1993). Tell them who I am: The lives of homeless women . New York, NY: Free Press.

Sherman, L. W., & Berk, R. A. (1984). The specific deterrent effects of arrest for domestic assault. American Sociological Review, 49 , 261–272.

Sherman, L. W. (1992). Policing domestic violence: Experiments and dilemmas . New York, NY: Free Press.

Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List

The Social Consequences of Poverty: An Empirical Test on Longitudinal Data

Carina mood.

Institute for Futures Studies, Box 591, 101 31 Stockholm, Sweden

Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Jan O. Jonsson

Nuffield College, OX1 1NF Oxford, England, UK

Poverty is commonly defined as a lack of economic resources that has negative social consequences, but surprisingly little is known about the importance of economic hardship for social outcomes. This article offers an empirical investigation into this issue. We apply panel data methods on longitudinal data from the Swedish Level-of-Living Survey 2000 and 2010 (n = 3089) to study whether poverty affects four social outcomes—close social relations (social support), other social relations (friends and relatives), political participation, and activity in organizations. We also compare these effects across five different poverty indicators. Our main conclusion is that poverty in general has negative effects on social life. It has more harmful effects for relations with friends and relatives than for social support; and more for political participation than organizational activity. The poverty indicator that shows the greatest impact is material deprivation (lack of cash margin), while the most prevalent poverty indicators—absolute income poverty, and especially relative income poverty—appear to have the least effect on social outcomes.

Introduction

According to the most influential definitions, poverty is seen as a lack of economic resources that have negative social consequences—this is in fact a view that dominates current theories of poverty (Townsend 1979 ; Sen 1983 ; UN 1995 ), and also has a long heritage (Smith 1776 /1976). The idea is that even when people have food, clothes, and shelter, economic problems lead to a deterioration of social relations and participation. Being poor is about not being able to partake in society on equal terms with others, and therefore in the long run being excluded by fellow citizens or withdrawing from social and civic life because of a lack of economic resources, typically in combination with the concomitant shame of not being able to live a life like them (e.g., Sen 1983 ). Economic hardship affects the standard of life, consumption patterns, and leisure time activities, and this is directly or indirectly related to the possibility of making or maintaining friends or acquaintances: poverty is revealed by not having appropriate clothes, or a car; by not being able to afford vacation trips, visits to the restaurant, or hosting dinner parties (e.g., Mack and Lansley 1985 ; Callan et al. 1993 )—in short, low incomes prevent the poor from living a life in “decency” (Galbraith 1958 ).

The relational nature of poverty is also central to the social exclusion literature, which puts poverty in a larger perspective of multiple disadvantages and their interrelationships (Hills et al. 2002 , Rodgers et al. 1995 ; Room 1995 ). While there are different definitions of the social exclusion concept, the literature is characterized by a move from distributional to relational concerns (Gore 1995 ) and by an emphasis on the importance of social integration and active participation in public life. The inability of living a decent or “ordinary” social life may in this perspective erode social networks, social relations, and social participation, potentially setting off a downward spiral of misfortune (Paugam 1995 ) reinforcing disadvantages in several domains of life. This perspective on poverty and social exclusion is essentially sociological: the playing field of the private economy is social. It is ultimately about individuals’ relations with other people—not only primary social relations, with kin and friends, but extending to secondary relations reflected by participation in the wider community, such as in organizations and in political life (UN 1995 ).

Despite the fact that the social consequences of limited economic resources are central to modern perspectives on poverty and marginalization, this relation is surprisingly seldom studied empirically. Qualitative research on the poor give interesting examples on how the negative effects of poverty works, and portray the way that economic problems are transformed into social ones (Ridge and Millar 2011 ; Attree 2006 ). Such studies, however, have too small sample sizes to generalize to the population, and they cannot tell us much about the range of the problem. The (relatively few) studies that have addressed the association between poverty and social outcomes on larger scale tend to verify that the poor have worse social relations (Böhnke 2008 ; Jonsson and Östberg 2004 ; Levitas 2006 ), but Barnes et al. ( 2002 ) did not find any noteworthy association between poverty (measured as relative income poverty, using the 60 %-limit) and social relations or social isolation. Dahl et al. ( 2008 ) found no relation between poverty and friendships, but report less participation in civic organizations among the poor. All these studies have however been limited to cross-sectional data or hampered by methodological shortcomings, and therefore have not been able to address the separation of selection effects from potentially causal ones.

Our aim in this study is to make good these omissions. We use longitudinal data from the Swedish Level of Living Surveys (LNU) 2000 and 2010 to study how falling into poverty, or rising from it, is associated with outcomes in terms of primary and secondary social relations, including participation in civil society. These panel data make it possible to generalize the results to the Swedish adult population (19–65 in 2000; 29–75 in 2010), to address the issue of causality, and to estimate how strong the relation between economic vulnerability and social outcomes is. Because the data provide us with the possibility of measuring poverty in several ways, we are also able to address the question using different—alternative or complementary—indicators. Poverty is measured as economic deprivation (lack of cash margin, self-reported economic problems), income poverty (absolute and relative), and long-term poverty, respectively. The primary, or core, social outcomes are indicated by having social support if needed, and by social relations with friends and relatives. We expand our analysis to secondary, or fringe, social outcomes in terms of participation in social life at large, such as in civil society: our indicators here include the participation in organizations and in political life.

Different Dimensions/Definitions of Poverty

In modern welfare states, the normal take on the issue of poverty is to regard it as the relative lack of economic resources, that is, to define the poor in relation to their fellow citizens in the same country at the same time. Three approaches dominate the scholarly literature today. The first takes as a point of departure the income deemed necessary for living a life on par with others, or that makes possible an “acceptable” living standard—defined as the goods and services judged necessary, often on the basis of consumer or household budget studies. This usage of a poverty threshold is often (somewhat confusingly) called absolute income poverty , and is most common in North America (cf. Corak 2006 for a review), although most countries have poverty lines defined for different kinds of social benefits. In Europe and in the OECD, the convention is instead to use versions of relative income poverty , defining as poor those whose incomes fall well behind the median income in the country in question (European Union using 60 % and OECD 50 % of the median as the threshold). As an alternative to using purchasing power (as in the “absolute” measure), this relative measure defines poverty by income inequality in the bottom half of the income distribution (Atkinson et al. 2002 ; OECD 2008 ).

The third approach argues that income measures are too indirect; poverty should instead be indicated directly by the lack of consumer products and services that are necessary for an acceptable living standard (Mack and Lansley 1985 ; Ringen 1988 ; Townsend 1979 ). This approach often involves listing a number of possessions and conditions, such as having a car, washing machine, modern kitchen; and being able to dine out sometimes, to have the home adequately heated and mended, to have sufficient insurances, and so on. An elaborate version includes information on what people in general see as necessities, what is often termed “consensual” poverty (e.g., Mack and Lansley 1985 ; Gordon et al. 2000 ; Halleröd 1995 ; van den Bosch 2001 ). Other direct indicators include the ability to cover unforeseen costs (cash margin) and subjective definitions of poverty (e.g., van den Bosch 2001 ). The direct approach to poverty has gained in popularity and measures of economic/material deprivation and consensual poverty are used in several recent and contemporary comparative surveys such as ECHP (Whelan et al. 2003 ) and EU-SILC (e.g., UNICEF 2012 ; Nolan and Whelan 2011 ).

It is often pointed out that, due to the often quite volatile income careers of households, the majority of poverty episodes are short term and the group that is identified as poor in the cross-section therefore tends to be rather diluted (Bane and Ellwood 1986 ; Duncan et al. 1993 ). Those who suffer most from the downsides of poverty are, it could be argued, instead the long-term, persistent, or chronically poor, and there is empirical evidence that those who experience more years in poverty also are more deprived of a “common lifestyle” (Whelan et al. 2003 ). Poverty persistence has been defined in several ways, such as having spent a given number of years below a poverty threshold, or having an average income over a number of years that falls under the poverty line (e.g., Duncan and Rodgers 1991 ; Rodgers and Rodgers 1993 ). The persistently poor can only be detected with any precision in longitudinal studies, and typically on the basis of low incomes, as data covering repeated measures of material deprivation are uncommon.

For the purposes of this study, it is not essential to nominate the best or most appropriate poverty measure. The measures outlined above, while each having some disadvantage, all provide plausible theoretical grounds for predicting negative social outcomes. Low incomes, either in “absolute” or relative terms, may inhibit social activities and participation because these are costly (e.g., having decent housing, needing a car, paying membership fees, entrance tickets, or new clothes). Economic deprivation, often indicated by items or habits that are directly relevant to social life, is also a valid representation of a lack of resources. Lastly, to be in long-term poverty is no doubt a worse condition than being in shorter-term poverty.

It is worth underlining that we see different measures of poverty as relevant indicators despite the fact that the overlap between them often is surprisingly small (Bradshaw and Finch 2003 ). The lack of overlap is not necessarily a problem, as different people may have different configurations of economic problems but share in common many of the experiences of poverty—experiences, we argue, that are (in theory at least) all likely to lead to adverse social outcomes. Whether this is the case or not is one of the questions that we address, but if previous studies on child poverty are of any guidance, different definitions of poverty may show surprisingly similar associations with a number of outcomes (Jonsson and Östberg 2004 ).

What are the Likely Social Consequences of Poverty?

We have concluded that poverty is, according to most influential poverty definitions, manifested in the social sphere. This connects with the idea of Veblen ( 1899 ) of the relation between consumption and social status. What you buy and consume—clothes, furniture, vacation trips—in part define who you are, which group you aspire to belong to, and what view others will have of you. Inclusion into and exclusion from status groups and social circles are, in this view, dependent on economic resources as reflected in consumption patterns. While Veblen was mostly concerned about the rich and their conspicuous consumption, it is not difficult to transfer these ideas to the less fortunate: the poor are under risk of exclusion, of losing their social status and identity, and perhaps also, therefore, their friends. It is however likely that this is a process that differs according to outcome, with an unknown time-lag.

If, as outlined above, we can speak of primary and secondary social consequences, the former should include socializing with friends, but also more intimate relations. Our conjecture is that the closer the relation, the less affected is it by poverty, simply because intimate social bonds are characterized by more unconditional personal relations, typically not requiring costs to uphold.

When it comes to the secondary social consequences, we move outside the realm of closer interpersonal relations to acquaintances and the wider social network, and to the (sometimes relatively anonymous) participation in civil or political life. This dimension of poverty lies at the heart of the social exclusion perspective, which strongly emphasizes the broader issues of societal participation and civic engagement, vital to democratic societies. It is also reflected in the United Nation’s definition, following the Copenhagen summit in 1995, where “overall poverty” in addition to lack of economic resources is said to be “…characterized by lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social, and cultural life” (UN 1995 , p. 57). Poverty may bring about secondary social consequences because such participation is costly—as in the examples of travel, need for special equipment, or membership fees—but also because of psychological mechanisms, such as lowered self-esteem triggering disbelief in civic and political activities, and a general passivity leading to decreased organizational and social activities overall. If processes like these exist there is a risk of a “downward spiral of social exclusion” where unemployment leads to poverty and social isolation, which in turn reduce the chances of re-gaining a footing in the labour market (Paugam 1995 ).

What theories of poverty and social exclusion postulate is, in conclusion, that both what we have called primary and secondary social relations will be negatively affected by economic hardship—the latter supposedly more than the former. Our strategy in the following is to test this basic hypothesis by applying multivariate panel-data analyses on longitudinal data. In this way, we believe that we can come further than previous studies towards estimating causal effects, although, as is the case in social sciences, the causal relation must remain preliminary due to the nature of observational data.

