One of the distinguishing features of the discipline of sociology is its concern with met hods and methodology. By contrast with disciplines as various as history, anthropology, art criticism and economics, sociologists are often criticised for being excessively concer ned with methodological preoccupations and with spending unnecessary time and effort establishing the basis of the knowledge and research findings which they present. This preoccupation really needs no defence. From the time at least of Max Weber onwards, a healthy debate has gone on among sociologists, at both the level of general methodology and in relation to particular research methods, about the “scientific” basis of sociological knowledge and about the warrants for the statements which sociologists make. If sociology is justifiably self-reflective about its methodological stance, a further is sue which receives widely differing answers is whether sociology is characterised by use of particular methods. Is there one method which is most characteristic of the discipli ne, which embodies its approach and which is most characteristic of what sociologists do when they conduct empirical social research? Arguably the reason that economists and anthropologists are less preoccupied with methods is that there is a greater degree of agreement about the methods which are used, and to a considerable extent taken for granted, by members of the discipline. In anthropology, for example the mystique around “field work” as a rite de passage is a very strongly held principle, while many an thropologists have traditionally maintained that they are studying “other” cultures than their own, and are not equipped to carry out studies of their own society. [This view has always been disputed and is not held by some younger social anthropologists]. This note is concerned with the relationship between sociologists and one parti cular research method, large scale social survey research, typically using large natio nal samples selected using probability methods. These reflections are prompted by my own sociological career over the last forty years, coming into sociology from the study of history in the early 1960s, pursuing an interest in research methods throug hout most of the intervening period, and in the later years of full time employment working intensively for much of my time over a five year period on two projects con cerned with disseminating information about large-scale UK social survey research to the UK academic community. This recent experience has made me acutely aware of the ambivalence of perhaps a majority of UK sociologists toward survey research, and an awareness that the principal UK academic developments in survey research are not necessarily being carried out by sociologists. One does need to distinguish between disciplines, one of which is sociology, re search methods, one of which is survey research, and techniques of investigation, such as questionnaire construction and interviewing, which are part of the building blocks of particular methods. The degree of fit between discipline and method varies, and a
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Jan 1, 2022
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