A theory is a model or framework which shapes what researchers expect to see and how sociologists interpret data or evidence that they collect
Methods are the tools that sociologists use to collect data about how the social world is organised, how people behave, and the way people view and interpret them
In a field of sociological research there are 2 generalised theories:
- Positivism
- Interpretivism
Govern both choice to subject matter and choice of research methods
Positivism
Def. an approach to sociological research which advocates using similar methods to natural sciences
Influenced by natural sciences so biologists, physicists and chemist have shown that plants, animals and chemicals behave in very predictable ways due to existence of natural laws
Positivist sociologists have adapted and applied these ideas to human behaviour
Argued that we should treat people as objects who behaves can be directly observed, measured and counted in same natural ways as birds
Believe that there are natural laws governing the behaviour of these natural phenomena so there are social laws or forces shaping and determining the social actions of people
Laws are the product of organisation of the society in which we live
Organisation of society is called social structure and positivist sociologist who study this are known as structuralists
Positivism believe their research should be under controlled conditions
Rarely use lab experiments but aim to achieve control through the use of random sampling
Social behaviour and society are the product of social forces beyond the control of individuals
The laws/forces of social structure cause produce social forces such as consensus, integration social class, patriarchy and they shape behaviour
People are puppets of society
Predictability of human actions by identifying social patterns and trends in social actions
Underpin it should be studied using scientific research
Patterns and Trends
Standardised, systematic and logical
Argue that the social structure of societies produces social forces or laws over which people have little or no control
From a positivism perspective, free-will, individualism and ability to make choices less influential than socials ability to shape human behaviour as society exists outside of the individuals who comprise it
Consequently, society is more important than the individual
Individuals behaviour is a product of social forces beyond that individuals’ control and understanding
All social actions are the outcome of the way that societies are organised
Positivists argue individuals as the puppets of society
Behaviour is important as a part of a wider collective whole
Whole groups of people behave in very patterned or similar ways as a result of the social structure
Trends in human behaviour can clearly be seen and catalogued so very predictable
Take a macro perspective as they are concerned with examining the relationship between different parts of the social structure to work out their effects
Highly unlikely that positivist research would focus on the micro aspects of wealth and poverty such as how the rich and poor experience and interpret their representative social worlds on daily basis
Product of social forces or laws such as social class, patriarchy and racism which we have little or no control over
Interested in seeing the world through the eyes of the individuals
Functionalism, Marxism and feminism tend to be positivism theories because they believe that individual behaviour is less important as a subject than value consensus, social class and patriarchy respectively as all are a product of social structure
Believes society is more important than the individual
Believe that the job of sociologists is to uncover these social forces or laws and to document predictable patterns or trends in social behaviour
The research methods are preferred by structuralists sociologist such as Marxists and functionalist who are interested in large-scale social processes, structure and institutions shape or influence social trends or patterns
Sociology as a Science
See sociology as the science of society = social science
Believe behaviour of human beings can be objectively and scientifically measured in much the same way as the subject matter of natural sciences
Consequently, argue that sociologists should adopt logic and methods of the natural sciences in exploration of how the social structure shapes people’s behaviour and actions
This approach is known as hypotheticodeductive approach which suggest positivist scientist and begin by making observations about the world
Observations then lead to positivists coming up with hypothesis or conjectures
Informed guesses about how and why the social situations they have observed have come about
May test the hypothesis by collecting data or evidence
Scientists normally do this by carrying out a lab experiment as they see positivists sociologists generally go out into the field so it’s a social context and conduct a scientific survey
Objectivity, Value-freedom, Reliability and Quantitative Data
Used to test hypothesis
Value-Freedom
Def. the notion that sociologists should be objective when they carry out research and that their subjective beliefs, values and attitudes should not be bias how they organise the research
Objectivity
Def. the absence of bias and approaching research without any pre-conceived ideas
Positivists are keen on achieving value freedom or objectivity
Sociologist carry out research and interpret evidence with an open mind, setting aside their own prejudices, values and political and religious beliefs
Positivist believe that subjectivity so undermines the reliability and findings lack validity
Reliability
A research tool is reliable if other sociologists can use it and obtain the same results
Validity
Research findings give a true or authentic picture of what is being studied so reflects reality
If designed other sociologists should be able to replicate the research device and obtain similar results
Positivists are very keen that research should demonstrate representativeness = def. relates to the sample of people who agree to take part in the research we can generalise
Normally practical impossible and costly to study the whole social group that the sociologists are interested in
Positivists aim to select a presentative sample of that group
This means that those who take part in the research need to be typical of the social group so we can generalise from their findings
