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Doing Sociology: Research Methods class 11 Notes Sociology

• Sociological research can provide explanations for issues that affect us both as individuals and as members of larger groups.
• It can help us to make the links between personal troubles and public issues, understanding, for example, how your social background can affect your educational attainment and why people in some countries die from diseases that have long since been eradicated in other parts of the world, etc.
• People hold a vast range of views on social issues, such as why certain people become criminals, why women are massively underrepresented in positions of power in the political and business world, and why fewer people attend religious services now than in the past.
• The findings of sociological research should help lessen the misconceptions and prejudices that often form the basis of commonsense views on many important social issues.
• Sociological research produces facts, knowledge, ideas, etc. Each of these has a particular meaning but can be seen as dimensions of a larger concept that is ‘evidence’. Evidence can be referred to as information that supports a statement. It can also be seen as a form of knowledge derived from various sources. Thus, sociological knowledge is derived from research.

Steps in Research Process

1. Selecting a topic and defining a problem: It relates to what a sociologist wants to know about. The selection may depend on the sociologist’s personal interest, relevance and even availability of funds.
   The selected topic is defined in the form of a problem/a puzzle/question. This puzzle represents a gap in knowledge or understanding. For example, within the topic a lot of research questions can be framed, how far does the economic position of women lag behind that of men or does education lead to better *** ratio etc.
2. Review of secondary literature: Here the sociologist familiarises himself/herself with existing literature on that topic. This literature could be in the form of books, journals, studies, newspaper articles etc. It helps the researcher sharpen his own research questions and also helps in making his own research questionnaire as well as the interview questions.
3. Formulating the hypothesis: Hypothesis is an educated guess about what is going on. The hypothesis tries to answer the research questions before the data collection on the basis of the secondary review of literature. The factual material gathered will provide evidence either supporting or disapproving the hypothesis.
4. Choosing the research method: Any one or a combination of one or more research methods can be used. There are a number of research methods and techniques of data collection such as surveys, observation, case study and interview. The choice of research method or technique depends on a number of factors:
   (a) The nature of research question being asked.
   (b) The time and resources available to researcher.
   (c) Size of community that needs to be studied.
   (d) Preferences of the researcher while some researchers are more comfortable with statistical method and others are more comfortable with anthropological method.
5. Collecting the data and recording the information: The data that is collected needs to be both valid and reliable. It should be valid to the problem that the researcher seeks to find answer for.
6. Analysing the result: It is at this step that the hypothesis is tested. Analysis of the result requires specific technique ranging from statistical analysis to content analysis.
7. Sharing the result: The final report is written or published and shared with other social scientists. This stimulates ideas for further research.

Methodological issues in social research

Objectivity

• It is difficult to be objective because human world cannot be studied in isolation. Human beings may develop bias views and influence the thinking about the group as being a part of it.
• The researcher who carries the research will also have his/her own values and prejudices about the social context they are studying and this may present as difficulty while gathering objective information.
• Since the problem of objectivity cannot be eliminated, a social researcher should try and reduce the problem of objectivity in the following ways:

1. By rigorously and continuously examining one’s own idea and feelings about the subject of research.
2. Through reflexivity: By taking an outsider’s perspective on the work and looking at the research through the eyes of others.
3. By consciously adopting the views of those who are the subjects of research.
4. Making a careful documentation of what one is doing, all procedures undertaken and formal citing of all sources of evidence
5. Objectivityshouldbeapproachedasthegoalofacontinuousongoingprocessandnotasan already achieved end result.