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Sociology Assignment - I

The document discusses social research methods. It defines social research as systematic attempts to expand knowledge and understanding of the social world through approved methods. Social research is different from other forms of research because it studies people. The key aspects of systematic social research include starting with a research question, developing a strategy like experiments or surveys to answer it, and considering design elements like aims, methods, and style. The document also outlines two main philosophies - positivism which uses quantitative methods like surveys, and interpretivism which uses qualitative methods like interviews to understand meanings and interpretations.

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anushka kashyap
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206 views3 pages

Sociology Assignment - I

The document discusses social research methods. It defines social research as systematic attempts to expand knowledge and understanding of the social world through approved methods. Social research is different from other forms of research because it studies people. The key aspects of systematic social research include starting with a research question, developing a strategy like experiments or surveys to answer it, and considering design elements like aims, methods, and style. The document also outlines two main philosophies - positivism which uses quantitative methods like surveys, and interpretivism which uses qualitative methods like interviews to understand meanings and interpretations.

Uploaded by

anushka kashyap
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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SOCIOLOGY ASSIGNMENT-I

- Anushka Kashyap( BA0190008)

Social research refers to a systematic attempt using socially approved methods aimed at
extending our knowledge and understanding of the outside world which gives us new ideas and
understanding of what’s going on in our surroundings. Systematic attempt here talks about
various ways through which we make our research systematic, this involves our approaches to
collect and analyze data, the way we design it, and get quality research. Socially approved
methods refer to what makes those attempts good in the eyes of the community of social
researchers. The acceptance of the methods can be estimated through years and years of usage,
appraisal etc. It helps in analyzing what gives good quality research by avoiding all kinds of bad
and poor design problems.

Social research is different from Physical, Chemical, Biological, and other forms of research
because it has people at both ends. In case of Social research, the things we are analyzing and
observing are people and the researchers who are analyzing are also people. It means an
individual or a group of people is analyzing people individually, in groups or societies. This
creates an advantage and problem at the same time for researchers. Problem in the sense, people
are not passive objects. They interact with the researchers. This may create an issue for the
researchers in terms of how to design research. Researchers need to take extra care to assure
quality and accuracy of search. The advantage for the same is that it gives the researcher insight
into what people are thinking, their likes and dislikes which helps in interpreting people properly.

Various disciples are covered by the range of social research which contains Psychology,
Sociology, and Economics. But such methods are also used in other disciplines such as History,
Politics, and Business Studies by using similar techniques or a subset of it. Even social research
involves slightly further afield such as its use in Accountancy, Geography, Nursing, Medicine,
etc. because very often they are dealing with people. For example- One aspect of Nursing
involves how a patient responds and interacts with nurses and other patients; here Social research
can be used to analyze patients.

The main key to systematic research is Design. For systematic research, we need to start from
Research Question i.e. what you want to find. Then, we have to make decisions about Strategy
which means approaching strategy for answering the research question and the method which
can be used for getting the data.

General Strategy used in Social Research

Hakim draws a parallel between researcher and architect. According to Hakim-“Design deals
mainly with aims, purposes, intentions, and plans within the practical constraints of location,
time, money and availability of staff.”It is also about the style. Like architect, different social
researchers have their style of working. A single research question can have different approaches
even though we have the same research strategy because of the stylistic differences.

Two Philosophies of research

(i) Positivistic: Perhaps the oldest and traditional method that has brought in Social
Science. This is a scientific, hypothetical deductive method which refers to making
policies about what’s happening outside to reach consequences from the hypothesis.
It is associated with quantitative approaches such as collecting numbers, counting,
and measuring things. This method is extensive too because the things that are
analyzed are objects that exist independently in the real world. Traditionally
positivistic approaches have been associated with things like experiments and
surveys. For example, in survey we tend to be interested in counts and frequencies
and we want numbers of the thing that we can use as a quantitative method.
(ii) Interpretive approach: This method takes a quite different approach
philosophically to analyze what is going on in the world. This involves recognizing
the things as social begins through our discourse, language, meanings, and
interpreting what people mean and do. It is associated with Ethnographic,
Hermeneutic, and qualitative approaches in general which leads to interviewing and
observing people.

The three-fold division of research strategies according to Robson in his work “Real World
Research” are- (i) Survey (ii) Case study (iii) Experiment.

1. Survey: It involves the selection of samples from a known population usually from large
group of individuals in the form of questionnaires and structured interviews. This refers
to a collection of the relatively small amount of data in a standardized form which means
every single individual you are researching is getting the same questions. For example-
Census contains data about every single person in the country by asking almost same
questions from everyone.
2. Case Study: It helps in developing detailed, intensive knowledge about a single complex
object or a small number of related objects. It involves analyzing a single person in a
detailed intensive way. Its nature is holistic and multifaceted. It helps us in connecting
cases with social context by talking to people, interviewing them, observing them. For
example- an organization or a political party, schools. Just like comparing different
schools by taking different schools as different cases within your study.
3. Experiment: Refers to measuring the effect of manipulating one variable on another. It is
done on a much smaller population in comparison of the other two. This involves
manipulating things in the experiment setting in order to see the effect that might have on
the respondents we are analyzing. It also involves the selection of representative samples
from a known population. It is a quantitative approach of randomly allocating groups in
different kinds of experiments. It is the hypothetical deductive method as we start with
hypothesis for analyzing.

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