Social Research and Market Research

Abstract

There are various errors and misunderstandings in Mr. Payne's essay ('Social Research and Market Research', Sociology, May 1979) that I would like to correct. Michael Young first discussed with me the possible establishment of an S SRC Survey Unit because the 'intellectual processes' of sociologists were such that a majority of the applications for research grants received by the Council were for funds to carry out surveys. And many of these applications were being turned down (by the academic peers of the applicants) on the grounds that the applicant seemed to lack the skills in survey research necessary to make good use of the money. Given this determination on the part of sociologists to use this particular form of research the Council could, I suppose, have adopted a Canute-like posture; instead it sought some instrument through which the quality of survey research could be improved without discouraging the would-be surveyors. The eagerness to engage in survey research was not limited to social scientists who applied to the SSRC for funds. Very early in its career the Unit carried out a census of all social science research then being conducted in the United Kingdom by non-profit bodies. Information was received from 531 university and polytechnic teaching departments and from 160 university research units; between them they described over one thousand research projects then in hand; two-thirds of them claimed that they had complete freedom in deciding their research area and their research methods and design, and that 60 per cent of all projects involved the use of survey methods. These findings hardly suggest an SSRC conspiracy, via the Survey Unit, to force survey research upon an academic world that otherwise would have pursued 'methodological pluralism'. When, therefore, I developed with Andrew Shonfield, then Chairman of the Council, a statement of the Unit's purposes the result was a five-point paragraph of which the first two items were: '(1) To provide advice and assistance in all stages of survey research. (2) To stimulate and help in the systematic training of social scientists in survey methods.' (The latter aim it was hoped would be pursued by supporting the Nuffield College Summer School on Survey Methods, and by encouraging British universities to provide a British equivalent of the University of Michigan's deservedly famous and long-running Detroit Area Study) . So much for Geoffrey Payne's 'conspiracy'. May I now turn to some specific points in his article?