Nicole Sweeney 00:00:00
What gives social science its scientific basis? The sciences you probably associate with science—things like biology, physics, or chemistry—can appear to be very different from sociology and the ideas we've discussed thus far. However, sociology is a branch of science, albeit one without beakers or microscopes. Sociology investigates the social world as opposed to the physical, natural world. Currently, there are various schools of thought within sociology regarding the most effective method for comprehending the social world. However, one of the main ways that sociology is conducted shares many of the same fundamental ideas and procedures as any of your hard clinical sciences. Can sociology apply science-based methods? Check. Does it rely on factual information? Check. And charts? Yes, indeed! *intro
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A science is really any activity that employs a methodical approach to knowledge acquisition, commonly referred to as the scientific method. Basically, you formulate a question about the world and then create a verifiable theory to explain how you can respond to it. And you create and test your theory by accumulating empirical evidence, which is verifiable data that is gathered methodically. Now, the scientific method is based on the positivist philosophy, whether you're using it to investigate the natural world or the social world. Positivism is an idea first advanced by Auguste Comte, the man we recently introduced as the father of sociology. It contends that phenomena can be studied through
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You might be wondering at this point how positivity and positivism fit in. Comte seemed to always see the bright side of things. Positive in this context does not, however, imply optimism, nor does it imply that I am confident in my position. Instead, a positive theory is one that is factual and objective, as opposed to a normative theory, which is value-based and subjective. Which brings us to the first of our three categories of sociological inquiry: positivist sociology, which is the social science that bases its findings on a careful examination of social behavior. And the key word here is "objective." In order to approach their work as objective observers and use empirical evidence to address questions about how the social world functions, sociologists must put aside their own values and beliefs in order to be scientific researchers.
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What sort of proof are you seeking then? You need data if you're conducting quantitative research. The study of observable relationships in the real world using mathematical or statistical techniques is known as quantitative research. Essentially, quantitative evidence is data that can be counted or added up. However, this isn't just referring to numerical information like age or income. It can also be used to group people or things into categories, such as your state of residence, gender, or race. And there are numerous ways to use quantitative evidence. For instance, descriptive data does exactly what it says on the tin. It describes information pertinent to the topic of your research. For instance, you might be interested in learning how income is distributed among American households. Here, quantitative data are your ally. The 2014 household income distribution is shown in the graph below, which was created by the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of households at each income level is represented by the height of the bars in the graph. The 50th point, which is the median income and the exact middle observation in the sample, is also a crucial one. Accordingly, 50% of households have incomes below that level and 50% have incomes above it. The median income in this situation is $53,700.
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However, be cautious when extrapolating meaning from this graph. The median is not the same as the average household income, despite being the observation in the middle. The mean, which is the sum of all values divided by the total number of observations, deserves this distinction. The average household income in 2014 was $75,700. That exceeds the median by a wide margin. What's going on there? Why do the mean and median differ from one another? Consider "the 1%," the population that the Occupy Wall Street Movement focused on. Actually, that political designation is a descriptive statistic. The percentage of the population with the highest income is described. We have a difference between the mean and the median because the income of that 1% is so much higher than the incomes of the other 99%. I'm not trying to be political here; this is just pure math. What will happen to the mean income if there are 99 people making $50,000 annually and one person making $50,000,000 annually? By the one extremely wealthy person, it will be greatly increased. The mean will be more than $500,000 even though the mode, or the most frequent observation in your sample, is $50,000, which is also the median income.
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Information that is not in numerical form, or qualitative data, is another type of evidence that sociologists use. Qualitative data aim to illustrate or characterize, whereas quantitative data aim to measure. There are times when the data you require cannot or should not be reduced to a number in a spreadsheet. Instead, you make use of descriptions of the world gleaned from discussions, surveys, and personal observation. For instance, why do some people enter into long-term partnerships without getting married, while others do not? Maybe some of that can be measured, but a lot of the decision-making process will depend on how the couple feels about marriage. And the statistic makes it difficult to easily state that.
