Sociological Methods

A Sourcebook

Norman K. Denzin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351489065
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

A comprehensive collection of contemporary and classical readings on sociological method, this book provides students with systematic analyses of each of the major strategies employed in sociological research. It may be used as a supplement or as the basic set of readings for all courses in methods.

The book contains thirteen sections dealing with theory and its development; issues of sampling units; problems of developing new measurement techniques; difficulties surrounding the interview (with special emphasis on interviewing deviant, hostile, and silent respondents); the nature of causation; and a review of the major methods of proof available to the sociologist. Actual research studies, focusing in turn on the experiment, the survey, participant observation, life-histories, and unobtrusive analysis, are also included.

Each section is preceded by an introduction, that defines the major issues in each paper, offers a discussion of problems not covered explicitly in the readings, and in general shows how each paper contributes to a view of interactional research processes. Because of its interactional approach, its use of classic articles, its anticipation of problems not yet formulated clearly in the literature, its illustrations of how social organizations may be studied, its inclusion of articles relevant to the social psychology of experiments, and its new statements on the ethics of research, this book will be invaluable in methods courses.

Especially when used in conjunction with its companion text, The Research Act, the book provides perhaps the most original and most useful compendium available to students today.

PART ONE
The Naturalistic Perspective

INTRODUCTION

THIS FIRST part borrows its title from a major theme underlying symbolic interaction research: the study and analysis of the empirical world in its natural settings.¹ The empirical world sets the tone, shapes the theories, and indicates the uses made of research methods. It is this world to which all theories, methods, and substantive specialties must return. It is this world that furnishes the final evaluation of the sociological act. If investigators are unsuccessful in explaining the nature of this world, they have failed in their efforts.

Sociology’s Reward Structure

Richard J. Hill’s paper suggests that the current reward structure in sociology favors a separation of theory, method, and research activities. This structure has significant negative consequences: that is, the methodologist and the theorist are hindered in going to the empirical world and opening that world to analysis because they have separated themselves from each other. The result is a continued isolation of each speciality, with few students now being trained in the skills and practices necessary for the grounding and development of social theory. Hill’s article offers a review of issues to be taken up in subsequent parts. He touches on the problems involved in current sampling theory, indicates how many of the traditional sociological methods are reactive in nature, and suggests that new ways of studying the empirical world need to be developed. This anticipates the readings in Part XII, which indicate how nonreactive and unobstru-sive research methods can be employed. Hill’s paper calls for a redefinition of the role currently given the methodologist. Because this role has become insulated from other aspects of the research and sociological act, Hill suggests that it be abolished, and that each sociologist should at once become his own theorist and methodologist. Such is the stance dictated by the naturalistic perspective, and in this sense Hill is justified in calling for an end to the role of methodologist.

The Nature Of Empirical Inquiry

Hill’s position is broadened and elaborated in Herbert Blumer’s essay. For perhaps the first time, the full implications of the naturalistic stance are spelled out. Working from the symbolic interactionist perspective, Blumer takes the position that the research and methodological act encompasses all of the aspects of doing sociology. The cardinal feature of any science is its grounding in the empirical world. Consequently, the research process becomes but one aspect of the scientific enterprise. Theory, method, research, and substantive interest intertwine to produce and shape the creative act. The ultimate test of these actions is their ability to reveal and explain the empirical world ? a world studied in its natural settings, not in simulated contexts. Perhaps the most significant scientific error is to assume that research actions can be separated; that they can be judged by separate criteria.

Blumer reviews the major ways by which the contemporary sociologist judges his research activity. These are seen to involve reliance on scientific protocol, valuing replication studies, giving heavy emphasis to hypothesis testing and developing operational definitions of the phenomena at hand. Each of these criteria are seen by Blumer as having severe restrictions. He suggests, for example, that relying on a scientific protocol that does not admit open analysis of the empirical world is of little use in building a naturalistic empirical science, as are operational definitions couched in terms of technical rather than empirical contingencies. To illustrate his view of naturalistic research, Blumer cites the work of Charles Darwin, perhaps the greatest naturalistic scientist. Darwin’s work is seen as involving a dual emphasis on the acts of exploration and inspection.