Data and Definitions

We use the two most recent waves of the Swedish Level-of-living Survey, conducted in 2000 and 2010 on random (1/1000) samples of adult Swedes, aged 18–75. 1 The attrition rate is low, with 84 % of panel respondents remaining from 2000 to 2010. This is one of the few data sets from which we can get over-time measures of both poverty and social outcomes for a panel that is representative of the adult population (at the first time point, t 0 )—in addition, there is annual income information from register data between the waves. The panel feature obviously restricts the age-groups slightly (ages 19–65 in 2000; 29–75 in 2010), the final number of analyzed cases being between 2995 and 3144, depending on the number of missing cases on the respective poverty measure and social outcome variable. For ease of interpretation and comparison of effect sizes, we have constructed all social outcome variables and poverty variables to be dichotomous (0/1). 2

In constructing poverty variables, we must balance theoretical validity with the need to have group sizes large enough for statistical analysis. For example, we expand the absolute poverty measure to include those who received social assistance any time during the year. As social assistance recipients receive this benefit based on having an income below a poverty line that is similar to the one we use, this seems justifiable. In other cases, however, group sizes are small but we find no theoretically reasonable way of making the variables more inclusive, meaning that some analyses cannot be carried out in full detail.

Our income poverty measures are based on register data and are thus free from recall error or misreporting, but—as the proponents of deprivation measures point out—income poverty measures are indirect measures of hardship. The deprivation measure is more direct, but self-reporting always carries a risk of subjectivity in the assessment. To the extent that changes in one’s judgment of the economic situation depend on changes in non-economic factors that are also related to social relations, the deprivation measure will give upwardly biased estimates. 3 As there is no general agreement about whether income or deprivation definitions are superior, our use of several definitions is a strength because the results will give an overall picture that is not sensitive to potential limitations in any one measure. In addition, we are able to see whether results vary systematically across commonly used definitions.

Poverty Measures

• Cash margin whether the respondent can raise a given sum of money in a week, if necessary (in 2000, the sum was 12,000 SEK; in 2010, 14,000 SEK, the latter sum corresponding to approximately 1600 Euro, 2200 USD, or 1400 GBP in 2013 currency rates). For those who answer in the affirmative, there is a follow-up question of how this can be done: by (a) own/household resources, (b) borrowing.
• Economic crisis Those who claim that they have had problems meeting costs for rent, food, bills, etc. during the last 12 months (responded “yes” to a yes/no alternative).
• Absolute poverty is defined as either (a) having a disposable family income below a poverty threshold or (b) receiving social assistance, both assessed in 1999 (for the survey 2000) or 2009 (for the survey 2010). The poverty line varies by family type/composition according to a commonly used calculation of household necessities (Jansson 2000 ). This “basket” of goods and services is intended to define an acceptable living standard, and was originally constructed for calculating an income threshold for social assistance, with addition of estimated costs for housing and transport. The threshold is adjusted for changes in the Consumer Price Index, using 2010 as the base year. In order to get analyzable group sizes, we classify anyone with an income below 1.25 times this threshold as poor. Self-employed are excluded because their nominal incomes are often a poor indicator of their economic standard.
• Deprived and income poor A combination of the indicator of economic deprivation and the indicator of absolute poverty. The poor are defined as those who are economically deprived and in addition are either absolute income-poor or have had social assistance some time during the last calendar year.
• Long - term poor are defined as those interviewed in 2010 (2000) who had an equivalized disposable income that fell below the 1.25 absolute poverty threshold (excluding self-employed) or who received social assistance in 2009 (1999), and who were in this situation for at least two of the years 2000–2008 (1990–1998). The long-term poor (coded 1) are contrasted to the non-poor (coded 0), excluding the short-term poor (coded missing) in order to distinguish whether long-term poverty is particularly detrimental (as compared to absolute poverty in general).
• Relative poverty is defined, according to the EU standard, as having a disposable equivalized income that is lower than 60 % of the median income in Sweden the year in question (EU 2005). 4 As for absolute poverty, this variable is based on incomes the year prior to the survey year. Self-employed are excluded.

Social and Participation Outcomes

Primary (core) social relations.

• Social support The value 1 (has support) is given to those who have answered in the positive to three questions about whether one has a close friend who can help if one (a) gets sick, (b) needs someone to talk to about troubles, or (c) needs company. Those who lack support in at least one of these respects are coded 0 (lack of support).
• Frequent social relations This variable is based on four questions about how often one meets (a) relatives and (b) friends, either (i) at ones’ home or (ii) at the home of those one meets, with the response set being “yes, often”, “sometimes”, and “no, never”. Respondents are defined as having frequent relations (1) if they have at least one “often” of the four possible and no “never”, 5 and 0 otherwise.

Secondary (fringe) Social Relations/Participation

• Political participation : Coded 1 (yes) if one during the last 12 months actively participated (held an elected position or was at a meeting) in a trade union or a political party, and 0 (no) otherwise. 6
• Organizational activity : Coded 1 (yes) if one is a member of an organization and actively participate in its activities at least once in a year, and 0 (no) otherwise.

Control Variables

• Age (in years)
• Educational qualifications in 2010 (five levels according to a standard schema used by Statistics Sweden (1985), entered as dummy variables)
• Civil status distinguishes between single and cohabiting/married persons, and is used as a time-varying covariate (TVC) where we register any changes from couple to single and vice versa.
• Immigrant origin is coded 1 if both parents were born in any country outside Sweden, 0 otherwise.
• Labour market status is also used as a TVC, with four values indicating labour market participation (yes/no) in 2000 and 2010, respectively.
• Global self - rated health in 2000, with three response alternatives: Good, bad, or in between. 7

Table  1 shows descriptive statistics for the 2 years we study, 2000 and 2010 (percentages in the upper panel; averages, standard deviations, max and min values in the lower panel). Recall that the sample is longitudinal with the same respondents appearing in both years. This means, naturally, that the sample ages 10 years between the waves, the upper age limit being pushed up from 65 to 75. Both the change over years and the ageing of the sample have repercussions for their conditions: somewhat more have poor health, for example, fewer lack social support but more lack frequent social relations, and more are single in 2010 (where widows are a growing category). The group has however improved their economic conditions, with a sizeable reduction in poverty rates. Most of the changes are in fact period effects, and it is particularly obvious for the change in poverty—in 2000 people still suffered from the deep recession in Sweden that begun in 1991 and started to turn in 1996/97 (Jonsson et al. 2010 ), while the most recent international recession (starting in 2008/09) did not affect Sweden that much.

Table 1

Descriptive statistics of dependent and independent variables in the LNU panel

N for variables used as change variables pertains to non-missing observations in both 2000 and 2010

The overall decrease in poverty masks changes that our respondents experienced between 2000 and 2010: Table  2 reveals these for the measure of economic deprivation, showing the outflow (row) percentages and the total percentages (and the number of respondents in parentheses). It is evident that there was quite a lot of mobility out of poverty between the years (61 % left), but also a very strong relative risk of being found in poverty in 2010 among those who were poor in 2000 (39 vs. 5 % of those who were non-poor in 2000). Of all our respondents, the most common situation was to be non-poor both years (81 %), while few were poor on both occasions (6 %). Table  2 also demonstrates some small cell numbers: 13.3 % of the panel (9.4 % + 3.9 %), or a good 400 cases, changed poverty status, and these cases are crucial for identifying our models. As in many panel studies based on survey data, this will inevitably lead to some problems with large standard errors and difficulties in arriving at statistically significant and precise estimates; but to preview the findings, our results are surprisingly consistent all the same.

Table 2

Mobility in poverty (measured as economic deprivation) in Sweden between 2000 and 2010

Outflow percentage (row %), total percentage, and number of cases (in parentheses). LNU panel 2000–2010

We begin with showing descriptive results of how poverty is associated with our outcome variables, using the economic deprivation measure of poverty. 8 Figure  1 confirms that those who are poor have worse social relationships and participate less in political life and in organizations. Poverty is thus connected with both primary and secondary social relations.

The relation between poverty (measured as economic deprivation) and social relations/participation in Sweden, LNU 2010. N = 5271

The descriptive picture in Fig.  1 does not tell us anything about the causal nature of the relation between poverty and social outcomes, only that such a relation exists, and that it is in the predicted direction: poor people have weaker social relations, less support, and lower levels of political and civic participation. Our task now is to apply more stringent statistical models to test whether the relation we have uncovered is likely to be of a causal nature. This means that we must try to rid the association of both the risk for reverse causality—that, for example, a weaker social network leads to poverty—and the risk that there is a common underlying cause of both poverty and social outcomes, such as poor health or singlehood.

The Change Model

First, as we have panel data, we can study the difference in change across two time-points T (called t 0 and t 1 , respectively) in an outcome variable (e.g., social relations), between groups (i.e. those who changed poverty status versus those who did not). The respondents are assigned to either of these groups on the grounds of entering or leaving poverty; in the first case, one group is non-poor at t 0 but experiences poverty at t 1 , and the change in this group is compared to the group consisting of those who are non-poor both at t 0 and t 1 . The question in focus then is: Do social relations in the group entering poverty worsen in relation to the corresponding change in social relations in the group who remains non-poor? Because we have symmetric hypotheses of the effect of poverty on social outcomes—assuming leaving poverty has positive consequences similar to the negative consequences of entering poverty—we also study whether those who exit poverty improve their social outcomes as compared to those remaining poor. We ask, that is, not only what damage falling into poverty might have for social outcomes, but also what “social gains” could be expected for someone who climbs out of poverty.

Thus, in our analyses we use two different “change groups”, poverty leavers and poverty entrants , and two “comparison groups”, constantly poor and never poor , respectively. 9 The setup comparing the change in social outcomes for those who change poverty status and those who do not is analogous to a so-called difference-in-difference design, but as the allocation of respondents to comparison groups and change groups in our data cannot be assumed to be random (as with control groups and treatment groups in experimental designs), we take further measures to approach causal interpretations.

Accounting for the Starting Value of the Dependent Variable

An important indication of the non-randomness of the allocation to the change and comparison groups is that their average values of the social outcomes (i.e. the dependent variable) at t 0 differ systematically: Those who become poor between 2000 and 2010 have on average worse social outcomes already in 2000 than those who stay out of poverty. Similarly, those who stay in poverty both years have on average worse social outcomes than those who have exited poverty in 2010. In order to further reduce the impact of unobserved variables, we therefore make all comparisons of changes in social outcomes between t 0 and t 1 for fixed t 0 values of both social outcome and poverty status.

As we use dichotomous outcome variables, we get eight combinations of poverty and outcome states (2 × 2 × 2 = 8), and four direct strategic comparisons:

• Poverty leavers versus constantly poor, positive social outcome in 2000 , showing if those who exit poverty have a higher chance of maintaining the positive social outcome than those who stay in poverty
• Poverty leavers versus constantly poor, negative social outcome in 2000 , showing if those who exit poverty have a higher chance of improvement in the social outcome than those who stay in poverty
• Poverty entrants versus never poor, positive social outcome in 2000 , showing if those who enter poverty have a higher risk of deterioration in the social outcome than those who stay out of poverty, and
• Poverty entrants versus never poor, negative social outcome in 2000 , showing if those who enter poverty have a lower chance of improvement in the social outcome.

Thus, we hold the initial social situation and poverty status fixed, letting only the poverty in 2010 vary. 10 The analytical strategy is set out in Table  3 , showing estimates of the probability to have frequent social relations in 2010, for poverty defined (as in Table  2 and Fig.  1 above) as economic deprivation.

