1. Introduction to Research Methods
Soc 3306a Lecture 1
Introduction to Research Methods

2. The Research Question Formal expression of an intellectual puzzle
Gives research focus and direction
Delimits boundaries
Makes research project manageable
Anticipates successful outcome
Three main types:
What = description
Why = understanding, explanation
How = intervention, problem solving

3. Four Research Strategies
Underlying logic of the research inquiry
Based on particular style of reasoning
The first two are the traditional strategies (most common):
A. Inductive: linear, bottom up process
moves from particular to general
B. Deductive: also linear but top down
goes from general to particular

4. Research Strategies (cont.)
The last two are less common but more complex, non-linear processes
Spiral-like processes with many iterations
C. Retroductive (Peirce, Bhaskar)
Use reason and imagination to create an explanatory model and then test its existence in the real world
D. Abductive (Schütz)
Develop concepts and theories from actors’ everyday life and understandings

5. Research Paradigms
Overarching philosophical and theoretical traditions within which attempts to understand the social world are made.
Sociology is a ‘multi-paradigmic science’
Classical
Positivism, Critical Rationalism (Popper), Interpretivism, Classical Hermeneutics
Contemporary
Critical Theory (Habermas), Ethnomethodology, Social Realism (Bhaskar), Contemporary Hermeneutics (Gadamar), Structuration Theory (Giddens), Feminism (Harding, Keller)

6. Ontological Assumptions
What is the nature of social reality?
Continuum from idealism to realism
Idealist (relativist)
External world has no independent existence from our thoughts
Realist
Natural and social phenomena exist independent of the observer
“social facts”

7. Epistemological Assumptions
Theories of knowledge: how do we know what we know?
Empiricism: knowledge is produced through the senses
Rationalism: we construct reality through our minds and thought processes
Falsificationism: hypothetico-deductive method to search for tentative truths
Neo-realism: search for underlying causal structures
Constructionism: reality socially constructed
Conventionalism: reality a human creation

8. Blaikie’s Research Manifesto
What is research?
What are the differences between ‘why,’ ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions?
Can you think of examples of each type?
Blaikie says that research results “are limited in time and space.” What does he mean by this?
How does this make the social science different from the natural sciences?