Exploration And Inspection

The naturalistic perspective breaks research activity into six interrelated processes: the use of a series of images or prior pictures about the events to be studied; the formulation of questions and problems about those events; the determination of what data are to be gathered and how they are to be gathered; the ascertaining of relationships between those data within an evolving theoretical perspective; and, last, the use of concepts. A commitment to the naturalistic perspective carries with it a number of implications. The researcher necessarily begins his studies as an outsider. Seldom is he intimately familiar with the groups, organizations, or persons being studied ? but the naturalistic stance demands such a familiarity. Lacking this prior acquaintance, the sociologist is prone to develop his own images and sterotypes. Too frequently these images bear little relationship to what is being studied. Blumer cites studies on intelligence as a case in point. Few social groups, he suggests, rank their members by scores on an I.Q. test, yet many groups judge their member’s intelligence. The researcher must grasp these diverse sources and points of evaluation; failing to do so opens him to the fallacy of objectivism, to the belief that because his formulations are theoretically or methodologically sound they must have relevance in the empirical world. This may not be the case and in these situations a reliance on the activities of exploration and inspection will be useful, indeed necessary. Exploration involves a very free and relatively unstructured set of observational activities. The scientist will admit any data that are ethically allowable and will employ any methods, be they surveys, experiments, interviews, direct observation, or even introspection, that reveal aspects of the problem he is studying. A critical attitude will characterize his activities in this phase. He will be searching for negative cases which refute his hypothesis, and he will be examining his problem from as many perspectives as possible. But most important, he will be assessing his knowledge of the events at hand. He must be constantly aware that his images and hypotheses may be irrelevant. Persons with insight into the situations he is studying will be sought, and often he will be led to forsake rules of scientific protocol concerning the representativeness of his samples-in order to discover data that provide him with new understanding. A notebook can and should be kept that is filled only with observations that refute his theory, or framework. In this way a constant interactive relationship is built up between himself and the empirical world. He progressively learns more and more about his problem, and the point where little new knowledge is forthcoming, the act of inspection begins.

This involves locating the major analytic concepts and elements relevant to the problem. It is complete once the scientist has discovered how those elements interrelate in an explanatory or theoretical scheme. Like a detective, the observer at this point is seeking to discover how and why something occured. To this end all points of view and all kinds of data are admitted into analysis. This phase is complete once an explanation that stands up under all data and all “negative cases” is forged. Unless such an explanation is developed, the scientific act is incomplete.

Both Blumer and Hill indicate how sociological researchers must learn to interact with the empirical world. The naturalistic or empirical position at the base of their statements may be taken as radical by many readers, for Hill and Blumer are developing a point of view that is currently out of favor among many methodologists. The reader must develop his own methodological stance, however, and this section concludes with suggested readings that present other points of view. It would of course be a mistake to assume that all the authors reprinted in this book share all of the views of Blumer and Hill, though their works, can easily be fitted within a perspective that calls for a new synthesis of theory, research, and methodology.

Suggested Readings. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Morris Rosenberg’s reader, The Language of Social Research (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955), presents a view of theory and methodology that is heavily couched in the “variable language” approach to social research, and that focuses almost exclusively on the survey as a method. The reader should consult it because it details another major conception of the research act and of the organization of sociology. A recent continuation of this perspective, although one which covers other methods besides the survey, is Hubert and Ann Blalock’s Methodology in Social Research (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). Consisting of original essays, this sourcebook stresses the quantitative and formal aspects of theory and method. A book that focuses strictly on the formal aspects of theory is Berger, Zelditch, and Anderson’s Sociological Theories in Progress (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). It should be explicitly examined in the context of Part II of this volume. Gideon Sjoberg and Roger Nett’s A Methodology for Social Research (New York: Harper and Row, 1968) presents a sociology of knowledge approach to theory and method. Its perspective largely complements the one contained in this volume. Irving Louis Horowitz? Professing Sociology (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1968) details in a highly critical fashion the current state of sociological practice. It is an important extension of the position stated by Hill and Blumer, and should be read in that light.