Table 3

Per cent with frequent social relations in “comparison” and “change” groups in 2000 and 2010, according to initial value on social relations in 2000 and poverty (measured as economic deprivation) in 2000 and 2010

LNU panel 2000–2010. N = 3083

The figures in Table  3 should be read like this: 0.59 in the upper left cell means that among those who were poor neither in 2000 nor in 2010 (“never poor”, or 0–0), and who had non-frequent social relations to begin with, 59 % had frequent social relations in 2010. Among those never poor who instead started out with more frequent social relations, 90 per cent had frequent social relations in 2010. This difference (59 vs. 90) tells us either that the initial conditions were important (weak social relations can be inherently difficult to improve) or that there is heterogeneity within the group of never poor people, such as some having (to us perhaps unobserved) characteristics that support relation building while others have not.

Because our strategy is to condition on the initial situation in order to minimize the impact of initial conditions and unobserved heterogeneity, we focus on the comparisons across columns. If we follow each column downwards, that is, for a given initial social outcome (weak or not weak social relations, respectively) it is apparent that the outcome is worse for the “poverty entrants” in comparison with the “never poor” (upper three lines). Comparing the change group [those who became poor (0–1)] with the comparison group [never poor (0–0)] for those who started out with weak social relations (left column), the estimated probability of frequent social relations in 2010 is 7 % points lower for those who became poor. Among those who started out with frequent relations, those who became poor have a 17 % points lower probability of frequent relations in 2010 than those who stayed out of poverty.

If we move down Table  3 , to the three bottom lines, the change and comparison groups are now different. The comparison group is the “constantly poor” (1–1), and the change group are “poverty leavers” (1–0). Again following the columns downwards, we can see that the change group improved their social relations in comparison with the constantly poor; and this is true whether they started out with weak social relations or not. In fact, the chance of improvement for those who started off with non-frequent social relations is the most noteworthy, being 33 % units higher for those who escaped poverty than for those who did not. In sum, Table  3 suggests that becoming poor appears to be bad for social relations whereas escaping poverty is beneficial.

Expanding the Model

The model exemplified in Table  3 is a panel model that studies change across time within the same individuals, conditioning on their initial state. It does away with time-constant effects of observed and unobserved respondent characteristics, and although this is far superior to a cross-sectional model (such as the one underlying Fig.  1 ) there are still threats to causal interpretations. It is possible (if probably unusual) that permanent characteristics may trigger a change over time in both the dependent and independent variables; or, put in another way, whether a person stays in or exits poverty may be partly caused by a variable that also predicts change in the outcome (what is sometimes referred to as a violation of the “common trend assumption”). In our case, we can for example imagine that health problems in 2000 can affect who becomes poor in 2010, at t 1 , and that the same health problems can lead to a deterioration of social relations between 2000 and 2010, so even conditioning on the social relations at t 0 will not be enough. This we handle by adding control variables, attempting to condition the comparison of poor and non-poor also on sex, age, highest level of education (in 2010), immigrant status, and health (in 2000). 11

Given the set-up of our data—with 10 years between the two data-points and with no information on the precise time ordering of poverty and social outcomes at t 1 , the model can be further improved by including change in some of the control variables. It is possible, for example, that a non-poor and married respondent in 2000 divorced before 2010, triggering both poverty and reduced social relations at the time of the interview in 2010. 12 There are two major events that in this way may bias our results, divorce/separation and unemployment (because each can lead to poverty, and possibly also affect social outcomes). We handle this by controlling for variables combining civil status and unemployment in 2000 as well as in 2010. To the extent that these factors are a consequence of becoming poor, there is a risk of biasing our estimates downwards (e.g., if becoming poor increases the risk of divorce). However, as there is no way to distinguish empirically whether control variables (divorce, unemployment) or poverty changed first we prefer to report conservative estimates. 13

Throughout, we use logistic regression to estimate our models (one model for each social outcome and poverty definition). We create a dummy variable for each of the combinations of poverty in 2000, poverty in 2010 and the social outcome in 2000, and alternate the reference category in order to get the four strategic comparisons described above. Coefficients do thus express the distance between the relevant change and comparison groups. The coefficients reported are average marginal effects (AME) for a one-unit change in the respective poverty variable (i.e. going from non-poor to poor and vice versa), which are straightforwardly interpretable as percentage unit differences and (unlike odds ratios or log odds ratios) comparable across models and outcomes (Mood 2010 ).

Regression Results

As detailed above, we use changes over time in poverty and social outcomes to estimate the effects of interest. The effect of poverty is allowed to be heterogeneous, and is assessed through four comparisons of the social outcome in 2010 (Y 1 ):

• Those entering poverty relative to those in constant non-poverty (P 01  = 0,1 vs. P 01  = 0,0) when both have favourable social outcomes at t 0 (Y 0  = 1)
• Those exiting poverty relative to those in constant poverty (P 01  = 1,0 vs. P 01  = 1,1) when both have favourable social outcomes at t 0 (Y 0  = 1)
• Those entering poverty relative to those in constant non-poverty (P 01  = 0,1 vs. P 01  = 0,0) when both have non-favourable social outcomes at t 0 (Y 0  = 0)
• Those exiting poverty relative to those in constant poverty (P 01  = 1,0 vs. P 01  = 1,1) when both have non-favourable social outcomes at t 0 (Y 0  = 0)

Poverty is a rare outcome, and as noted above it is particularly uncommon to enter poverty between 2000 and 2010 because of the improving macro-economic situation. Some of the social outcomes were also rare in 2000. This unfortunately means that in some comparisons we have cell frequencies that are prohibitively small, and we have chosen to exclude all comparisons involving cells where N < 20.

The regression results are displayed in Table  4 . To understand how the estimates come to be, consider the four in the upper left part of the Table (0.330, 0.138, −0.175 and −0.065), reflecting the effect of poverty, measured as economic deprivation, on the probability of having frequent social relations. Because these estimates are all derived from a regression without any controls, they are identical (apart from using three decimal places) to the percentage comparisons in Table  3 (0.33, 0.14, −0.17, −0.07), and can be straightforwardly interpreted as average differences in the probability of the outcome in question. From Table  4 it is clear that the three first differences are all statistically significant, whereas the estimate −0.07 is not (primarily because those who entered poverty in 2010 and had infrequent social relations in 2000 is a small group, N = 25).

Table 4

Average marginal effects (from logistic regression) of five types of poverty (1–5) on four social outcomes (A-D) comparing those with different poverty statuses in 2000 and 2010 and conditioning on the starting value of the social outcome (in 2000)

Right columns control for sex, education, age, immigrant status, health in 2000, civil status change between 2000 and 2010, and unemployment change between 2000 and 2010. P values in parentheses. Excluded estimates involve variable categories with N < 20. Shaded cells are in hypothesized direction, bold estimates are statistically significant ( P  < 0.05). N in regressions: 1A: 3075; 1B: 3073; 1C: 3075; 1D: 3069; 2A: 3144; 2B: 3137; 2C: 3144; 2D: 3130; 3A: 3074, 3B: 3072; 3C: 3074; 3D: 3068; 4A: 2995; 4B: 2988; 4C: 2995; 4D: 2981; 5A: 3128; 5B: 3121; 5C: 3128; 5D: 3114

In the column to the right, we can see what difference the controls make: the estimates are reduced, but not substantially so, and the three first differences are still statistically significant.

The estimates for each social outcome, reflecting the four comparisons described above, support the hypothesis of poverty affecting social relations negatively (note that the signs of the estimates should differ in order to do so, the upper two being positive as they reflect an effect of the exit from poverty, and the lower two being negative as they reflect an effect of entering poverty). We have indicated support for the hypothesis in Table  4 by shading the estimates and standard errors for estimates that go in the predicted direction.

Following the first two columns down, we can see that there is mostly support for the hypothesis of a negative effect of poverty, but when controlling for other variables, the effects on social support are not impressive. In fact, if we concentrate on each social outcome (i.e., row-wise), one conclusion is that, when controlling for confounders, there are rather small effects of poverty on the probability of having access to social support. The opposite is true for political participation, where the consistency in the estimated effects of poverty is striking.

If we instead follow the columns, we ask whether any of the definitions of poverty is a better predictor of social outcomes than the others. The measure of economic deprivation appears to be the most stable one, followed by absolute poverty and the combined deprivation/absolute poverty variable. 14 The relative poverty measure is less able to predict social outcomes: in many instances it even has the non-expected sign. Interestingly, long-term poverty (as measured here) does not appear to have more severe negative consequences than absolute poverty in general.

Because some of our comparison groups are small, it is difficult to get high precision in the estimates, efficiency being a concern particularly in view of the set of control variables in Table  4 . Only 14 out of 62 estimates in models with controls are significant and in the right direction. Nonetheless, with 52 out of 62 estimates in these models having the expected sign, we believe that the hypothesis of a negative effect of poverty on social outcomes receives quite strong support.

Although control variables are not shown in the table, one thing should be noted about them: The reduction of coefficients when including control variables is almost exclusively driven by changes in civil status. 15 The time constant characteristics that are included are cross-sectionally related to both poverty and social outcomes, but they have only minor impacts on the estimated effects of poverty. This suggests that the conditioning on prior values of the dependent and independent variables eliminates much time invariant heterogeneity, which increases the credibility of estimates.

Conclusions

We set out to test a fundamental, but rarely questioned assumption in dominating definitions of poverty: whether shortage of economic resources has negative consequences for social relations and participation. By using longitudinal data from the Swedish Level-of-living Surveys 2000 and 2010, including repeated measures of poverty (according to several commonly used definitions) and four social outcome variables, we are able to come further than previous studies in estimating the relation between poverty and social outcomes: Our main conclusion is that there appears to be a causal relation between them.

Panel models suggest that falling into poverty increases the risk of weakening social relations and decreasing (civic and political) participation. Climbing out of poverty tends to have the opposite effects, a result that strengthens the interpretation of causality. The sample is too small to estimate the effect sizes with any precision, yet they appear to be substantial, with statistically significant estimates ranging between 5 and 21 % units.

While these findings are disquieting insofar as poverty goes, our results also suggest two more positive results. First, the negative effects of poverty appear to be reversible: once the private economy recovers, social outcomes improve. Secondly, the negative consequences are less for the closest social relations, whether there is someone there in cases of need (sickness, personal problems, etc.). This is in line with an interpretation of such close relations being unconditional: our nearest and dearest tend to hang on to us also in times of financial troubles, which may bolster risks for social isolation and psychological ill-being,

Our finding of negative effects of poverty on civic and political participation relates to the fears of a “downward spiral of social exclusion”, as there is a risk that the loss of less intimate social relations shrinks social networks and decreases the available social capital in terms of contacts that can be important for outcomes such as finding a job (e.g., Lin 2001 ; Granovetter 1974 ). However, Gallie et al. ( 2003 ) found no evidence for any strong impact of social isolation on unemployment, suggesting that the negative effects on social outcomes that we observe are unlikely to lead to self-reinforcement of poverty. Nevertheless, social relations are of course important outcomes in their own right, so if they are negatively affected by poverty it matters regardless of whether social relations in turn are important for other outcomes. Effects on political and civic participation are also relevant in themselves beyond individuals’ wellbeing, as they suggest a potentially democratic problem where poor have less of a voice and less influence on society than others.

Our results show the merits of our approach, to study the relation between poverty and social outcomes longitudinally. The fact that the poor have worse social relations and lower participation is partly because of selection. This may be because the socially isolated, or those with a weaker social network, more easily fall into poverty; or it can be because of a common denominator, such as poor health or social problems. But once we have stripped the analysis of such selection effects, we also find what is likely to be a causal relation between poverty and social relations. However, this effect of poverty on social outcomes, in turn, varies between different definitions of poverty. Here it appears that economic deprivation, primarily indicated by the ability of raising money with short notice, is the strongest predictor of social outcomes. Income poverty, whether in absolute or (particularly) relative terms, are weaker predictors of social outcomes, which is interesting as they are the two most common indicators of poverty in existing research.