Positivists aim to make generalisations as they aim to say what is true to the group who have taken part in the research and wider group to which they belong
Follow systematic and logical procedures so other social scientist can replicate research
Replication is important to ensure reliability as they argue that if the research process is used to test a hypothesis is reliable and someone else can repeat it and get same/similar results
Believe that scientific research would be objective or value-free
Sociologists should be neutral and not allow their personal or political values or prejudices to bias any aspect of their research methods or interpretation of data
Determined to pursue scientific truths with an open mind
Ensure objectivity but carrying their research under controlled conditions such as a lab
Quantitative Data
Def. statistical
Generate quantitative data so statistics can be converted into tabular or graphical information
Data can be comparative value as it is observed for patterns, trends, correlations
Used to establish cause and effect relationships in order to deduce facts about human behaviour
Positivists methodology is intended to focus on the use of quantitative methods such as social surveys which incorporate questionnaire and/or structured interviews
Positivists are keen on using official statistics and public documents mainly historical documents
Strive to achieve validity as they argue their approach is most effective way of achieving validity as they believe the research is well designed as the data gathered should be authentic
Early sociologists argued that uncovering these social facts or laws means that predictions can be made about social world
Certain amount of social engineering to modify or change it for the better
Positivists believe this potential for social engineering which could lead to a reduction of poverty, crime or social unrest
Used to create a better society
Study of Suicide – Durkheim (1897)
Used a positivists scientific approach to investigate suicide
Examined the 19th century suicide statistics across a number of European societies and observed 3 trends:
Suicides rates remain constant and predictable over time
Remain constant between societies and between social groups within same society
Basis of these observations he concluded that suicide rate was not a result of individuals using their free-will and choosing to kill themselves
Hypothesised that suicide rate was a social fact and suicidal behaviour was shaped by the nature of the society to which the individual belonged and by its level of social integration and moral regulation
Argued that the main type of suicide is called egoistic suicide which was caused by too much individualism
Society had failed to integrate individuals into society
Saw religion as playing a big part in whether individuals were sufficiently integrated or not such as catholic sense of community was more powerful than encouraged by protestant religions and therefore Catholics have a strong sense of belonging in society
Consequently, argued that protestants were more likely to kill themselves than Catholics as Catholics society provided more community protection against suicide
- Believe that remaining objective and adopting a scientific approach free from one’s own values and biases is vital
British Sociological Associations ethical guidelines encourage the type of quantitative data
- Government when funding sociological research projects through agencies such as Economic and social research council tends to favour more positivists style research because allows generalisations
- Science still has a great status in society and is still perceived as a source of much human progress
Interpretivism
Def. advocates using methods which allow sociologists to understand the means and interpretations of those they mainly using qualitative methods
Max Weber was a founding father
He argued that there is an important difference between subject matter
Takes an anti-positivists position because it rejects the positivists idea that social laws shape or determine human behaviour and human beings are the puppets of society
Takes a micro rather than a macro approach to studying society due to them believing the individual is more important than society
Less focused on the impact of social class on the individual
More likely to be interested in how the individual subjectively makes sense of their social class
Suggest society is the product of individuals interacting with each other in social groups
He rejected the view that humans can be treated like objects
People are active, conscious beings with free will who are aware of what is going on in social situations and capable of making choice on how to behave
Observe human beings have consciousness which differentiates them from the subject matter of the natural sciences
People have free will
Choose to behave, unlike chemicals
Behaviour of any human is unique and cannot be predicted
Unable to compare as they are not conscious or self-aware
Do not act on purpose
Cannot interpret what is happening to them and choose to behave in particular ways
Argue that cause and effect relationships are impossible to establish in regard to human behaviour as human behaviour Is unpredictable
They are architects of society rather than puppets
Meanings and Experiences
Social world is socially contrasted – product of shared interaction and meaning that make sense of our interpretations
Sociologists uncover these to document social experience and identify the motives and reasons for social action
See society as a product of people choosing to come together in social groups such as family and religious groups
People are architects of society
Argue that sociologists should focus on the shared meanings or interpretations that people use to make sense of their social world
People know how to behave in most situations such as a funeral as they learned these shared meanings
Believe that society is socially contrasted in that the product of 2 crucial social processes:
- People choose to come together to interact in social groups
- Weber argued that what makes an interaction or event social is that all those who take part give it same meaning
Group interaction or experience in broadly the same way
Share the same sense of what is going on
Point out people interact with each other; they constantly interact as their own behaviour and that of others
