Social research is the act of gathering data that can help a person to answer the questions about the various aspects of the society. These questions can be generalized, or very specific in terms of the problems.
The research methods, such as surveys and experiments have a
major impact on the society through their findings. They are increasingly being
used outside of the social sciences, in the other sectors of the society. For
example- surveys being conducted to determine proper voting hours in
presidential elections. Traditionally, there were two ways of determining the
voting hours. The scientist would develop a theory concerning the voting hours
that would best meet the goals of democracy, and then the survey could be used
to gather data for testing the theory. This was one way. The other way could be
by conducting surveys to directly ask people when it would be most convenient
for them to vote, and to open polls at those hours to ensure maximum number of
voters.
In presidential elections of 1980, the surveys turned out to
have a beneficial impact on the voting pattern. Surveys that were conducted by
major television networks showed that Ronald Regan was ahead of president
carter. As a result, carter conceded, and some of the potential voters believed
that their vote would not play a part in the outcome of the election. There was
a difference of three hours in the closing of east coast polls and the west
coast polls. Therefore, there was a talk of closing the poll at the same time
across the country. A study shows that exit polls suggest a clear winner, when previously
the race has been considered close.
Gathering of data is done through personal interviews of eye
witnesses and other ‘non-scientific’ manner. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 not
only were widely reported by the international media, but also spawned a number
of social surveys designed to gather data about not only opinions concerning
the underlying cause of the riot, but a number of other matters as well.
It is not necessary that research methods, including exit
polls are always correct. For example- November 1989 exit pole in Virginia, US
which accurately showed democrat L. Douglas wilder as the winner over the
republican j. Marshall Coleman. However, there was an error of 5 percentage
points between the victory, which is outside of the normally accepted standards
of sampling error. Reason fir the same could be the reluctance to accept that some
of them were not voting for the black candidate (welder) for the fear of being
labelled as racist.
SOCIAL
SCIENCE AS SCIENCE
The society in which we live, is very complex and is needed
to be understood, since, the social environment affects us just as directly and
deeply as the physical environment, although in different ways. It has been
relatively recent, that we have started to study the social sciences. However,
there has been much less funding for social science research than for other
physical sciences. One explanatory answer for this has always been that physical
scientists could expect more satisfactory result than social sciences. As a
result, most of the funding were spent on the space programs and as a result
social science was so poorly developed, that it would achieve very little. But
soon, due to certain world events, they recognized the importance of study of
social sciences with the physical sciences, and the interdependency of the two.
A crucial question in social sciences concern the nature of
social phenomena and how they can best be understood. Different sociologists
had different perspective about it. Wilhelm Dilthey, a nineteenth century
sociologist, believed that no one can generalize or predict they actions of
humans. Whereas Emile Durkheim had the opposite view. He said, that social
phenomena can be generalized. According to him, there was a little difference
between physical science and social science except for subject matters. Weber,
however, took and intermediate approach between the two extremes, and stated
his view that though humans have free will, but the actions are in a rational
pattern, that can be predicted.
Most social scientists believed that social phenomena are
orderly enough to be explained and predicted. But some believed that not all
social phenomena could be explained or predicted accurately. Others believed
that the phenomena contain some random element or margin of error. The social
scientists agreed to the view of positivism. This means that social phenomena
are considered to be objectively occurring phenomena. It came to be seen as
pure science rather that applied (its task is to gather information rather than
to use it), abstract rather than concrete, it does not concern itself with
history, but with the generations of scientific laws.
STAGES OF
SOCIAL RESEARCH
Though different sociologists have different point of view,
but they have a common goal of understanding the society, and hence will have
common stages of research. There are five stages of research, as discussed
below. Each of the stages are dependent on the other.
Circularity
The research process is in the form of a circle. After the
researcher completes stage 5, and the study is found to be unsuccessful or
partially successful, the researcher has to return to the early stages of the
investigation, and repeat all the stages beginning with the faulty stage.
Replication
Once the research is completed, and proved successful, the
researcher must re analyse all the stages of his research to ensure better
accuracy of the hypothesis. But due to lack of money and funding, usually
repeats the hypothesis with few modifications. Nevertheless, research is a never-ending
process, it may be proved wrong in further investigations.
Examples:
density research
While all social research projects share the five basic
stages, but they are very different in how they are carried out. Different
approaches were carried out for the study on the effects of density on human
population. One of the studies is “population density and pathology: what are
the relations for man?’ by Galle, Gove and McPherson (1972). The other study by
Griffith and Veitch (1971) is “hot and crowded: influence of population density
and temperature on interpersonal affective behaviour”. There is a comparison
made on these studies through the five stages of research.
1.
Choosing the problem and stating the hypothesis- it is obvious, that the first step towards research is to
know the subject matter and form adequate hypothesis to formulate the
hypothesis and gather facts and information.
2.
Research design- in this stage, the researcher has to decide how to measure
the two main variables (density and social effects) and on what group/how many
people to test the hypothesis.
3.
Gathering the data- here, people are chosen for surveys, and the data is
collected. Griffith and Veitch decided to conduct a laboratory study, about the
degree of aggressiveness by how well the subject like the hypothetical
stranger. There were total 8 experimental conditions by varying density and
heat of the room. Galle also performed the experiment. Persons in the Griffith’s
study were randomly assigned the experimental conditions. In the Galle study,
data had already been collected. He researchers could not collect exactly the
data they wanted, but had to use whatever was available in the fact book
4.
Coding and analysing the data- through analysing of the data, Griffith and Veitch
concluded, that high density increases the tendency of people to dislike one
another. Density analysis was more complicated in the Galle study, since there
were many confounding factors that might affect the relationship between
density and pathology.
5.
Interpreting the result and testing the hypothesis- Griffith and Veitch found evidence to support the
hypothesis. Now the next step was to replicate the study, make some changes or
conduct study with a larger sample of people to make sure that their finding
was not fluke. The evidences in Galle’s study seemed to indicate that density
does not cause pathology, but that both density level and pathology level vary
with social class. They left the hypothesis unchanged and revised the study.
They found that when density is measured by persons per room, there is a
relation between density and pathology, hence the hypothesis was supported.
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