Even if we are fortunate to have panel data at our disposal, there are limitations in our analyses that render our conclusions tentative. One is that we do not have a random allocation to the comparison groups at t 0 ; another that there is a 10-year span between the waves that we analyze, and both poverty and social outcomes may vary across this time-span. We have been able to address these problems by conditioning on the outcome at t 0 and by controlling for confounders, but in order to perform more rigorous tests future research would benefit from data with a more detailed temporal structure, and preferably with an experimental or at least quasi-experimental design.

Finally, our analyses concern Sweden, and given the position as an active welfare state with a low degree of inequality and low poverty rates, one can ask whether the results are valid also for other comparable countries. While both the level of poverty and the pattern of social relations differ between countries (for policy or cultural reasons), we believe that the mechanisms linking poverty and social outcomes are of a quite general kind, especially as the “costs for social participation” can be expected to be relative to the general wealth of a country—however, until comparative longitudinal data become available, this must remain a hypothesis for future research.

1 http://www.sofi.su.se/english/2.17851/research/three-research-departments/lnu-level-of-living .

2 We have tested various alternative codings and the overall pattern of results in terms of e.g., direction of effects and differences across poverty definitions are similar, but more difficult to present in an accessible way.

3 Our deprivation questions are however designed to reduce the impact of subjectivity by asking, e.g., about getting a specified sum within a specified time (see below).

4 In the equivalence scale, the first adult gets a weight of one, the second of 0.6, and each child gets a weight of 0.5.

5 We have also tried using single indicators (either a/b or i/ii) without detecting any meaningful difference between them. One would perhaps have assumed that poverty would be more consequential for having others over to one’s own place, but the absence of support for this can perhaps be understood in light of the strong social norm of reciprocity in social relations.

6 We have refrained from using information on voting and membership in trade unions and political parties, because these indicators do not capture the active, social nature of civic engagement to the same extent as participation in meetings and the holding of positions.

7 We have also estimated models with a more extensive health variable, a s ymptom index , which sums responses to 47 questions about self-reported health symptoms. However, this variable has virtually zero effects once global self-rated health is controlled, and does not lead to any substantive differences in other estimates. Adding the global health measure and the symptom index as TVC had no effect either.

8 Using the other indicators of poverty yields very similar results, although for some of those the difference between poor and non-poor is smaller.

9 We call these comparison groups ”never poor” and ”constantly poor” for expository purposes, although their poverty status pertains only to the years 2000 and 2010, i.e., without information on the years in between.

10 With this design we allow different effects of poverty on improvement versus deterioration of the social outcome. We have also estimated models with a lagged dependent variable, which constrains the effects of poverty changes to be of the same size for deterioration as for improvement of the social outcome. Conclusions from that analysis are roughly a weighted average of the estimates for deterioration and improvement that we report. As our analyses suggest that effects of poverty differ in size depending on the value of the lagged dependent variable (the social outcome) our current specification gives a more adequate representation of the process.

11 We have also tested models with a wider range of controls for, e.g., economic and social background (i.e. characteristics of the respondent’s parents), geography, detailed family type and a more detailed health variable, but none of these had any impact on the estimated poverty effects.

12 It is also possible that we register reverse causality, namely if worsening social outcomes that occur after t 0 lead to poverty at t 1 . This situation is almost inevitable when using panel data with no clear temporal ordering of events occurring between waves. However, reverse causality strikes us, in this case, as theoretically implausible.

13 We have also estimated models controlling for changes in health, which did not change the results.

14 If respondents’ judgments of the deprivation questions (access to cash margin and ability to pay rent, food, bills etc.) change due to non-economic factors that are related to changes in social relations, the better predictive capacity of the deprivation measure may be caused by a larger bias in this measure than in the (register-based) income measures.

15 As mentioned above, this variable may to some extent be endogenous (i.e., a mediator of the poverty effect rather than a confounder), in which case we get a downward bias of estimates.

Contributor Information

Carina Mood, Phone: +44-8-402 12 22, Email: [email protected] .

Jan O. Jonsson, Phone: +44 1865 278513, Email: [email protected] .

• Atkinson AB, Cantillon B, Marlier E, Nolan B. Social indicators: The EU and social inclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• Attree P. The social costs of child poverty: A systematic review of the qualitative evidence. Children and Society. 2006; 20 :54–66. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bane MJ, Ellwood DT. Slipping into and out of Poverty: The Dynamics of Spells. Journal of Human Resources. 1986; 21 :1–23. doi: 10.2307/145955. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barnes M, Heady C, Middleton S, Millar J, Papadopoulos F, Room G, Tsakloglou P. Poverty and social exclusion in Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar; 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• Böhnke P. Are the poor socially integrated? The link between poverty and social support in different welfare regimes. Journal of European Social Policy. 2008; 18 :133–150. doi: 10.1177/0958928707087590. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bradshaw J, Finch N. Overlaps in dimensions of poverty. Journal of Social Policy. 2003; 32 :513–525. doi: 10.1017/S004727940300713X. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Callan T, Nolan B, Whelan CT. Resources, deprivation, and the measurement of poverty. Journal of Social Policy. 1993; 22 :141–172. doi: 10.1017/S0047279400019280. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Corak M. Principles and practicalities for measuring child poverty in the rich countries. International Social Security Review. 2006; 59 :3–36. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-246X.2006.00237.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dahl E, Flotten T, Lorentzen T. Poverty dynamics and social exclusion: An analysis of Norwegian panel data. Journal of Social Policy. 2008; 37 :231–249. doi: 10.1017/S0047279407001729. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Gustafsson B, Hauser R, Schmauss G, Messinger H, Muffels R, Nolan B, Ray J-C. Poverty dynamics in eight countries. Journal of Population Economics. 1993; 6 :215–234. doi: 10.1007/BF00163068. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Rodgers W. Has children’s poverty become more persistent? American Sociological Review. 1991; 56 :538–550. doi: 10.2307/2096273. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Galbraith J. The affluent society. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin; 1958. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gallie D, Paugam S, Jacobs S. Unemployment, poverty and social isolation: Is there a vicious cycle of social exclusion? European Societies. 2003; 5 :1–32. doi: 10.1080/1461669032000057668. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gordon D, Adelman L, Ashworth K, Bradshaw J, Levitas R, Middleton S, Pantazis C, Patsios D, Payne S, Townsend P, Williams J. Poverty and social exclusion in Britain. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gore C. Introduction: Markets, citizenship and social exclusion. In: Rodgers G, Gore C, Figueiredo JB, editors. Social exclusion: Rhetoric, reality, responses. Geneva: International Labour Organization; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Granovetter, M. S. (1974). Getting a job. A study of contacts and careers . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Halleröd B. The truly poor: Direct and indirect measurement of consensual poverty in Sweden. Journal of European Social Policy. 1995; 5 :111–129. doi: 10.1177/095892879500500203. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hills J, Le Grand J, Piachaud D. Understanding social exclusion. Oxford: OUP; 2002. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jansson, K. (2000). Inkomstfördelningen under 1990-talet. In Välfärd och försörjning 2000, pp. 15–60. SOU 2000:40.
• Jonsson, J. O., Mood, C., & Bihagen, E. (2010). Fattigdomens förändring, utbredning och dynamik, Chapter 3. In Social Rapport 2010 . Stockholm: Socialstyrelsen.
• Jonsson, J. O., & Östberg, V. (2004). Resurser och levnadsförhållanden bland ekonomiskt utsatta 10-18-åringar: Analys av Barn-LNU och Barn-ULF. pp. 203–55 in Ekonomiskt utsatta barn, Socialdepartementet, Ds. 2004:41. Stockholm: Fritzes.
• Levitas R. The concept and measurement of social exclusion. In: Pantazis C, Gordon D, Levitas R, editors. Poverty and social exclusion in Britain. Bristol: Policy Press; 2006. pp. 123–162. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lin, N. (2001). Social capital. A theory of social structure and action . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  
• Mack J, Lansley S. Poor Britain. London: Allen & Unwin Ltd; 1985. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mood C. Logistic regression: Why we cannot do what we think we can do and what we can do about it. European Sociological Review. 2010; 26 :67–82. doi: 10.1093/esr/jcp006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nolan B, Whelan CT. Poverty and deprivation in Europe. New York: Oxford University Press; 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• OECD . Growing unequal? Income distribution and poverty in OECD countries. Paris: OECD Publishing; 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Paugam S. The spiral of precariousness: A multidimensional approach to the process of social disqualification in France. In: Room G, editor. Beyond the threshold: The measurement and analysis of social exclusion. Bristol: Policy Press; 1995. pp. 47–79. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ridge T, Millar J. Following families: Working lone-mother families and their children. Social Policy & Administration. 2011; 45 :85–97. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2010.00755.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ringen S. Direct and indirect measures of poverty. Journal of Social Policy. 1988; 17 :351–365. doi: 10.1017/S0047279400016858. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rodgers G, Gore C, Figueiredo JB, editors. Social exclusion: Rhetoric, reality, responses. Geneva: International Labour Organization; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rodgers JR, Rodgers JL. Chronic poverty in the United States. Journal of Human Resources. 1993; 28 :25–54. doi: 10.2307/146087. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Room G, editor. Beyond the threshold: The measurement and analysis of social exclusion. Bristol: Policy Press; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sen A. Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford Economic Papers. 1983; 35 :153–169. [ Google Scholar ]
• Smith, A. (1776). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (republished by R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).
• Townsend P. Poverty in the United Kingdom. Harmondsworth: Penguin; 1979. [ Google Scholar ]
• van den Bosch K. Identifying the poor: Using subjective and consensual measures. Aldershot: Ashgate; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• United Nations. (1995). United nations world summit (Copenhagen) for social development. programme of action , Chapter 2. New York: United Nations.
• UNICEF. (2012). Measuring child poverty. New league tables of child poverty in the world’s rich countries. In Innocenti Report Card 10 . Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.
• Veblen T. The theory of the leisure class. New York: McMillan; 1899. [ Google Scholar ]
• Whelan CT, Layte R, Maitre B. Persistent income poverty and deprivation in the European Union: An analysis of the first three waves of the European community household panel. Journal of Social Policy. 2003; 32 :1–18. doi: 10.1017/S0047279402006864. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. By continuing we’ll assume you’re on board with our cookie policy

• A Research Guide
• Research Paper Topics

40 Social Issues Research Paper Topics

Useful information: Where can I pay someone to write my research paper ?

List of 40 Social Issues Topics for College Students

• Religious gatherings and rituals
• Country-wide strikes and protest
• LGBTQ+ prides
• Worldwide flashmobs
• Social stratification
• Gender discrimination and anti-harassment movements
• The issues of orphanage kids
• Pornography and AI sex dolls
• Sex work or paid rape?
• Virtual reality
• Information overload: the society is overstressed with the amount of data
• Demographic crisis
• Beauty standards
• Social isolation of people with HIV/AIDS
• The fight against animal testing
• Internet safety
• Humanitarian missions
• Fighting racism
• The rights of ethnic minorities and native people
• Internet safety and cybercrimes
• The necessity of the death penalty
• Fighting poverty in the world
• Access to the drinking water in third world countries
• Free education for everyone: shall it be implemented?
• National identity versus globalization
• Women rights and trans people rights
• Obesity as an obstacle in social life. Fatshaming
• Civil rights: shall they be expanded?
• Abuse and neglect in asylums, orphanages, and care homes
• Church and state: shall they remain separate?
• The problem of bigotry in modern society
• Immigration and resocialization of the immigrants
• Sustainable consumption on a worldwide scale
• School violence
• Legalizing drugs: basic rights to choose or a danger to society?
• Social isolation. The hikikomori phenomenon
• Bullying at schools and colleges
• Kids transitioning: shall it be allowed?
• Advertisements: are they becoming too powerful?
• The global impact of the third world countries

By clicking "Log In", you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We'll occasionally send you account related and promo emails.

