Summary
Summary Social Research Methods - Alan Bryman
- Course
- Institution
- Book
Summary Social Research Methods by Alan Bryman.
[Show more]
Connected book
Book Title:
Author(s):
- Edition:
- ISBN:
- Edition:
More summaries for
-
Introduction to Social Science Methods: Uitwerkingen Learning Objectives gebaseerd op de Lectures
-
Resume Social Research Methods, ISBN: 9780199689453 Introduction To Research Methodology - Pre-Master 's
-
College notes Introduction To Research Methodology - Pre-Master 's Social Research Methods, ISBN: 9780199689453
5 reviews
By: bas-23082001 • 2 year ago
By: maartjeverduijn • 4 year ago
By: jetskeparee • 4 year ago
By: leurink20 • 4 year ago
By: liesje2404 • 5 year ago
Clear summary of all fabric, stand no errors in vlgm
Seller
Follow
lck97
Reviews received
Content preview
Social research methods – Alan BrymanChapter 1: The nature and process of social research
Social research is academic research on topics relating to questions relevant to social
scientific fields, such as sociology, human geography, social policy, politics and criminology.
Why do social research?
• Gap in literature
• Inconsistency between number of studies
• Unresolved issue in literature
• Development is society that provides an interesting point of departure for research
question
• At its core, it is done because there is an aspect of our understanding of what goes
on in society that is unresolved.
Forming part of the context within which social research and its methods operate:
• The theories that social scientists use to understand the social world have an
influence on what is researched and how research findings are interpreted. The
topics are profoundly influenced by available theoretical ideas.
• The existing knowledge about an area in which a researcher is interested forms an
important part of the background within which social science take place, i.e. be
familiar with the literature.
• The researcher’s view about the nature of the relationship between theory and
research. The researcher might engage in some theoretical reflections out of which a
hypothesis is formulated and subsequently tested.
• The assumptions and views about how research should be conducted influence the
research process. Considerations in testing a hypothesis using precise measurement
technique are called epistemological ones.
• The assumptions about the nature of social phenomena. Ontological considerations
invite us to consider the nature of social phenomena – are they relatively inert and
beyond are influence or are they very much a product of social interaction?
• The values of the research community. Ethical issues have been a point of discussion.
It is now almost impossible to do certain kinds of research without risking
condemnation of the research community and possible censure from the
organizations in which researchers are employed. Also, there is a strong view that
those being researched should be involved in the research process.
• The training and personal values of the researcher form a component of the context
of social research methods in that they may influence the research area, the research
questions, and the methods employed to investigate these.
Elements of the process of social research:
• Literature review, determine a number of things:
➢ What is already known about the topic?
➢ What concepts and theories have been applied to the topic?
➢ What research methods have been applied to the topic?
➢ What controversies exist about the topic and howis it studied?
➢ What clashes of evidence (if any) exist?
1
, ➢ Who are the key contributors on the topic?
• Concepts are the way we make sense of the social world. They are labels we give to
aspects of the social world that seem to have common features that strike us as
significant. Concepts serve several purposes in social research: they are important to
how we organize and signal to intended audiences our research interests. A
deductive approach is theories driving the research process in all its phases. An
inductive approach is theories as a product the research process.
• Research questions are important in research because they force you to consider
that most basic of issues – what is it about your area of interest that you want to
know. They will:
➢ Guide your literature search;
➢ Guide your decisions about the kind of research design to employ;
➢ Guide your decisions about what data to collect and from whom;
➢ Guide your analysis of your data;
➢ Guide your writing-up of your data;
➢ Stop you from going off in unnecessary directions;
➢ Provide your readers with a clearer sense of what your research is about.
• In case study research the goal is to understand the selected case or cases in depth.
• Data collection represents the key point of any research project → structured
interviews, participant observation and semi-structured interviewing. The last two
are used for inductive approaches.
• Data analysis is a stage that incorporates several elements. The raw data have to be
managed, check whether there are there are any obvious flaws. The preparation of
data for transcription enables the researcher to introduce the transcripts into a
computer software program. Once the transcripts have been incorporated within the
software, the authors say they conducted a thematic analysis. The analyst then
searches for recurrences of these sequences of coded text within and across cases
and also for links between different codes. Data analysis can refer to the analysis of
either primary or secondary data.