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Of course, sociology has its limitations as a positive discipline. Not all the information you seek about society will fall into observable or quantifiable categories. What's worse is that people are generally unpredictable; I'm not sure if you've noticed this. The environment in which research is conducted is largely under full scientific control in the natural sciences. They probably won't develop free will and interfere with your carefully planned experiment, like microbes in a Petri dish. However, if you're researching human behavior, you have no control over the surroundings or how your subject behaves with them. Therefore, if you're curious about something like how parenting style affects a child's development, Because it is unethical, you cannot assign babies to parents at random. Evidently, parents desire to raise their own offspring. In addition, you might not want to exert as much control over the environment. You don't want your research techniques to influence how people behave in the real world if that is something you are interested in. Because it is a known fact that subjects who are aware of being watched may alter their behavior.
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Let's visit the Thought Bubble for a really entertaining and fascinating example of this. Australian sociologist Elton Mayo visited the Hawthorne Works, a telephone manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois, in the late 1920s. His objective was to assist the Western Electric Company in determining how to increase employee productivity. Mayo divided the factory workers into two groups: an experimental group and a control group that continued to work under the same circumstances as before. Mayo altered the working environment in a number of ways for the experimental group. He changed their shift times, the length of their breaks, and even the factory floor's lighting. And lo, the adjustments appeared to be working. The experiment's employees
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But in actuality, it wasn't the physical environment that had changed that made a difference. The workers were more productive when the room was brighter, but it turned out that the opposite was also true when the lights were dimmed and all of the other changes made by Mayo. Mayo eventually understood that the workers were exerting more effort as a result of his observation. The workers were motivated to work harder because they knew someone was observing how hard they worked. Furthermore, this discovery at the Hawthorne Works inspired later researchers to pay much closer attention to how their own presence affected their results. The Hawthorne Effect is still used to describe how an observer can affect the actions of her participants. Thanks, Thinking Bubble.
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So yes, it can be difficult to conduct scientific research on people and their behavior. The fact that not all social facts can be applied to all people in all contexts is another issue with positivist sociology. Truth is not always objective, in other words. It's comparable to telling someone about your preferred book. You have no idea what the word "objectively" means if you're trying to persuade them that Harry Potter is objectively the best book series ever written. The best book is a matter of opinion; there is no absolute truth. That is wholly subjective because it is based on your individual feelings and experiences. However, despite the fact that we are unable to generalize, sociologists still believe that subjective experiences are valid, significant, and even worthwhile study.
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In sociology, subjectivity is defined as the interpretation that individuals give to their own personal experiences. This brings up a different method of conducting sociological. The study of society known as interpretive sociology is concerned with the meanings that people give to their social environment. Interpretive sociology inquires as to why a person behaves in a particular way, whereas positivist sociology is more interested in whether a person acts in a particular way, something you can see from the outside. What's the significance of it? How do people see their own deeds and thoughts, furthermore? Instead of approaching their subjects through quantitative data, interpretive sociologists attempt to understand them as individuals. As a result, this kind of research uses fewer statistics. Interpretive sociologists, however, frequently
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There is currently another school of thought regarding how sociological research can be carried out, and it actually relaxes some of the presumptions we made earlier regarding the objectivity of the researcher. These scholars think that subjectivity, especially with regard to values, has plenty of room in sociology. Values are a person's conceptions of what is right and their attitudes to the way the world functions. And these very values are frequently the source of curiosity about a research topic. Many academics are drawn to the study of sociology because they want to comprehend moral or political issues regarding how societies function. For instance, how do racial disparities and poverty compare in the US? How can recognizing that connection aid in severing the link , or social science research that emphasizes the need for social change. These concepts have a long history, dating back to the 19th century, when Jane Addams founded the Hull House, an organization that not only offered low-income residents of Chicago housing and educational opportunities but also conducted research on the causes and remedies of poverty.
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