He concluded that if we are to explain some events in the social world as our explanation has to take into account what people involved feel and think
Experiences and their meanings apply to those experiences
We must not regard people simply as helpless puppets
Society as a social construct in that it is the net sum of all social interactions and the interpretations or meanings that underpin them
People are the architects of society
Weber’s ideas we developed by Mead who showed peoples sense of self can only develop in a social context
Important part of the socialisation as interpret every interaction they found themselves in by learning to put themselves in other people’s shoes
Mead observed that the central feature of social life is that actions are the result of people’s interpretations of the situation that they are in
Interpretations are shared by all of those involved and social proceeds smoothly
Interpretations are not shared, social breakdown can occur
Mead concluded that the causes of social action life in people’s definition of the situation as rather than as a result of objective laws that govern from outside
Coroners and Suicide – Atkinson (1978)
This was an interpretivist critique of Durkheim’s positivist study of suicide
She was very critical of Durkheim’s use of official suicide statistics as Durkheim failed to appreciate that these are socially constructed
Don’t just come about by themselves
Result of an interaction between the victim, their relatives and friends and most importantly a legal official called a coroner whose function is to interpret how people have died and officially apply one of 5 possible labels or categories
- Natural causes
- Misadventure
- Homicide
- Suicide
- Open verdict
Evidence available so creating an official death statistic
Coroner suspects intent to die, he or she will look various clues such as a suicide note and will look closely at how and where the person died using previous experiences and interpretation of suicidal action
Interact with friends and relatives in order to work out the frame of mind of the decreased person
Look for clues in a person’s biography that might have motivated such action as a redundancy, death of a loved one etc…
Relatives in particular can influence a coroner’s final decision by insisting that the victim was not depressed and upset
Argues that Durkheim’s methodology was crucially flawed because he failed to recognise that suicide statistics are socially constructed
Coroners who came to the decision as a result of interacting with the friends and relatives of the decreased and interpreting to the dead persons action and intentions
Verstehen and Empathy
Def. sociologist employs a method that helps them to see the world through the eyes of the group being researched
Interpretivist argue that if we want to explain social actions, so we have an understanding in the way that the participants do
Learn to see the world from their standpoint
Develop empathetic understanding so they are called ‘verstehen’ according to Weber through unstructured interviews and participant observation to establish rapport or trust
Job of a sociologists therefore is to uncover the shared interactions and interpretations that make up society
Interpret reality
Interpretivists aim to get inside people’s head and experience the world from their points of view
Interpretivists emphasise validity rather than reliability
Believe unique and trusting relationship should be established with those being studied so that a true and authentic picture of the lives can be constructed
Relationships can be difficult to replicate, and the data extracted from such a relationship can be difficult to verify
Qualitative Data
They are not keen on quantitative data as they believe it tells researchers little about feelings, experiences or reasons for behaviour
Also believed that data is socially constructed and may reflect biases of the groups involved in its collection
Speaks for itself as it has personal accounts taken directly from subjects
Tends to focus on how the research subjects see or interpret the world
Consequently, provides insight into feelings, opinion, motivations and thought
Studied speak for themselves
Researcher Imposition
They do not believe that a scientific approach is central to good sociological research
See validity as more important than objectivity and reliability
Suggest that the positivists emphasis on reliability can result in researcher imposition as they claim that positivist research only focuses on what the sociologists think is important
Consequently, it may neglect what the research subject really thinks
Argue researcher should always be aware of how their presence influences the behaviour of the research subjects
Research tool undermines the validity of the data
Believe that positivists research methods such as questionnaires and structured interviews are artificial and alien
Consequently, people may feel threatened by them and be tempted to give false or inauthentic answers
In contrast, interpretivist research methods involve minimal interference with the everyday natural environment of the research subject such as unstructured interviews resemble an informal conversation
Believe that researchers should also be flexible enough be change the content or direction of the research if they feel that the research methods are negatively impacting on the data being collected
Important source of bias in positivists sociological research when developing research tools so make decisions or assumptions about what is and is not important based on their own experience
May miss important behaviours
Rapport, subject experience and qualitative data
Strongly believe that unique and trusting relationships or rapport should be established with those being studied so that a true picture of their lives is constructed
Interpretivists argue that it is important to appreciate how the world looks from the point of view of those being studied which is subjectively
Essential to validity and to able to establish ‘verstehen’ in order to understand how the research subject really feels about his or her subjective experience
Data collected by interpretivist research is very different to the positivist emphasis on quantitative data
Prefer qualitative data which presents the quality of the way of life of the research subjects in a form of words rather than numbers
Regarded as richer in detail and validity than statistical data
Presented in word form
Data is normally presented in the words of those being researched and consequently lets research subjects speak to themselves