Sign Up for your FREE account

Get a 50% off

Study smarter with Chegg and save your time and money today!

2.4 Research Methods for Social Problems

Theories discuss the why of particular social problems. They begin to systematically explain, for example, why socioeconomic class is prevalent in industrialized societies, or why implicit bias is so common. But how do sociologists develop the theories in the first place or figure out if the theories are useful? For that, they must observe people interacting, and collect data. The ways in which social scientists collect, analyze, and understand research information are called research methods.

However, science isn’t the only way to understand the world. You may experience many more ways of knowing. When you consider why you know something, this knowledge may be based on different sources or experiences. You may know when the movie starts because a friend told you, or because you looked it up on Google. You may know that rain is currently falling because you feel it on your head. You may know that it is wrong to kill another person because it is a belief in your religious tradition or part of your own ethical understanding. You may know because you have a gut feeling that a situation is dangerous, or a choice is the right one. You may know that your friend will be late to class because past experience predicts it. Or, instead of the past, you can imagine the future, knowing that eating a hamburger will satisfy your hunger, just by seeing the picture on the menu. Finally, you may know something because the language you use supports you in noticing particular details. For example, how many ways can you describe the water that falls from the sky? People who live in Oregon, for instance, use several distinct words for rainy weather: drizzle, downpour, showers. Partly cloudy doesn’t change their plans, but they may throw a jacket in the car. In other regions, it may be more useful to describe snow or heat in great detail. The formation of language itself structures how you know something. The table in figure 2.23 organizes these ways of knowing.

Figure 2.23 Ways of Knowing and Examples

Each of these ways of knowing is useful, depending on the circumstances. For example, when my wife and I bought our house, we did research on home prices, home loans, and market value—reason. We talked about what home felt like to us—emotion. We walked through houses and pictured what life would look like in a particular house—imagination. Ultimately, when we drove down the cedar and fir-lined driveway, welcomed by the warm light through the window—sense perception—we turned to each other and said, “I hope this house is still for sale,” because we both knew we had found our home—intuition.

Of all of these ways of knowing, though, reason allows us to use logic and evidence to draw conclusions about what is true. Reason, as used in science, is unique among all of the ways of knowing because it allows us to propose an idea about how a social situation might work, observe the situation, and find out whether our idea is correct. Sociology is a unique scientific approach to understanding people. Let’s explore this more deeply.

As you saw in Chapter 1, sociology is the systematic study of society and social interactions to understand our social world. Although sages, leaders, philosophers, and other wisdom holders have asked what makes a good life throughout human history, sociology applies scientific principles to understanding human behavior.

Like anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists, sociologists collect and analyze data in order to draw conclusions about human behavior. Although these fields often overlap and complement each other, sociologists focus most on the interaction of people in groups, communities, institutions, and interrelated systems.

More simply, sociologists study society, a group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture. Sociologists study human interactions at the smallest micro unit of how parents and children bond, to the widest macro lens of what causes war throughout recorded history. They explore microaggressions, those small moments of interaction that reinforce prejudice in small but powerful ways. They also study the generationally persistent systems of systemic inequality. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage and the climate crisis worsens, sociologists turn even greater attention to global and planetary systems to understand and explain our interdependence.

2.4.1 The Scientific Method

Scientists use shared approaches for figuring out how the social world works. The most common method is known as the scientific method , an established scholarly research process that involves asking a question, researching existing sources, forming a hypothesis, designing a data collection method, gathering data, and drawing conclusions. Often this method is shown as a straight line. Scientists proceed in an orderly fashion, executing one step after the next.

In reality, the scientific method is a circular process rather than a straight line, as shown in figure 2.24. The circle helps us to see that science is driven by curiosity and that learnings at each step move us to the next step, in ongoing loops. This model allows for the creativity and collaboration that is essential in how we actually create new scientific understandings. Let’s dive deeper!

Figure 2.24 The Scientific method as an ongoing process Figure 2.24 Image Description

2.4.1.1 Step 1: Identify a Social Issue/Find a Research Topic and Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, select a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geographic location and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to be of significance. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. Sociologists strive to frame questions that examine well-defined patterns and relationships.

2.4.1.2 Step 2: Review the Literature/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, a thorough online search, and a survey of academic journals will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted, identify gaps in understanding of the topic, and 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.

To study crime, for example, a researcher might also sort through existing data from the court system, police database, and prison information. It’s important to examine this information in addition to existing research to determine how these resources might be used to fill holes in existing knowledge. Reviewing existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve a research study design.

2.4.1.3 Step 3: Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a testable educated guess about predicted outcomes between two or more variables. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. For example, a hypothesis might be in the form of an “if, then statement.” Let’s relate this to our topic of crime: If unemployment increases, then the crime rate will increase.

In scientific research, we formulate hypotheses to include an independent variable (IV) , which is the cause of the change, and a dependent variable (DV) , which is the effect , or thing that is changed. In the example above, unemployment is the independent variable and the crime rate is the dependent variable.

In a sociological 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 the 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)?

Figure 2.25 Examples of dependent and independent variables. Typically, the independent variable causes the dependent variable to change in some way.

Taking an example from figure 2.25, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Note, however, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. A sociologist might predict that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will 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 related topics or variables is not enough. Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

2.4.1.4 Step 4: Select a Research Method and Design a Study

Researchers select a research method that is appropriate to answer their research question in this step. Surveys, experiments, interviews, ethnography, and content analysis are just a few examples that researchers may use. You will learn more about these and other research methods later in this chapter. Typically your research question influences the type of methods that will be used.

2.4.1.5 Step 5: Collect Data

Next the researcher collects data. Depending on the research design (step 4), the researcher will begin the process of collecting information on their research topic. After all the data is gathered, the researcher will be able to systematically organize and analyze the data.

2.4.1.6 Step 6: Analyze the Data

After constructing the research design, sociologists collect, tabulate or categorize, and analyze data to formulate conclusions. If the analysis supports the hypothesis, researchers can discuss what this might mean. If the analysis does not support the hypothesis, researchers may consider repeating the study or think of ways to improve their procedure.

Even when results contradict a sociologist’s prediction of a study’s outcome, the results still contribute to sociological understanding. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, for example, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While many assume 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 may substantiate or contradict it.

2.4.1.7 Step 7: Report Findings

Researchers report their results at conferences and in academic journals. These results are then subjected to the scrutiny of other sociologists in the field. Before the conclusions of a study become widely accepted, the studies are often repeated in the same or different environments. In this way, sociological theories and knowledge develop as the relationships between social phenomena are established in broader contexts and different circumstances.

If you still aren’t quite sure about how sociologists use the scientific method, you might enjoy “ The Scientific Method: Steps, Examples, Tips, and Exercise [YouTube Video] ,” which explores why people smile. It also reminds us that people have been using logic and evidence to explore the world for centuries. The video credits Ibn al-Haytham , an eleventh-century Arab Muslim scholar with pioneering the modern scientific method in his study of light and vision (figure 2.26). If the video makes you curious about the science behind why people smile, you might want to check out this current research related to gender and smiling in this article, “ Women smile more than men, but differences disappear when they are in the same role, Yale researcher finds .”

Figure 2.26 Drawing of Ibn al-Hayatham

You might remember that in Chapter 1 , we talked about human society like a forest. We said that individual trees did not exist in isolation. Instead, they were interdependent. They formed a living community. The video in figure 2.27 describes the science behind this knowledge. Please watch at least the first 10 minutes to see if you can discover all the steps of the scientific method that Canadian female scientist Suzanne Simard used in her revolutionary science.

Figure 2.27 Suzanne Simard: How Trees Talk To Each Other [YouTube Video]

2.4.2 Interpretive Framework

You may have noticed that most of the early recognized sociologists in this chapter were White wealthy men. Often, they looked at economics, poverty, and industrialization as their topics. They were committed to using the scientific method. Although women like Harriet Martineau and Jane Addams examined a wide range of social problems and acted on their research, science, even social science, was considered a domain of men. Even in 2020, women are only less than 30% of the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) workforce in the United States (American Association of University Women 2020).

Feminist scientists challenge this exclusion, and the kinds of science it creates. Feminist scientists argue that women and non-binary people belong everywhere in science.They belong in the laboratories and scientific offices. They belong in deciding what topics to study, so that social problems of gendered violence or maternal health are studied also. They belong as participants in research, so that findings apply to people of all gender identities. They belong in applying the results to doing something about social problems. In other words:

Feminists have detailed the historically gendered participation in the practice of science—the marginalization or exclusion of women from the profession and how their contributions have disappeared when they have participated. Feminists have also noted how the sciences have been slow to study women’s lives, bodies, and experiences. Thus from both the perspectives of the agents—the creators of scientific knowledge—and from the perspectives of the subjects of knowledge—the topics and interests focused on—the sciences often have not served women satisfactorily. (Crasnow 2020)

Figure 2.28 NASA “human computer” Katherine Johnson watches the premiere of Hidden Figures after a reception where she was honored along with other members of the segregated West Area Computers division of Langley Research Center.

You may have seen the movie Hidden Figures or read the book. In figure 2.28, Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician, physicist, and space scientist, watches the premiere of the movie. In it, women, particularly Black women, were the computers for NASA, manually calculating all the math needed to launch and orbit rockets. However, politicians and leaders did not recognize their work. Even when they were creating equations and writing reports, women’s names didn’t go on the title pages.

The practice of science often excludes women and nonbinary people from leadership in research, research topics, and as research subjects. The feminist critque of the traditional scientific method, and other critiques around the process of doing traditional science created space for other frameworks to emerge.

One such framework is the interpretive framework. The interpretive framework is an approach that involves detailed understanding of a particular subject through observation or listening to people’s stories, not through hypothesis testing. Researchers try to understand social experiences from the point of view of the people who are experiencing them. They interview people or look at blogs, newspapers, or videos to discover what people say is happening, and how the people make sense of things. This in-depth understanding allows the researcher to create a new theory about human activity. The steps are similar to the scientific method, but not the same, as you see in figure 2.29.

Figure 2.29. Interpretive framework, Figure 2.29 I mage Description

White American researcher Brene Brown, who you will learn more about in Chapter 3 , describes the approach this way:

In grounded theory we don’t start with a problem or a hypothesis or a literature review, we start with a topic. We let the participants define the problem or their main concern about the topic, we develop a theory, and then we see how and where it fits in the literature. (Brown 2022)

In her own research she interviewed people who she considered resilient to understand how shame works. By listening to resilient people, she was able to develop a theory about how people recover from difficult situations in life. If you are interested in seeing her writing for yourself, check out this blog post on addressing social problems with the power of love: “ Doubling Down on Love .”

Even though both the traditional scientific method and the interpretive framework start with curiosity and questions, the people who practice science using the interpretive framework allow the data to tell its story. Using this method can lead to insightful and transformative results. You can find things you didn’t even know to expect, because you are listening to what the stories say.

2.4.3 Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods

In the video you saw in figure 2.20, Suzanne Simard describes the amazing science she does when she researches how trees talk to each other. The methods she uses, with the possible exception of bringing bear spray, don’t work very well when you study people. Instead social scientists use a variety of methods that allow them to explain and predict the social world. These research methods define how we do social science.

In this section, we examine some of the most common research methods. Research methods are often grouped into two categories: quantitative research , data collected in numerical form that can be counted and analyzed using statistics and qualitative research , non-numerical, descriptive data that is often subjective and based on what is experienced in a natural setting. These methods seem to contradict each other, but some of the strongest scientific studies combine both approaches. New research methods go beyond the two categories, exploring international and Indigenous knowledge, or doing research for the purpose of taking action.