• We do research so it can be written up, thereby allowing others to read what we
have done and concluded. Structures for most dissertations, theses, and research
articles:
➢ Introduction, research area and its significance are outlined.
➢ Literature review, what is already known?
➢ Research methods, which has/was been used
➢ Results, findings are presented.
➢ Discussion, findings are discussed in relation to their implications for the
literature ad for the research questions previously introduced.
➢ Conclusion, the significance of the research is reinforced for the leader.
Key points:
• Social research and social research methods are embedded in wider contextual
factors. They are not practiced in a vacuum.
• Social research practice comprises elements that are common to all or at least most
forms of social research. These include: a literature review; concepts and theories;
research questions; sampling of cases; data collection; data analysis; and a writing up
of the research finding.
2
, • Attention to these steps is what distinguishes academic social research from other
kinds of social research.
• Although we can attempt to formulate general principles for conducting social
research, we have to recognize that things do not always go entirely to plan.
Chapter 2: Social research strategies: quantitative research and qualitative research
Theory is most commonly used as an explanation of observed regularities.
In social theory, they are more focused on theories with a higher level of abstraction. Ex.
structural functionalism, symbolic interactionalism, critical theory, post-structuralism,
structuration theory. These are all grand theories, operating at a more abstract level.
Merton:
“Grand theories offer few indications to researchers as to how they might guide or influence
the collection of empirical evidence.”
“Middle range theories are intermediate to general theories of social systems which are too
remote from particular classes of social behavior, organization and change to account for
what is observed a to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not
generalized at all.”
Middle range theories operate in a limited domain, they vary in the range of application.
Key concept: empiricism
Definition: 1. It is used to denote a general approach to a study of reality that suggests that
only knowledge gained through experience and the senses is acceptable. In other words,
ideas must be subjected to the rigours of testing before they can be considered knowledge.
2. the belief that the accumulation of facts is a legitimate goal in its own right. Also,
referred to as ‘naive empiricism’.
Deductive theory represents the commonest view of the nature of the
relationship between theory and social research, whereby the researcher draws
upon what is known about in a particular domain and on relevant theoretical
ideas in order to deduce a hypothesis that must then be subjected to empirical
scrutiny. The researcher must both skillfully deduce a hypothesis and then
translate it into operational terms. The researcher must specify how data can be
collected in relation to the concepts that make up the hypothesis.
The revision of the theory involves induction, as the researcher infers the
implications of his or her findings for the theory that prompted the whole
exercise.
With an inductive stance, theory is the outcome of research which involves
drawing generalizable inferences out of observations. This also contains a
degree of deduction, after the theoretical reflection on a set of data has
been carried out, the researcher may want to collect further data in order to
establish the conditions in which a theory will and will not hold. Such
general strategy is often called iterative: it involves weaving bac and forth
between data and theory.
3
,An inductive strategy of linking data and theory is typically associated with qualitative
research, whereas a deductive strategy is associated with qualitative research.
An epistemological issue concerns the question of what is (or should be) regarded as
acceptable knowledge in a discipline. The position that affirms the importance of imitating
the natural sciences is invariably associated with an epistemological position known as
positivism.
Key concept: positivism
This is an epistemological position that advocates the application of methods of the natural
science to the study of social reality and beyond. Positivism may be taken to entail the
following principles:
• Only phenomena and hence knowledge confirmed by the senses can be genuinely
warranted as knowledge (principle of phenomenalism)
• The purpose of theory is to generate hypotheses that can be tested and that will
thereby allow explanations of laws to be assed (principle of deductivism)
• Knowledge is arrived at through the gathering of facts that provide the basis for laws
(principle of inductivism)
• Science must (and presumably can) be conducted in a way that is value free
(objective)
• There is a clear distinction between scientific statements and normative statements
and a belief that the former are the true domain of the scientist. This last principle is
implied by the first because the truth or otherwise of normative statements cannot
be confirmed by the senses.
Interpretivism is a term given to an epistemology that contrasts with positivism. The term
subsumes the views of writers who have been critical of the application of the scientific
model to the study of the social world and who have been influenced by different
intellectual traditions.