Aims to give insight into attitudes and beliefs, motivation for behaviour and how people interpret social reality and behaviour of those around them
Conducted social experiments to uncover taken-for-granted interpretations and behaviour and the effects of labelling
Prefer to highlight the concept of validity and they claim that their research approach ensures this is in a number of ways
Research methods are ethnographic as they involve trying to understand social behaviour and organisation of societies and cultures by going out and talking to people wherever they are
Involve the insertion of the sociologists into the everyday world with the minimum of fuss and disturbance
Ethnography is an important aspect of interpretivists research
Involves that research should be naturalistic and conducted whenever possible in everyday environment or context in which the subjects of the research normally live
Endeavour to get inside people’s head and to experience the world from the research subjects’ point of view
Reports produced by interpretivist research contain material in which the research subjects speak for themselves in they are often verbatim accounts of the social world which are expressed in actual words of the research subjects
Prefer primary research methods such as unstructured interviews due to their naturalistic conversational style and observations so the covert kind as they are unware
Keen on secondary data in which the research subject’s interpretation of reality is paramount
Critics point out there is always the danger in research involving the establishment of rapport a close relationship with subjects that sociologists may go naïve and allow subjective relationship to overcome their detachment and objectivity
Reflexivity
Def. refers to the process of self-reflection by sociologists carrying out research
Very keen on reflexivity
Review the degree of objectively that they have achieved in their research, there rapport with their research subjects
The way they have collected and processed their data in order to ensure methodological integrity
Respondent validation
Involves observer cross-checking their interpretation of a particular situation with those who are being researched to make sure that researcher and researched agree on what is happening
Positivists Critique of Interpretivist Research
They are not generally not very complimentary
Suggests that the interpretivists research process is bad science and poor research
Unsystematic and unstructured because it focuses on naturally occurring behaviour, they are critical of the fact that interpretivists make no attempt to control possible influential IV or causes
Requires the researcher to be part of the study and consequently there is always the possibility that their presence may become obtrusive and influence the behaviour that is researched
Possible to judge from ethnographic research whether the social context or the people studied are in any way typical or representative
Research and data are difficult to replicate and verify because much of it is a product of the unique rapport that they had built up
Qualitative data that interpretivists sociologists may be biased because it is the result of the researcher has experienced thousands of social interactions but in practice only a few selected so unrepresentative
Ethnography is criticised as a methodological approach due to it being involved in being too narrow a view of the group
Researcher usually does not study the wider context within the research setting is located
Other structural influences such as social class or patriarchy on the behaviour of the group being studied
Contrasting Views – Positivists and Interpretivist
Durkheim (1897) – Positivists
Argued that understanding social laws can help sociologists solve social problems and change society for the better
- Durkheim studied statistics from 19th century across Europe
- Observed that suicide rates remain constant over time between societies and between social groups within same society
- Concluded that suicide rate was not the product of individual free will, but social law or fact caused by social organisation of a society
- How badly or well a society promotes social integration or sense of belonging
Atkinson (1978) – Interpretivists
Observed that suicide statistics are not social facts that reflect the social organisation of societies
Rather suicide statistics are socially constructed by coroners who investigate suspicious deaths, and interpret and categorise same of these as suicides using their subjective experiences of past deaths
Critical of Durkheim’s research saying it fails to recognise the subjective factors that contribute to coroners reaching a verdict of suicide such as interaction between the decreased and their friends and family up to death
Reflexivity
Attempted to counter this type of criticism by keeping research dairies that document the trials and tribulations of every stage of the research = reflexivity
Intended as a form of self-evaluation that involves researchers reflecting critically on how they organised the research progress their everyday experiences of it and how a range of influences might have positively or negatively affected the validity
- Power inequalities between the researcher and research subjects affected the quality of the data collected
- Social context of the research
- Mistakes made during the course of the research
- How the researchers own social background and beliefs influenced how they got on with those research subjects or how they are collected with data
Purpose of reflexivity is to document how the researcher’s role might undermine the validity of the findings
It is recognition that the research team might be contributing to the way that the research investigating
Acknowledging that they may be the cause of some of the data that they have collected
A Third Way?
Not all researchers are happy with the positivists/interpretivists divide that is supposed to exist in the world of sociological research
Critics have even gone as far as suggesting that no divide actually exists in real world as many researchers acknowledge that people’s social actions are the result of a combination of free-will and structural constraints
These critics point out that it is rare to find researchers who exclusively use whatever methods work best and this normally means a combination of positivists and interpretivists methodology