2.4.3.1 Surveys

Do you strongly agree? Agree? Neither agree or disagree? Disagree? Strongly disagree? You’ve probably completed your fair share of surveys, if you’ve heard this before. 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, the United States has conducted a survey consisting of six questions to receive demographic data of the residents who live in the United States.

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. Surveys are 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.

Not all surveys are considered sociological research. 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. 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.

2.4.3.2 Experiments

One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment, meaning the researcher investigates relationships to test a hypothesis. This approach closely resembles the scientific method. 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 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. Field-based experiments are often used to evaluate interventions in educational settings and health (Baldassarri and Abascal 2017).

Typically, 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 as a student, for example.

2.4.3.3 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. Instead secondary data uses data collected by 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.

2.4.3.4 Participant Observation

Participant observation refers to a style of research where 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. For instance, 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. The ethnographer will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, and the researcher will be able either make connections to existing theories or develop new theories based on their observations. This approach will guide the researcher in analyzing data and generating results.

2.4.3.5 In-depth interviews

Interviews, sometimes referred to as in-depth interviews, are one-on-one conversations with participants designed to gather information about a particular topic. Interviews can take a long time to complete, but they can produce very rich data. In fact, in an interview, a respondent might say something that the researcher had not previously considered, which can help focus the research project. Researchers have to be careful not to use leading questions. You want to avoid leading the respondent into certain kinds of answers by asking questions like, “You really like eating vegetables, don’t you?” Instead researchers should allow the respondent to answer freely by asking questions like, “How do you feel about eating vegetables?”

2.4.4 International Research

International research is conducted outside of the researcher’s own immediate geography and society. This work carries additional challenges considering that researchers often work in regions and cultures different from their own. Researchers need to make special considerations in order to counter their own biases, navigate linguistic challenges and ensure the best cross cultural understanding possible. This webpage shows a map and descriptions of field projects around the world by students at Oxford University’s Masters in Development Studies. What are some interesting projects that stand out to you?

For example, in 2021 Jörg Friedrichs at Oxford published his research on Muslim hate crimes in areas of North England where Islam is the majority religion. He studied police data of racial and religious hate crimes in two districts to look for patterns related to the crimes. He related those patterns to the wider context of community relations between Muslims and other groups, and presented his research to hate crime practitioners in police, local government and civil society (Friedrichs 2021).

2.4.5 Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous scientists also critique traditional ways of doing science. Often, Western science will break things down into parts to understand what each part does. While that may help understand details, it doesn’t give the whole picture of a process or help understand the interdependence in the social and physical world. Also, Western science values intellectual ways of knowing. Intuition, empathy, and connection are not valued. Robin Wall Kimmer, an Indigenous biologist from the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, writes this:

Native scholar Greg Cajete has written that in indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our being: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. I came to understand quite sharply when I began my training as a scientist that science privileges only one, possibly two, of those ways of knowing: mind and body. As a young person wanting to know everything about plants, I did not question this. But it is a whole human being who finds the beautiful path. (Kimmerer 2013)

When we can do science using all of our ways of knowing, our answers become richer. As the world becomes more aware of increases in the environmental crisis, researchers are more often acknowledging the ways that Indigenous peoples care for their ecological surroundings. As Indigenous communities conduct their own fieldwork to identify and document their own knowledge they are able to engage with research as agents of ecological conservation.

Figure 2.30 Consider This with Robin Wall Kimmerer [YouTube Video]

In the video in Figure 2.30, Kimmerer has a longer conversation about what it means to be American. Starting around minute 55:25 she shares the importance of naming, and how naming can sometimes shut down learning. Please listen to her words for yourself, and reflect on how the practices she introduces might change your own approach to science.

2.4.6 Community-Based Research and Participatory Action Research

Social problems sociologists and other social scientists often conduct their research so that they can take action. Action research is a family of research methodologies that pursue action (or change) and research (or understanding) at the same time. We see this when the government changes a policy based on data or when a community organization tries a new evidence-based approach for providing services. One of the most visible applications of social problems research is through humanitarian or social action efforts.

2.4.6.1 Humanitarian Efforts

One effective example of social action efforts is in the work of Paul Farmer. Farmer was a public health physician, anthropologist, and founder of partners in health. Until his death in 2022, he focused on epidemiological crises in low and middle income countries.

One trend that Farmer championed was the importance of good health and health care as human rights. He contributed to a broader understanding that poor health is a symptom of poverty, violence and inequality (Partners in Health 2009). If you want to learn more, please watch the NPR video essay, “ Paul Farmer: I believe in health care as a human right ” [YouTube Video] where he describes this view. What field experiences of Farmer’s do you see allowed him to develop this view?

Farmer applied this human rights perspective to pandemics. His book, Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History , looks at the 2014 Ebola crisis, and what we can learn from it to apply to the COVID-19 epidemic. In a PBS Newshour interview he spoke of his work during the Ebola outbreak:

>Early in the Ebola outbreak, almost all of our attention was turned towards clinical services. But we kept on bumping into things we didn’t understand and sometimes even our colleagues from Sierra Leone and Liberia didn’t understand. And that just triggered an interest in a deeper understanding of the place, the culture, the history. (Public Broadcasting Service 2021).

Farmer shares his experiences both as a medical doctor and a researcher, asking the questions: “Who is most impacted by disease? How might things have been done differently? What can be done now?” His research on Ebola focused on circumstances in West Africa where lack of medical resources and decades of war played a role in the epidemic, and how the epidemic itself, as we experience in the United States with Covid, revealed underlying problems and inequities in society (Public Broadcasting Service 2021). We’ll explore topics of health, inequality and interdependence more deeply in Chapter 7 .

2.4.6.2 Community-Based Action Research

Community-based research takes place in community settings. It involves community members in the design and implementation of research projects. It demonstrates respect for the contributions of success that are made by community partners. Research projects involve collaboration between researchers and community partners, whether the community partners are formally structured community-based organizations or informal groups of individual community members. The aim of this type of research is to benefit the community by achieving social justice through social action and change.

2.4.6.3 Participatory Action Research

Community-based research is sometimes called participatory action research (Stringer 2021). In partnership with community organizations, researchers apply their social science research skills to help assess needs, outcomes, and provide data that can be used to improve living conditions. The research is rigorous and often published in professional reports and presented to the board of directors for the organization you are working with. As it sounds, action research suggests that we make a plan to implement changes. Often with academic research, we aim to learn more about a population and leave the next steps up to others. This is an important part of the puzzle, as we need to start with knowledge but action research often has the goal of fixing something or at least quickly translating the newly acquired findings into a solution for a social problem.

To learn more about participatory action research, check out this short 4 minute clip for an introduction with Shirah Hassan of Just Practice (figure 2.31):

Figure 2.31 Participatory Action Research with Shirah Hassan  [YouTube Video]

Community-based action research looks for evidence. As new insights emerge, the researchers adjust the question or the approach. This type of research engages people who have traditionally been referred to as subjects as active participants in the research process. The researcher is working with the organization during the whole process and will likely bring in different project design elements based on the needs of the organization. Social scientists can bring more formalized training, but they draw both on existing research/literature and goals of the organization they are working with. Community-based research or participatory research can be thought of as an orientation for research rather than strictly a method. Often a number of different methods are used to collect data. Change can often be one of the main aims of the project, as we will see in the box below.

2.4.7 Research Ethics

How we do science and how we apply our results is more challenging than it might first appear. The American Sociological Association (ASA) is the major professional organization of sociologists in North America. ASA is a great resource for students of sociology as well. The ASA maintains a code of ethics —formal guidelines for conducting sociological research—consisting of principles and ethical standards to be used in the discipline. These formal guidelines were established by practitioners in 1905 at John Hopkins University, and revised in 1997. When working with human subjects, these codes of ethics require researchers’ to do the following:

• Maintain objectivity and integrity in research
• Respect subjects’ rights to privacy and dignity
• Protect subject from personal harm
• Preserve confidentiality
• Seek informed consent
• Acknowledge collaboration and assistance
• Disclose sources of financial support

2.4.8 Unethical Studies

Unfortunately, when these codes of ethics are ignored, it creates an unethical environment for humans being involved in a sociological study. Throughout history, there have been numerous unethical studies, as we’ll explore in the following sections.

2.4.8.1 The Tuskegee Experiment

This study was conducted 1932 in Macon County, Alabama, and included 600 African American men, including 399 diagnosed with syphilis. The participants were told they were diagnosed with a disease of “bad blood.” Penicillin was distributed in the 1940s as the cure for the disease, but unfortunately, the African American men were not given the treatment because the objective of the study was to see “how untreated syphilis would affect the African American male” (Caplan 2007). This study was shut down in 1972, because a reporter wrote that at least 128 people had died from syphillis or related complications (Nix 2020).

2.4.8.2 Milgram Experiment

In 1961, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment at Yale University. Its purpose was to measure the willingness of study subjects to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. People in the role of teacher believed they were administering electric shocks to students who gave incorrect answers to word-pair questions. No matter how concerned they were about administering the progressively more intense shocks, the teachers were told to keep going. The ethical concerns involve the extreme emotional distress faced by the teachers, who believed they were hurting other people. (Vogel 2014). Today this experiment would not be allowed because it would violate the ethical principal of protecting subjects from personal harm.

2.4.8.3 Philip Zimbardo and the Stanford prison experiment

In 1971, psychologist Phillip Zimbardo conducted a study involving students from Stanford University. The students were put in the roles of prisoners and guards, and were required to play their assigned role accordingly. The experiment was intended to last two weeks, but it only lasted six days due to the negative outcome and treatment of the “prisoners.” Beyond the ethical concerns, the study’s validity has been questioned after participants revealed they had been coached to behave in specific ways. Today, this experiment would not be allowed because it would violate a participants right to dignity, and protection from harm.

2.4.8.4 Laud Humphreys

In the 1960s, Laud Humphreys conducted an experiment at a restroom in a park known for same-sex sexual encounters. His objective was to understand the diversity of backgrounds and motivations of people seeking same-sex relationships. His ethics were questioned because he misrepresented his identity and intent while observing and questioning the men he interviewed (Nardi 1995). Today this experiment would not be allowed because participants did not provide informed consent, among other issues.

2.4.9 Licenses and Attributions for Research Methods for Social Problems

2.4 Research methods for social problems.

Puentes and Gougherty https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BOCrIQ5xDJD1RbVdmS1glMeaKurj4fHgF5hkn2P77-U/edit#heading=h.lc1f68rgruem Slightly summarized

Figure 2.23 – Ways of Knowing and Examples by Kimberly Puttman. License: CC-BY-ND

Figure 2.24 The Scientific Method as an Ongoing Process by Michaela Willi Hooper and Jennifer Puentes. License: CC-BY-4.0.

Figure 2.25 Examples of dependent and independent variables. Typically, the independent variable causes the dependent variable to change in some way. [c] [d]

Figure 2.26 Drawing of Ibn al-Hayatham by Unknown Artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons public domain.

Figure 2.27 “ How Trees Talk To Each Other ” by Suzanne Simard. License Terms: Standard YouTube license.

2.4.2 Interpretive Frameworks by Kimberly Puttman. License: CC-BY-4.0

Figure 2.28 “ Hidden Figures Premiere ” by NASA/Aubrey Gemignani, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons public domain.

Figure 2.29. Interpretive Framework Source – Kim Puttman [e]

Figure 2.30 “ Consider This with Robin Wall Kimmerer ” by Oregon Humanities . License Terms: Standard YouTube license.

Figure 2.31 “ Participatory Action Research ” with Shirah Haasan by Vera Instit ute of Justice . License Terms: Standard YouTube license.

