As social scientific discipline researchers, nosotros would all similar to receive got an fantabulous methodology for carrying out th...
As social scientific discipline researchers, nosotros would all similar to receive got an fantabulous methodology for carrying out the tasks nosotros human face upwards inwards our scientific work. But what just are nosotros looking for when nosotros aspire to this goal? What is a methodology, too what is it intended to allow us to do?
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 methodology is a ready of ideas or guidelines well-nigh how to maintain inwards gathering too validating noesis of a discipline matter. Different areas of scientific discipline receive got developed real dissimilar bodies of methodology on the footing of which to send their research. We powerfulness say that a methodology provides a guide for carrying out some or all of the next activities:
- probing the empirical details of a domain of phenomena
- discovering explanations of surprising outcomes or patterns
- identifying entities or forces
- establishing patterns
- providing predictions
- separating dissonance from signal
- using empirical reasoning to assess hypotheses too assertions
Social scientists receive got a publish of methods, stylized ways of conducting their research that incorporate routine too accepted procedures for doing the rigorous side of science. Each method is loosely attached to a community of social scientists for whom it is the correct means to create things. But no method is the exclusive holding of whatever ane of the social sciences, nor is whatever social science, amongst the possible exception of anthropology, principally organized unopen to the role of ane exceptional method. (13)So a method or a methodology is a ready of recommendations for how to maintain inwards doing scientific research within a surely domain. Sometimes inwards the history of philosophy in that place has been a promise that scientific discipline could maintain on the footing of a pure inductive logic: collect the data, analyze the data, sift through the findings, study the strongest regularities found inwards the information set. But scientific enquiry requires to a greater extent than than this; it requires regain too imagination.
What shape powerfulness a methodology take? The simplest catch is that a methodology is a recipe for arriving at justified scientific statements amongst honour to a domain of empirical phenomena. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 recipe is a ready of instructions for treating a publish of ingredients inwards a sequential means too producing a specific sort of output -- a soufflé or a bowl of pad thai. If you lot follow the recipe, you lot are almost surely to brand it at the soufflé. But it is clear that scientific methodology cannot live every bit prescriptive every bit a recipe. There is no ready of rules that are surely or probable to Pb to the regain of compelling hypotheses too explanations.
So if a scientific methodology isn't a ready of recipes, too so what is it? Here is some other possibility: a methodology consists of a ready of heuristics that serve to guide the activities, information collection, too hypothesis formation of the scientist. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 heuristic is likewise a ready of rules; but it is weaker than a recipe inwards that in that place is no guarantee of success. Here is a heuristic for consumers: "If you lot are selecting a used auto to purchase, pay attending to rust spots." This is a skillful guide to action, non because rust spots are the most of import business office of a car's quality, but because they may serve every bit a proxy for the attentiveness to maintenance of the previous possessor -- too hence live an indication of hidden defects.
Andrew Abbott mentions several fundamental topics for specification through methodology -- "how to advise a question, how to pattern a study, how to depict inferences, how to acquire too analyze data" (13), too he shows that nosotros tin classify methods past times placing them into the types of inquiry they answer.
types of information gathering | data analysis | posing a question |
History | Direct interpretation | Case study analysis |
Ethnography | Quantitative analysis | Small-N comparison |
Surveys | Formal modeling | Large-N analysis |
Record-based analysis |
Abbott suggests that these varieties tin live combined into v basic approaches:
- ethnography
- historical narration
- standard causal analysis
- small-N comparison
- formalization
And he arranges them inwards a three-dimensional space, amongst each dimension increasing from real exceptional noesis at the rootage to to a greater extent than abstract noesis farther out the axis. (Commonsense agreement of the facts lies at the rootage of the mapping.) The 3 axes are formal modeling (syntactic program), pattern finding (semantic program), too campaign finding (pragmatic program) (28).
Abbott is a sociologist whose empirical too theoretical function is truly master copy too important, too nosotros tin larn a lot from his exercise every bit a working researcher. His meta-analysis of methodology, on the other hand, seems fairly distant from his ain practice. And I'm non surely that the analysis of methodology represented hither provides a lot of insight into the research strategies of other talented social scientists (e.g. Tilly, Steinmetz, Perrow, Fligstein). This perchance illustrates a mutual occurrence inwards the history of science: researchers are non ever the best interpreters of their ain practice.
It is likewise interesting to regain that the regain of causal mechanisms has no explicit yell inwards this scheme. Abbott never refers to causal mechanisms inwards the book, too none of the methods he highlights allow us to encounter what he powerfulness recollect well-nigh the mechanisms approach. It would appear that mechanisms theory would reverberate the pragmatic programme (searching for causal relationships) too the semantic programme (discovering patterns inwards the observable data).
My ain map of the varieties of the methods of the social sciences suggests a dissimilar system altogether. This is represented inwards the figure at the hand of the post.
COMMENTS