For an overview of sociological theories in general and of the various philosophical positions that underly each perspective, Don Martindale’s The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960) is recommended. William J. Catton’s From Animistic to Naturalistic Sociology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) examines the logic and argument for a naturalistic perspective in sociology. Other positions are also reviewed by Catton, and his book provides a convenient and historical analysis of the naturalistic point of view. Scott Greer’s The Logic of Social Inquiry (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969) is an excellent analysis of sociology as seen from the inside. Greer discusses the nature of social theory, various conceptions of the empirical world, and the role of values and metaphors in sociological practice. He presents a convincing argument for intergrating the various components of the sociological act. Walter Wallace’s Sociological Theory (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969) gives probably the best analysis of the many theories now employed in sociology. It should be read in conjunction with Martindale’s and Catton’s books. Wallace’s book also has the advantage of offering basic readings from diverse sociological theories.

1. Very briefly to indicate the nature of the symbolic interactionist perspective, it is a point or view that gives heavy emphasis to man’s ability to guide and direct his own activities, that lodges the source of human activity in ongoing units of social organization, most commonly social groups, and that stresses the importance of symbols, languages, and gestures in the formation of social action. Yet it always returns to the point of view of the acting person. A cardinal feature of this perspective is the assumption that the interaction process is a potentially emergent event; an event that must be studied over time in natural situations. For a major statement of this point of view, the reader is directed to the fuller source of Blumer’s work. The readings by Kuhn and McPartland, Glaser and Strauss, Benny and Hughes, Becker, and Olesen and Whittaker also point up aspects of symbolic interactionism.

1. On The Relevance of Methodology

Richard J. Hill

BORROWING a theme from the present generation of dissident students, I will argue that the “traditional” stance taken by sociologists regarding methodology has decreasing relevance for research activity in our discipline. I am convinced that the characteristic definitions of both “the methodologist” and “methodology” within many academic settings never were totally appropriate to the sociological enterprise. Further, given the current nature of the enterprise, these typical definitions of methodology rapidly are becoming anachronisms.

I take it that many, perhaps most, methodologists would agree with the distinction that has been made by Robert K. Merton between methodology and theory. Merton wrote as follows:

At the outset we should distinguish clearly between sociological theory, which has for its subject matter certain aspects and results of the interaction of men and is therefore substantive, and methodology, or the logic of scientific procedure. The problems of methodology transcend those found in any one discipline, dealing either with those common to groups of disciplines or, in more general form, with those common to all scientific inquiry. Methodology is not peculiarly bound up with sociological problems, and, though there is a plenitude of methodological discussions in books and journals of sociology, they are not thereby rendered sociological in character. Sociologists, in company with all others who essay scientific work, must be methodologically wise; they must be aware of the design of investigation, the nature of inference, the requirements of a theoretic system. But such knowledge does not contain or imply the particular content of sociological theory. There is, in short, a clear and decisive difference between knowing how to test a battery of hypotheses and knowing the theory from which to derive hypotheses to be tested.¹

At an analytic and highly abstract level, there can be little disagreement with Merton’s position. On the other hand, the distinction is totally artificial at the level of actual research. Further, I am convinced that the established predilection of methodologists to accept the distinction and view their speciality as something apart from substance has been dysfunctional for sociology and especially for the development of a methodology which has a high degree of utility to the investigation of crucial sociological problems.

At another point in the essay cited above, Merton describes a hiatus between theory and research.² Despite the score of years that has elapsed since the first edition of Merton’s analyses, there continues to be less relationship between theory and research than most sociologists believe to be necessary to a respectable science.

If anything, the general condition of our discipline seems to be in a state of more serious disorder than that which Merton described. Not only has the separation between theory and research continued, but a new division is developing. As ridiculous as this may appear to some, there is a growing separation between research and methodology. Further, the emerging trichotomy that increasingly divides our discipline leads to other conditions which, if maintained, can only impede the rate of our development.