Social Problems Copyright © by Kim Puttman. All Rights Reserved.

Share This Book

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

3. Americans’ views of the problems facing the nation

The affordability of health care is high on the public’s list of the biggest problems in the country today, with 56% of adults describing this as “a very big problem” and an additional 30% rating it “a moderately big problem.”

Health care costs is the only issue of the 15 asked on the survey seen as a very big problem by a majority of Americans, though about half say that the federal budget deficit (49%), violent crime (48%), illegal immigration (48%) and gun violence (48%) are very big problems. A similar share (47%) name the coronavirus outbreak as a very big problem – though that is down significantly from last summer, when nearly six-in-ten (58%) said this.

All of the 15 problems in the survey are seen as at least moderately big problems by a majority of the public. However, Americans differ over the severity of these problems.

For example, nearly a quarter of adults (23%) say sexism is a very big problem – the lowest share of any issue asked about –while 36% view sexism as a moderately big problem. Just one-in-ten say that sexism is not a problem at all, while 30% say it is a small problem.

As the Biden administration makes the case for massive new investment in the nation’s infrastructure , the condition of roads, bridges and other infrastructure ranks relatively low on the list of major problems facing the country. About a third of adults (34%) say the condition of infrastructure is a very big problem, four-in-ten say it is a moderately big problem, and a quarter say it is either a small problem (23%) or not a problem (2%).

Though neither domestic nor international terrorism ranks among the public’s top problems, roughly a third of Americans (35%) say domestic terrorism is a very big problem in the country today, while a smaller share (26%) says the same about international terrorism.

Republicans and Democrats far apart on biggest problems facing the country

Gun violence, the affordability of health care, the coronavirus outbreak and racism are each seen as very big problems facing the country today by two-thirds or more Democrats and Democratic leaners.

By contrast, far fewer Republicans say these are major problems in the country. Four-in-ten say health care affordability is a very big problem, and only about two-in-ten rate the coronavirus and gun violence as very big problems.

The extent to which climate change and economic inequality are viewed as very big problems is similarly split along partisan lines. About six-in-ten Democrats say each of these are very big problems, while just 21% of Republicans say economic inequality is a very big problem and even fewer (14%) say this about climate change.

By contrast, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit are the top problems identified by Republicans. About seven-in-ten say both of these are very big problems for the country. Only about three-in-ten Democrats identify these issues as very big problems.

Since last summer, Republicans and Democrats have diverged sharply in their views of whether the federal budget deficit represents a very big problem. Today, 71% of Republicans say the federal budget deficit is a very big problem – 22 percentage points higher than the share saying this in June 2020. By comparison, about three-in-ten Democrats (31%) now say the deficit is a very big problem – 14 points lower than the share saying this last summer.

As a result, Republicans are now 40 percentage points more likely than Democrats to say the deficit is a very big problem, a stark contrast to the lack of a substantial partisan gap in these views 10 months ago.

The shares of both Republicans and Democrats who say the coronavirus outbreak is a very big problem have decreased since June, though this decline has been steeper among Republicans (a 16 percentage point change) than among Democrats (8 points).

The share of the public viewing unemployment as a very big problem for the country has declined since last June from 50% to 41% (when national unemployment was substantially higher than it is today). The share of Democrats who say unemployment is a very big problem has fallen from 61% to 45% over this period, while the share of Republicans saying this is unchanged (36% then and now).

Since 2018, the share of Democrats who say the affordability of health care is a very big problem has decreased by 10 percentage points, while the share of Republicans who say this has decreased by 18 points. The shares who say economic inequality is a very big problem have also decreased among members of both parties in recent years.

A similar share of Democrats say that the condition of infrastructure is a very big problem (44%) as said this in 2016 (41%). Republicans have become somewhat less likely to describe the condition of infrastructure as a very big problem (23% in 2021 vs. 32% in 2016).

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

Most Popular

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Age & Generations
• Coronavirus (COVID-19)
• Economy & Work
• Family & Relationships
• Gender & LGBTQ
• Immigration & Migration
• International Affairs
• Internet & Technology
• Methodological Research
• News Habits & Media
• Non-U.S. Governments
• Other Topics
• Politics & Policy
• Race & Ethnicity
• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Copyright 2024 Pew Research Center

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Cookie Settings

Reprints, Permissions & Use Policy

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• The Research Problem/Question
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Applying Critical Thinking
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation. A research problem does not state how to do something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value question. In the social and behavioral sciences, studies are most often framed around examining a problem that needs to be understood and resolved in order to improve society and the human condition.

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Guba, Egon G., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. “Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research . Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, editors. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 105-117; Pardede, Parlindungan. “Identifying and Formulating the Research Problem." Research in ELT: Module 4 (October 2018): 1-13; Li, Yanmei, and Sumei Zhang. "Identifying the Research Problem." In Applied Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning . (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022), pp. 13-21.

Importance of...

The purpose of a problem statement is to:

• Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied . The reader is oriented to the significance of the study.
• Anchors the research questions, hypotheses, or assumptions to follow . It offers a concise statement about the purpose of your paper.
• Place the topic into a particular context that defines the parameters of what is to be investigated.
• Provide the framework for reporting the results and indicates what is probably necessary to conduct the study and explain how the findings will present this information.

In the social sciences, the research problem establishes the means by which you must answer the "So What?" question. This declarative question refers to a research problem surviving the relevancy test [the quality of a measurement procedure that provides repeatability and accuracy]. Note that answering the "So What?" question requires a commitment on your part to not only show that you have reviewed the literature, but that you have thoroughly considered the significance of the research problem and its implications applied to creating new knowledge and understanding or informing practice.

To survive the "So What" question, problem statements should possess the following attributes:

• Clarity and precision [a well-written statement does not make sweeping generalizations and irresponsible pronouncements; it also does include unspecific determinates like "very" or "giant"],
• Demonstrate a researchable topic or issue [i.e., feasibility of conducting the study is based upon access to information that can be effectively acquired, gathered, interpreted, synthesized, and understood],
• Identification of what would be studied, while avoiding the use of value-laden words and terms,
• Identification of an overarching question or small set of questions accompanied by key factors or variables,
• Identification of key concepts and terms,
• Articulation of the study's conceptual boundaries or parameters or limitations,
• Some generalizability in regards to applicability and bringing results into general use,
• Conveyance of the study's importance, benefits, and justification [i.e., regardless of the type of research, it is important to demonstrate that the research is not trivial],
• Does not have unnecessary jargon or overly complex sentence constructions; and,
• Conveyance of more than the mere gathering of descriptive data providing only a snapshot of the issue or phenomenon under investigation.

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Brown, Perry J., Allen Dyer, and Ross S. Whaley. "Recreation Research—So What?" Journal of Leisure Research 5 (1973): 16-24; Castellanos, Susie. Critical Writing and Thinking. The Writing Center. Dean of the College. Brown University; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova. "Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem." Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); Thesis and Purpose Statements. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Selwyn, Neil. "‘So What?’…A Question that Every Journal Article Needs to Answer." Learning, Media, and Technology 39 (2014): 1-5; Shoket, Mohd. "Research Problem: Identification and Formulation." International Journal of Research 1 (May 2014): 512-518.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Types and Content

There are four general conceptualizations of a research problem in the social sciences:

• Casuist Research Problem -- this type of problem relates to the determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing moral dilemmas through the application of general rules and the careful distinction of special cases.
• Difference Research Problem -- typically asks the question, “Is there a difference between two or more groups or treatments?” This type of problem statement is used when the researcher compares or contrasts two or more phenomena. This a common approach to defining a problem in the clinical social sciences or behavioral sciences.
• Descriptive Research Problem -- typically asks the question, "what is...?" with the underlying purpose to describe the significance of a situation, state, or existence of a specific phenomenon. This problem is often associated with revealing hidden or understudied issues.
• Relational Research Problem -- suggests a relationship of some sort between two or more variables to be investigated. The underlying purpose is to investigate specific qualities or characteristics that may be connected in some way.

A problem statement in the social sciences should contain :

• A lead-in that helps ensure the reader will maintain interest over the study,
• A declaration of originality [e.g., mentioning a knowledge void or a lack of clarity about a topic that will be revealed in the literature review of prior research],
• An indication of the central focus of the study [establishing the boundaries of analysis], and
• An explanation of the study's significance or the benefits to be derived from investigating the research problem.

NOTE :   A statement describing the research problem of your paper should not be viewed as a thesis statement that you may be familiar with from high school. Given the content listed above, a description of the research problem is usually a short paragraph in length.

II.  Sources of Problems for Investigation

The identification of a problem to study can be challenging, not because there's a lack of issues that could be investigated, but due to the challenge of formulating an academically relevant and researchable problem which is unique and does not simply duplicate the work of others. To facilitate how you might select a problem from which to build a research study, consider these sources of inspiration:

Deductions from Theory This relates to deductions made from social philosophy or generalizations embodied in life and in society that the researcher is familiar with. These deductions from human behavior are then placed within an empirical frame of reference through research. From a theory, the researcher can formulate a research problem or hypothesis stating the expected findings in certain empirical situations. The research asks the question: “What relationship between variables will be observed if theory aptly summarizes the state of affairs?” One can then design and carry out a systematic investigation to assess whether empirical data confirm or reject the hypothesis, and hence, the theory.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives Identifying a problem that forms the basis for a research study can come from academic movements and scholarship originating in disciplines outside of your primary area of study. This can be an intellectually stimulating exercise. A review of pertinent literature should include examining research from related disciplines that can reveal new avenues of exploration and analysis. An interdisciplinary approach to selecting a research problem offers an opportunity to construct a more comprehensive understanding of a very complex issue that any single discipline may be able to provide.

Interviewing Practitioners The identification of research problems about particular topics can arise from formal interviews or informal discussions with practitioners who provide insight into new directions for future research and how to make research findings more relevant to practice. Discussions with experts in the field, such as, teachers, social workers, health care providers, lawyers, business leaders, etc., offers the chance to identify practical, “real world” problems that may be understudied or ignored within academic circles. This approach also provides some practical knowledge which may help in the process of designing and conducting your study.

Personal Experience Don't undervalue your everyday experiences or encounters as worthwhile problems for investigation. Think critically about your own experiences and/or frustrations with an issue facing society or related to your community, your neighborhood, your family, or your personal life. This can be derived, for example, from deliberate observations of certain relationships for which there is no clear explanation or witnessing an event that appears harmful to a person or group or that is out of the ordinary.

Relevant Literature The selection of a research problem can be derived from a thorough review of pertinent research associated with your overall area of interest. This may reveal where gaps exist in understanding a topic or where an issue has been understudied. Research may be conducted to: 1) fill such gaps in knowledge; 2) evaluate if the methodologies employed in prior studies can be adapted to solve other problems; or, 3) determine if a similar study could be conducted in a different subject area or applied in a different context or to different study sample [i.e., different setting or different group of people]. Also, authors frequently conclude their studies by noting implications for further research; read the conclusion of pertinent studies because statements about further research can be a valuable source for identifying new problems to investigate. The fact that a researcher has identified a topic worthy of further exploration validates the fact it is worth pursuing.

III.  What Makes a Good Research Statement?

A good problem statement begins by introducing the broad area in which your research is centered, gradually leading the reader to the more specific issues you are investigating. The statement need not be lengthy, but a good research problem should incorporate the following features:

1.  Compelling Topic The problem chosen should be one that motivates you to address it but simple curiosity is not a good enough reason to pursue a research study because this does not indicate significance. The problem that you choose to explore must be important to you, but it must also be viewed as important by your readers and to a the larger academic and/or social community that could be impacted by the results of your study. 2.  Supports Multiple Perspectives The problem must be phrased in a way that avoids dichotomies and instead supports the generation and exploration of multiple perspectives. A general rule of thumb in the social sciences is that a good research problem is one that would generate a variety of viewpoints from a composite audience made up of reasonable people. 3.  Researchability This isn't a real word but it represents an important aspect of creating a good research statement. It seems a bit obvious, but you don't want to find yourself in the midst of investigating a complex research project and realize that you don't have enough prior research to draw from for your analysis. There's nothing inherently wrong with original research, but you must choose research problems that can be supported, in some way, by the resources available to you. If you are not sure if something is researchable, don't assume that it isn't if you don't find information right away--seek help from a librarian !

