Doing Sociology: Research Methods — Class 11 Sociology

What makes a sociologist a social scientist is not how much they know but how they acquire their knowledge — through method, the procedures by which knowledge is gathered. Because sociologists study the very social world they live in, objectivity is harder than in the natural sciences: there is the risk of personal bias, many competing versions of the truth, and multiple theoretical paradigms within the discipline itself. Sociologists guard against bias through self-reflexivity — continuously examining their own ideas and feelings, documenting all procedures and citing sources so others can retrace the steps and check the conclusions, and openly stating features of their own background that could bias the work. Objectivity is therefore a continuous goal rather than a finished result. Sociology uses multiple methods, classified as quantitative or qualitative, observing behaviour or interpreting meaning, using secondary or primary data, and micro or macro in scale; combining methods is called triangulation. Participant observation or fieldwork, central to social anthropology since Malinowski's Trobriand study, involves living among a community for a long period, learning its language, making a census and genealogy, relying on key informants and keeping detailed field notes; in Indian sociology it shaped village studies. Its strength is rich insider knowledge; its weakness is small coverage and the single observer's voice. The survey studies a large population through a carefully chosen representative sample, using stratification and randomisation, accepting a margin of sampling error. The interview is a flexible guided conversation between researcher and respondent, often supplementing other methods.