I wish to consider first certain consequences of this division for methodology and methodologists. Courses in methodology have proliferated in most major universities. Given the rapid growth of the area since World War II, a strong justification for such proliferation can be forwarded. After all, when important, specialized and technical bodies of knowledge grow, the typical academic response is to expand the curriculum in those areas. This expansion, in my opinion, has not solved the problems of sociological methodology; on the contrary, it has widened the separation between the methodologist and his disciplinary colleagues. Consider but one example. In the current catalogue of one major university, the department of sociology lists a staff of 16 members. In that same catalogue, the same department of sociology also lists 12 courses in methodology, nine of which are at the graduate level. On the basis of my acquaintance with the department in question, I know that these courses are the responsibility of three men. If the courses are to be taught with any regularity, the departmental methodologists obviously can teach little but methodology. Further, under such conditions, a graduate student wishing to become a “methodologist” must take a very heavy concentration in his chosen area. Unless he has considerable stamina and an unusual ability to defer gratification, such a student will receive less exposure to the substantive problems of the discipline than will his “non-methodological” peer.³

The explosion of knowledge in what are now considered to be methodological areas also places unrealistic role requirements on those defined as methodologists. To be a general expert in the area, the methodologist now must have a working knowledge of dominance matrices, computer simulation, cononical correlations, discriminant analysis, game theory, non-metric spaces, multi-dimensional measurement, Markov chains, Bayesian probabilities, and so on, even forever. There is now some indication that these unrealistic expectations will bring about the demise of the “general methodologist.” Younger scholars are focusing their attention on a more restricted set of interests. They are experts on Markov processes or computer simulation or multi-dimensional measurement models or some other speciality which is viewed by many of their colleagues as esoteric scientism having little relevance for the general substantive problems of sociology. Thus, the division widens. The non-methodologist sees little relevance in what the methodologist is about; the methodologist finds an ever decreasing number of men who can serve as his colleagues in an intellectually supporting fashion.

I believe that the above description of the current state of affairs is essentially correct at least for a significant number of large departments. I also am convinced that this condition has contributed to still another disciplinary development. There now exist groups of scholars who “do sociology” but who reject the standard model of natural science and the traditional methods of investigation. Many of our disciplines’ current heroes are those who write insightful treatises on obviously significant problems but who rely on their own professional judgment with respect to procedure and truth.

Consider but one recent example of this tendency to move away from standard methods. In their most provocative work on “grounded theory,” Glaser and Strauss argue for the essential superiority of something called “theoretical sampling” over the sampling procedures that methodologists have worked so hard to master.⁴ To many, it seems to make little difference that there are serious limitations in “theoretical sampling.” It also makes little difference, apparently, that the considerations forwarded by Glaser and Strauss could be reformulated in a way that would permit the strategy of “theoretical sampling” to be combined with probability considerations. The pursuasive argument of Glaser and Strauss is taken as sufficient grounds to reject the relevance of more traditional sampling theory.⁵

If Glaser and Strauss were lonely voices in the wilderness, then perhaps they could be ignored. Such is not the case, and “standard methodology” is now fair game for a growing number of very articulate critics. Cicourel tells us that we really do not have the necessary knowledge to ask even basic questions in a way that permits the valid interpretation of the responses we obtain.⁶ Sjoberg and Nett argue that all of methodology must be reviewed in a framework of the sociology of knowledge.⁷ Rosenthal and Freidman even challenge the validity of our experimental efforts.⁸ Such attacks on what I believe are considered to be standard methodological strategies areincreasing. This criticism is coming from a variety of sources, and it is having a growing influence on our total enterprise.

Criticism o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I. The Naturalistic Perspective
• Part II. The Nature of Social Theory
• Part III. Sampling Techniques: Strategies for Observing Elements of Theory and Social Structure
• Part IV. Problems and Strategies of Measurement
• Part V. The Sociological Interview: Problems and Strategies
• Part VI. Problems of Design and Analysis
• Part VII. The Social Experiment: Uses and Problems
• Part VIII. The Social Survey: Uses and Problems
• Part IX. Participant Observation: Uses and Problems
• Part X. The Life History Method
• Part XI. The Unobtrusive Method
• Part XII. Triangulation; A Case for Methodological Evaluation and Combination
• Part XIII. Contingencies and Problems in the Execution of Social Research
• EPILOGUE
• INDEX