NOTE:   Do not confuse a research problem with a research topic. A topic is something to read and obtain information about, whereas a problem is something to be solved or framed as a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution, or explained as a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation. In short, a research topic is something to be understood; a research problem is something that needs to be investigated.

IV.  Asking Analytical Questions about the Research Problem

Research problems in the social and behavioral sciences are often analyzed around critical questions that must be investigated. These questions can be explicitly listed in the introduction [i.e., "This study addresses three research questions about women's psychological recovery from domestic abuse in multi-generational home settings..."], or, the questions are implied in the text as specific areas of study related to the research problem. Explicitly listing your research questions at the end of your introduction can help in designing a clear roadmap of what you plan to address in your study, whereas, implicitly integrating them into the text of the introduction allows you to create a more compelling narrative around the key issues under investigation. Either approach is appropriate.

The number of questions you attempt to address should be based on the complexity of the problem you are investigating and what areas of inquiry you find most critical to study. Practical considerations, such as, the length of the paper you are writing or the availability of resources to analyze the issue can also factor in how many questions to ask. In general, however, there should be no more than four research questions underpinning a single research problem.

Given this, well-developed analytical questions can focus on any of the following:

• Highlights a genuine dilemma, area of ambiguity, or point of confusion about a topic open to interpretation by your readers;
• Yields an answer that is unexpected and not obvious rather than inevitable and self-evident;
• Provokes meaningful thought or discussion;
• Raises the visibility of the key ideas or concepts that may be understudied or hidden;
• Suggests the need for complex analysis or argument rather than a basic description or summary; and,
• Offers a specific path of inquiry that avoids eliciting generalizations about the problem.

NOTE:   Questions of how and why concerning a research problem often require more analysis than questions about who, what, where, and when. You should still ask yourself these latter questions, however. Thinking introspectively about the who, what, where, and when of a research problem can help ensure that you have thoroughly considered all aspects of the problem under investigation and helps define the scope of the study in relation to the problem.

V.  Mistakes to Avoid

Beware of circular reasoning! Do not state the research problem as simply the absence of the thing you are suggesting. For example, if you propose the following, "The problem in this community is that there is no hospital," this only leads to a research problem where:

• The need is for a hospital
• The objective is to create a hospital
• The method is to plan for building a hospital, and
• The evaluation is to measure if there is a hospital or not.

This is an example of a research problem that fails the "So What?" test . In this example, the problem does not reveal the relevance of why you are investigating the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., perhaps there's a hospital in the community ten miles away]; it does not elucidate the significance of why one should study the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., that hospital in the community ten miles away has no emergency room]; the research problem does not offer an intellectual pathway towards adding new knowledge or clarifying prior knowledge [e.g., the county in which there is no hospital already conducted a study about the need for a hospital, but it was conducted ten years ago]; and, the problem does not offer meaningful outcomes that lead to recommendations that can be generalized for other situations or that could suggest areas for further research [e.g., the challenges of building a new hospital serves as a case study for other communities].

Alvesson, Mats and Jörgen Sandberg. “Generating Research Questions Through Problematization.” Academy of Management Review 36 (April 2011): 247-271 ; Choosing and Refining Topics. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; D'Souza, Victor S. "Use of Induction and Deduction in Research in Social Sciences: An Illustration." Journal of the Indian Law Institute 24 (1982): 655-661; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova. "Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem." Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); How to Write a Research Question. The Writing Center. George Mason University; Invention: Developing a Thesis Statement. The Reading/Writing Center. Hunter College; Problem Statements PowerPoint Presentation. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Procter, Margaret. Using Thesis Statements. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Shoket, Mohd. "Research Problem: Identification and Formulation." International Journal of Research 1 (May 2014): 512-518; Trochim, William M.K. Problem Formulation. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Thesis and Purpose Statements. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Pardede, Parlindungan. “Identifying and Formulating the Research Problem." Research in ELT: Module 4 (October 2018): 1-13; Walk, Kerry. Asking an Analytical Question. [Class handout or worksheet]. Princeton University; White, Patrick. Developing Research Questions: A Guide for Social Scientists . New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009; Li, Yanmei, and Sumei Zhang. "Identifying the Research Problem." In Applied Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning . (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022), pp. 13-21.

• << Previous: Background Information
• Next: Theoretical Framework >>
• Last Updated: Apr 24, 2024 10:51 AM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essays Samples >
• Essay Types >
• Research Paper Example

Social Issues Research Papers Samples For Students

4267 samples of this type

If you're seeking a possible method to streamline writing a Research Paper about Social Issues, WowEssays.com paper writing service just might be able to help you out.

For starters, you should skim our large directory of free samples that cover most various Social Issues Research Paper topics and showcase the best academic writing practices. Once you feel that you've figured out the key principles of content presentation and taken away actionable insights from these expertly written Research Paper samples, composing your own academic work should go much smoother.

However, you might still find yourself in a circumstance when even using top-notch Social Issues Research Papers doesn't allow you get the job done on time. In that case, you can get in touch with our experts and ask them to craft a unique Social Issues paper according to your custom specifications. Buy college research paper or essay now!

Prevalence of Obesity Research Paper Samples

1.0 introduction 1.1 overview of the condition, vanishing middle class research paper examples, vanishing middle class: implications for management and business.

The middle class person belongs to a social group that falls between the upper and the lower working class, speaking in terms of socio –economic factors. The degree of socio-economic factors varies from one country to another and differs significantly. However, it is seen that, in most parts of the developed world, the middle class has slowly and steadily started to vanish. The issue of vanishing middle class is primarily related to the business, the reasons for this are:

Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s Research Paper Example

Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors That Explain The Decline And Six That Do Not. Experience by Steven D. Levitt

Don't waste your time searching for a sample.

Get your research paper done by professional writers!

Just from $10/page

Good Research Paper On Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Research paper on incarceration, example of embedded expertise and the new terrorism research paper, free research paper about obesity as a disease, health insurance research paper example, burtless, gary, siegel, sarah. “medical spending, health insurance, and measurement of american poverty”. brookings institute 2001, example of research paper on business allocation.

The economists are concerned with the maximization of the society well being due to scarcity of resources and unlimited wants. The scarcity is the presence of limited resources and competition on the demand side (Peter 524). In this situation, the scarce resources are located to the most efficient business via a competitive mechanism because the focus of economics is to allocate resources in the most efficient manner. Similarly, the resource scarcity causes a large allocation of time and effort to appropriate competition.

Research Paper On The Egypt Revolution

Juvenile offenders research paper examples.

Juvenile delinquency is an adolescent disorder that affects children between the ages of about 7 and 17 years. Juveniles at this age normally experience adolescent disorder that affects their rational decision making abilities. The victims of the disorder may get involved in certain crimes making them subject to law enforcement agencies.

James Baldwin Research Paper Sample

James Baldwin is best known for his novels, short stories and essays. Most of his work revolves around the themes of discrimination towards blacks and homosexuals. Most of his work is considered to be at least somewhat autobiographical because a reader can often detect the traces of his own past torture and dilemmas. The loneliness and the suffering from all the taunts which he faced all his life are reflected in his writings.

Good Example Of Racism Against African American In Healthcare In The US Research Paper

Age and abortion research paper sample, the variables, sample research paper on obesity in latino communities, introduction.

A major part of Latino community in America is suffering from the obesity. The obesity and overweight are creating several other health related problems for this community. Obesity is one of the most common health problems in the United States of America and the Latinos are the second largest obese people in the nation. This paper intends to discuss the obesity in the Latino community and several other related aspects of the area under discussion.

Obese and overweight Latinos

Good example of illustration research essay of a social problem research paper, research paper on divorce factor, free research paper on fast food and obesity.

Background: Many people in the public circles tend to think that fast food is responsible for the increase in obesity cases, particularly in the US (Marlow & Shiers, 2012). There has been a notable increase in the cases of obesity in the US, in the past few decades. Aim: To find out if there is there a link between the increase in obesity cases and the consumption of fast food in the US?

Approach/method: An analysis of current literatures on this topic.

Dignity for all students act (dasa) research paper, free the roles of cctv in security research paper example, sample research paper on criminal behavior patterns, section 1: proposal.

Within the major profession of criminology, one recurring problem is the explanation of criminal behavior patterns and their relationship to crime, involving the subtopics of the sociological legal and psychiatric aspects of crime which contribute to defining and elaborating on criminal behavior.

Section 2: Body Sections

Avoiding childhood obesity research paper, free kwame kilpatrick former detroit mayor case research paper example, kwame kilpatrick former detroit mayor case, example of broken windows and displacement of crime theories research paper, broken window theory.

The broken window (theory) refers to a criminological theory devised by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. The theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a structured and well-ordered condition can stop vandalism. The theory investigates the effects of social disorder such as anti-social behavior as it relates to community life. Additionally, it correlates vagrancy, social norms and quality of community life. It is imperative to define social norms and disorder in order to efficiently examine how the broken windows concept requires both police and neighborhood participation.

Disorder and Social Norms

Good example of research paper on reasons of migration.

The story is the story of the grandfather of David, one of my best friend. I knew that his family was migrated from Mexico, so I asked my friend to arrange my meeting with his grandfather. His name is George and now 90 years old. He told that they were six brothers, and he was the youngest one. He was graduated at that time.

Good Global Health Policies In Ghana Research Paper Example

Juvenile delinquency research papers examples, good the effects of unemployment on the economy research paper example, free over eating and the obesity of children research paper sample, good research paper about research: religious discrimination: key issues in the workplace in small businesses, good example of research paper on the trail of tears, good research paper on how homosexuality has evolved over time and how monstrosity has played a role in, defenses to criminal culpability research paper, republican candidates research paper examples.

2016 Presidential Election Nominees 2016 Presidential Election nominees

Introduction:

The relationship between poverty rate and gdp growth research paper samples, childhood obesity causes and solutions research paper examples, drug use and criminal behavior research paper, good exercise vs. diet education research paper example, should long term welfare recipients have a deadline date research paper samples, the role of socioeconomic status in criminal behavior research paper samples, sample research paper on obesity and overweight as global diseases, adjustment problems immediately following divorce research paper examples, research paper on the relation of poverty and exposure to crime in adolescent men, lgbt civil rights and discrimination research papers example, following the american psychological association’s guidelines name: institutional affiliation:, should children who commit crime be tried as adults research paper example, should children who commit crime be tried as adults, good career opportunities within criminal justice systempolice officer research paper example, free research paper on automatism, good research paper on decision-making and philosophy, part i: decision-making and philosophy, gun control research papers samples, superb sexual harassment research paper sample, free research paper on role of women in honduras, evidence-based practice research papers example, convincing gay marriage research paper examples, free research paper about nelson mandela.

The 20th century saw number of social reforms and reformers who aimed at bringing about relive to the world. These individuals brought about massive change to the history and set a new trend towards leadership, social reforms and welfare of mankind. They have set precedence for human welfare and noble deeds.

Free Orlando Police Department Research Paper Example

Should the canadian government help homeless people research paper samples, free discrimination against international students in the united states research paper example, the interconnection of social problems research paper examples, good race and ethnicity in literature research paper example, ‎introduction, free research paper about divorce laws in the united states.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline