by Julian Salisbury

Created on: April 20, 2008   Last Updated: April 21, 2008

The research methods used in Sociology are little different to those used in other social and political sciences. Common modes of enquiry include the use of social surveys: experiments, interviews and observation. Descriptions of their various strengths and weaknesses can be found in any introductory School or College text and Themes and Perspectives by Michael J. Haralambos is probably the most comprehensive of these. Yet what is more interesting is why particular methods are used or not used.

What is your theoretical position?

Positivist sociologists like Marx, Comte and Durkheim attempted to explain society by discovering universal laws. They sought to emulate the methods used in the natural sciences and by doing so they hoped to raise the status of the subject and to convince others about the worthiness of their political views. Those that follow this research tradition are referred to as macro theorists and they use methods that necessarily involve the generation and collation of quantitative data taken from large, representative samples.

Additionally, man is viewed as relatively passive. Powerful institutions and structures like the mass media, family, education and social classes, shape our identity and behaviour. This is important because without subscribing to a passive view of man, the quest to discover scientific laws is doomed to failure. If this belief was mistaken and we are all directed by our own consciousness, behaviour could not be generalised and sociology would remain very much to poor relation to natural science. Therefore, one tradition within the subject is positivist, macro and structural.

These factors dictate that the research methods used must be imbued with objectivity in order to collect data on social facts. The survey method can be implemented on a large scale and it has a kudos that makes it attractive to national governments to help them with social planning and policy reform. Questions are predetermined and possible answers are limited and fixed. Research can be replicated in order to ensure that it is reliable and surveys can be implemented at intervals to provide data on longitudinal patterns. This standardised method can also be used for comparative approaches like Durkheim's study of suicide or it might be used as part of a unique case study.

Anti Positivists like Goulder, Becker, or Mead argue that universal laws of social behaviour don't exist. So the pursuit of them, no matter how "scientific" you are in going about it, is

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