Social Research Methods

The Essentials

Nicholas Walliman

• Editorial: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473952744
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Social Science Research & Methodology

Nicholas Walliman is the supervisor in your students? pockets, making sure they understand all the essential methods for successfully carrying out a research project and negotiating the challenges and pitfalls. In this book, he:

· Takes students step-by-step through the research process

· Helps them formulate clear aims and objectives

· Explains all the vocabulary to understand the A – Z of research methods

· Ends each chapter with a reading guide for taking learning further with more resources to help get a deeper understanding of the issues discussed

· Improves research reports with practical advice on presenting findings in great tables, graphs and diagrams

· Opens his office door with reflective questions (and answers)

· Delivers the confidence to get started and get finished!

Social Research Methods: The Essentials is the perfect starting point and guide for your students?research project.

Part I PLANNING AND DESIGNING YOUR RESEARCH

One Theoretical Background

What is research?

In everyday speech ‘research’ is a term loosely used to describe a multitude of activities, such as collecting masses of information, delving into esoteric theories and producing wonderful new products. So how can true ‘scientific’ research be defined?

The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary defines it as:

the systematic investigation into the study of materials, sources etc. in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions; an endeavour to discover new or collate old facts etc. by the scientific study of a subject or by a course of critical investigation.

Leedy and Ormrod (2012) define it from a more utilitarian point of view:

Research is a procedure by which we attempt to find systematically, and with the support of demonstrable fact, the answer to a question or the resolution of a problem.

Kerlinger (1970, p. 8) uses more technical language to define it as:

the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about presumed relations among natural phenomena.

But is social science research ‘scientific’ research? Some sociologists would not maintain this. In fact, they would say that there is a distinct difference between research into the natural world and research into the habits, traditions, beliefs, organizations, etc. of human beings. Being human ourselves, we cannot take an impartial view of others, and we cannot establish ‘facts’ as fixed eternal truths. We can only aim for interpretation and understanding of the social world.

Do: Remember that the debate about the nature of social research is a lively one and is based around the philosophical aspects of epistemology and ontology.

Epistemology and ontology

Epistemology is concerned with how we know things and what we can regard as acceptable knowledge in a discipline. In the study of social (and any other) sciences there is a choice between two ways of acquiring knowledge:

• Empiricism – knowledge gained by sensory experience (using inductive reasoning).
• Rationalism – knowledge gained by reasoning (using deductive reasoning).

The relative merits of these approaches have been argued ever since the time of the Ancient Greeks – Aristotle advocating the first and Plato the second.

Another polarization in the pursuit of knowledge has appeared more recently, and relates to the status of scientific methods and human subjectivity:

• Positivism – the application of the natural sciences to the study of social reality. An objective approach that can test theories and establish scientific laws. It aims to establish causes and effects.
• Interpretivism – the recognition that subjective meanings play a crucial role in social actions. It aims to reveal interpretations and meanings.
• Realism – (particularly social realism) – this maintains that structures do underpin social events and discourses, but as these are only indirectly observable they must be expressed in theoretical terms and are thus likely to be provisional in nature. This does not prevent them being used in action to change society.

All philosophical positions and their attendant methodologies, explicitly or implicitly, hold a view about social reality. This view, in turn, will determine what can be regarded as legitimate knowledge. Thus, the ontological shapes the epistemological (Williams and May, 1996, p. 69).

Ontology is about the theory of social entities and is concerned with what exists to be investigated. Bryman (2012, pp. 32–3) identifies two opposing theoretical attitudes to the nature of social entities:

• Objectivism – the belief that social phenomena and their meanings have an existence that is not dependent on social actors. They are facts that have an independent existence.
• Constructionism – the belief that social phenomena are in a constant state of change because they are totally reliant on social interactions as they take place. Even the account of researchers is subject to these interactions; therefore social knowledge can only be interdeterminate.

The objectivist approach will stress the importance of the formal properties of organizations and cultural systems, while the constructionist approach will concentrate more on the way that people themselves formulate structures of reality, and how this relates to the researcher him- or herself.

Don’t: Forget that the way that social research questions are formulated and the way the research is carried out is based on the ontological viewpoint of the researcher.

Ways of reasoning

The ways of reasoning behind the empirical and rationalist approaches to gaining information start from opposite ends of a spectrum. It is not possible practically to apply either extreme in a pure fashion, but the distinct differences in the two opposing approaches are easily outlined. The shortcomings of each can be mitigated by using a combination that is formulated as the hypothetico-deductive method.

Inductive reasoning – the empiricist’s approach

Inductive reasoning starts from specific observations and derives general conclusions from them. A simple example will demonstrate the line of reasoning:

All swans which have been observed are white in colour.

Therefore one can conclude that all swans are white.

Induction was the earliest and, even now, the commonest popular form of scientific activity. Every day, our experiences lead us to make conclusions, from which we tend to generalize. The development of this approach in the seventeenth century by such scientists as Galileo and Newton heralded the scientific revolution. The philosopher Francis Bacon summed this up by maintaining that in order to understand nature, one should consult nature, and not the writings of ancient philosophers such as Aristotle, or the Bible. Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendel’s discovery of genetics are perhaps the most famous theories claimed (even by their authors) to be derived from inductive reasoning.

Three conditions must be satisfied for such generalizations to be considered legitimate by inductivists:

1. There must be a large number of observation statements.
2. The observations must be repeated under a large range of circumstances and conditions.
3. No observation statement must contradict the derived generalization.

Induction’s merit was disputed as long ago as the mid-eighteenth century by Hume. He demonstrated that the argument used to justify induction was circular, using induction to defend induction. This has traditionally been called the ‘problem of induction’. Two further serious problems for the naive inductivist remain. The first is how large the number of observation statements must be; and the second is how large a range of circumstances and conditions must they be repeated under in order that true conclusions can be reached?

Do: Despite its shortcomings, you use inductive reasoning every day quite successfully without even thinking about it. But be aware that what at first seems obvious may not be so with further systematic research.

Deductive reasoning – the rationalist’s approach

Deductive reasoning was first developed by the Ancient Greeks. An argument based on deduction begins with general statements and, through logical argument, comes to a specific conclusion. A syllogism is the simplest form of this kind of argument and consists of a major general premise (statement), followed by a minor, more specific premise, and a conclusion that follows logically. Here is a simple example:

All live mammals breathe.

This cow is a live mammal.

Therefore, this cow breathes.

Research is guided in this case by the theory that precedes it. Theories are speculative answers to perceived problems, and are tested by observation and experiment. While it is possible to confirm the possible truth of a theory through observations that support it, theory can be falsified and totally rejected by making observations that are inconsistent with its statement. In this way, science is seen to proceed by trial and error: when one theory is rejected, another is proposed and tested, and thus the fittest theory survives.

In order for a theory to be tested, it must be expressed as a statement called a hypothesis. The essential nature of a hypothesis is that it must be falsifiable. This means that it must be logically possible to make true observational statements that conflict with the hypothesis, and thus can falsify it. However, the process of falsification leads to a devastating result of the rejection of a theory, requiring a completely new start.

Don’t: Forget that it is not practically possible to be either a pure inductivist or deductivist as you either need some theoretical ideas in order to know what information to look for, or some knowledge in order to devise theories.

Hypothetico-deductive reasoning or scientific method

The hypothetico-deductive method combines inductive and deductive reasoning, resulting in the to-and-fro process of developing hypotheses (testable theories) inductively from observations, charting their implications by deduction and testing them to refine or reject them in the light of the results. It is this combination of experience with deductive and inductive reasoning that is the foundation of modern scientific research, and is commonly referred to as scientific method.

A simple summary of the steps in scientific method could go like this:

• Identification or clarification of problems.
• Formulation of tentative solutions or hypotheses.
• Practical or theoretical testing of solutions or hypotheses.
• Elimination or adjustment of unsuccessful solutions.

Problems are posed by the complexity of testing theories in real life. Realistic scientific theories consist of a complex of statements, each of which relies on assumptions bas...