Key concept: interpretivism
It is a term given to an epistemology that usually denotes an alternative to the positivist
orthodoxy that has dominated the social sciences for decades. It is founded upon the view
that a strategy is required that respects the differences between people and objects of the
natural sciences and therefore requires the social scientist to grasp the subjective meaning
of social action.
Phenomenology is a philosophy that is concerned with the question of how individuals make
sense of the world around them and how in particular the philosopher should bracket our
preconceptions in his or her grasp of that world.
The social scientist will aim to place the interpretations that have been elicited into a social
scientific framework. There is a double interpretation going on: the researcher provides an
interpretation of others’ interpretations.
It is important to not overstate interconnection between epistemological issues and
research, they represent tendencies rather than definitive points of correspondence.
Questions of social ontology are concerned with the nature of social entities. The central
point of orientation here is the question of whether social entities can and should be
considered objective entities that have a reality external to social actors, or whether they
4
,can and should be considered social constructions built up from these perceptions and
actions of social actors.
These two positions are referred to respectively as objectivism and constructionism.
Key concept: objectivism
It is an ontological position that asserts that social phenomena and their meanings have an
existence that is independent of social actors. It implies that social phenomena and the
categories that we use in everyday discourse have an existence that is independent or
separate from actors.
It adopts standardized procedures for getting things done.
Key concept: constructionism
It is an ontological position (also referred to as constructivism) that asserts that social
phenomena and their meanings are continually being accomplished by social actors. It
implies that social phenomena are not only produced through social interaction but they are
in a constant state of revision.
Constructionism suggests that the categories that people employ in helping them
understand the world around them are in fact social products.
Quantitative research can be represented as a research strategy that emphasizes
quantification in the collection and analysis of data and that
• Entails a deductive approach to the relationship between theory and research, in
which the accent is placed on the testing of theories;
• Has incorporated the practices and norms of the natural scientific model and of
positivism in particular;
• And embodies a view of social reality as an external, objective reality.
Qualitative research can be constructed as a research strategy that usually emphasizes
words rather than quantification in the collection and analysis of data and that
• Emphasizes an inductive approach to the relationship between theory and research,
in which an emphasis is placed the generation of theories.
• Has rejected practices and norms of the natural scientific model, and of positivism in
particular, in preference for an emphasis on how individuals interpreted their social
world;
• And embodies a view of social reality as a constantly shifting emergent property of
individuals’ creation.
5
, Qualitative research can, for instance, be used in order to test theories or at least shed light
on them; it is not a research strategy that is solely concerned with the generation of a
theory.
Social research is influenced by a variety of factors, including values and practical
considerations.
Values reflect either personal beliefs or the feelings of a researcher. These values can
intrude at any or all number of points in the process of social research:
• Choice of research area;
• Formulation of research questions;
• Choice of method;
• Formulation of research design and data-collection
techniques;
• Implementation of data collection;
• Analysis of data;
• Interpretation of data;
• Conclusions.
Research cannot be value free but to ensure that the incursion of values in research is
restrained and to be self-reflective and so exhibit reflexivity.
There are a number of different dimensions to practical issues:
• Choices of research strategy, design, or method have to be tailored to the research
question being investigated.
• If a researcher is interested in a topic on which little or no research has been done in
the past, quantitative research may be difficult to employ, because there is little prior
literature from which to draw leads.
• The nature of the topic and/or of the people being investigated may be another
factor → quantitative vs. qualitative.
Key points
• Quantitative and qualitative research constitute different approaches so social
investigation and carry them with important epistemological and ontological
considerations.
• Theory can be depicted as something that precedes research (as in quantitative
research) or as something that emerges out of it (as qualitative research).
• Epistemological considerations loom large in considerations of research strategy. To
a large extent, these revolve around the desirability of employing a natural science
model (and in particular positivism) versus interpretivism.
• Ontological considerations, concerning objectivism versus constructionism, also
constitute important dimensions of the quantitative/qualitative contrast.
• Values may impinge on the research process at different times.
• Practical considerations in decisions about research methods are also important
factors.
• Feminist researchers have tended to prefer a qualitative approach, though there is
some evidence of a change of viewpoint in this regard.
6
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller lck97. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $7.62. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
62890 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now