types of experiments in sociology

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Chapter 2. Sociological Research

2.2. Research Methods

Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study — perhaps a positivist, quantitative method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know that they are being observed. A researcher would not stroll into a crime-ridden neighbourhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally. The unique nature of human research subjects is that they can react to the researcher and change their behaviour under observation.

Making Connections: Sociological Research

The hawthorne effect.

In the 1920s, leaders of a Chicago factory, called Hawthorne Works, commissioned a study to determine whether or not changing certain aspects of working conditions could increase or decrease worker productivity. Sociologists were interested in the increased productivity of a test group when the lighting of their workspace was improved. They were surprised however when productivity improved if the lighting of the workspace was dimmed, as well. In fact almost every change of independent variable — lighting, work breaks, work hours — resulted in an improvement of productivity. But when the study was over, productivity dropped again.

Why did this happen? In 1953, Henry A. Landsberger analyzed the study results to answer this question. He realized that employees’ productivity increased because sociologists were paying attention to them. The sociologists’ presence influenced the study results. Worker behaviours were altered not by the lighting but by the study itself. From this, sociologists learned the importance of carefully planning their roles as part of their research design (Franke & Kaul, 1978). Landsberger called the workers’ response the Hawthorne effect  — people change their behaviour when they know they are being watched as part of a study.

The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known for ethical reasons. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld, 1985). Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviours, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers cannot just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Ku Klux Klan conclaves and unobtrusively observe behaviours. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the studies’ outcomes. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topic and that fit with their overall goal for the research.

In planning a study’s design, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, experiment, field research, and textual or secondary data analysis (or use of existing sources). Every research method comes with pluses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a written questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used sociological research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point or another, everyone responds to some type of survey. The Statistics Canada census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Customers also fill out questionnaires on-line and at stores or promotional events, responding to questions such as “How did you hear about the event?” and “Were the staff helpful?” Many people have probably picked up the phone and heard a caller ask them to participate in a political poll or similar type of survey: “Do you eat hot dogs? If yes, how many per month?” Not all surveys would be considered sociological research. Marketing polls help companies refine their marketing goals and strategies; they are generally not conducted as part of a scientific study, meaning they are not designed to test a hypothesis or to contribute knowledge to the field of sociology. The results are not published in a refereed scholarly journal where design, methodology, results, and analyses are vetted.

Often, polls on TV do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or Canadian Idol represent the opinions of fans, but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement (BBM) (now called Numeris) ratings, which determine the popularity of radio and television programming in Canada through scientific market research. Their researchers ask a large random sample of Canadians, age 12 and over, to fill out a television or radio diary for one week, noting the times and the broadcasters they listened to or viewed. Based on this methodology they are able to generate an accurate account of media consumers preferences, which are used to provide broadcast ratings for radio and television stations and define the characteristics of their core audiences.

Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think — or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track attitudes and opinions, political preferences, individual behaviours (e.g., sleeping, driving, dietary, or texting habits), or factual social background information (e.g., employment status, income, and education levels). A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as Canadian citizens, university athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes.

Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample : That is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples can be used to represent the population as a whole. The larger the sample size, the more accurate the results will be in characterizing the population being studied. For practical purposes, however, a sample size of 1,500 people will give acceptably accurate results even if the population being researched was the entire adult population of Canada. For instance, an Ipsos Reid poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 1,500 or 10,000 people.

Typically surveys will include a figure that gives the margin of error of the survey results. This is a measure of reliability. Based on probabilities, this will give a range of values within which the true value of the population characteristic will be. This figure also depends on the size of a sample. For example, a political poll based on a sample of 1,500 respondents might state that if an election were called tomorrow the Conservative Party would get 30% of the vote plus or minus 2.5% based on a confidence interval of 95%. That is, there is a 5% chance that the true vote would fall outside of the range of 27.5% to 32.5%, or 1 time out of 20 if pollsters were to conduct the poll 20 times. If the poll was based on a sample of 1,000 respondents, the margin of error would be higher, plus or minus 3.1%. This is significant, of course, because if the Conservatives are polling at 30% and the Liberals are polling at 28% the poll would be inconclusive about which party is actually ahead with regard to actual voter preferences.

Problems with accuracy or reliability can result if sample sizes are too small because there is a stronger chance the sample size will not capture the actual distribution of characteristics of the whole population. In small samples the characteristics of specific individuals have a greater chance of influencing the results. The reliability of surveys can also be threatened when part of the population is inadvertently excluded from the sample (e.g., telephone surveys that rely on land lines exclude people that use only cell phones) or when there is a low response rate. There is also a question of what exactly is being measured by the survey. This is a question of validity . Does asking whether a voter would choose the Conservatives, Liberals, NDP, or Greens if an election was held today accurately measure their actual voting behaviour on election day? In the BC election of 2013, polls found that the NDP had the largest popular support but on election day many people who said they would vote NDP did not actually vote, which resulted in a Liberal majority government.

After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask a list of standardized questions and record responses. It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study upfront. If they agree to participate, researchers thank the subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researchers present the subjects with an instrument or means of gathering the information. A common instrument is a structured written questionnaire in which subjects answer a series of set questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question.

This kind of quantitative data  — research collected in numerical form that can be counted — is easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” answers or tabulate the scales of “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” etc. responses, and chart them into percentages. This is also the chief drawback of questionnaires, however: their artificiality. The artificial nature of the questions affects their validity. In real life, there are rarely any unambiguously yes or no answers. Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers beyond yes, no, agree, strongly agree, or another option next to a check box. For example, How do you plan to use your university education? Why do you follow Justin Bieber on Twitter? In those cases, the answers are more nuanced, varying from person to person. Those types of survey questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to provide those answers will convey personal information about their beliefs, views, and attitudes that will need to be interpreted and coded by the researcher.

Some topics that reflect internal subjective perspectives are impossible to quantify simply. Sometimes they can be sensitive and difficult to discuss with a researcher straightforwardly. Sometimes they are nuanced and ambiguous. People might not know how to answer a question on a topic, but the way in which they formulate their response can be illuminating to sociologists. This type of information is qualitative data  — results that are subjective and often based on what is experienced in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising and unpredictable in advance. Nevertheless, the responses are a richer source of primary data on a topic.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and is another way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. They can be quantitative if the questions are standardized and have numerically quantifiable answers: Are you employed? (Yes=0, No=1); On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you describe your level of optimism? They can also be qualitative if participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly. Questions such as “How did society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. Obviously, a sociological interview is also not supposed to be an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust by empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and by listening without judgement.

2. Experiments

People often test personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When one tests a theory, the results either prove or disprove a hypothesis. On an individual level these tests are often of dubious value, of course. If one fails a test once using a particular study technique, it is not likely that one will try the same method 100 more times to make sure. It is also not likely that one rigorously controls the experimental conditions to make sure that it is studying at night and not some other factor that produces the results. However the underlying idea is the same as that used in sociological experiments.  One way sociological researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they test a hypothesis by introducing a variable to a control group and an experimental group under controlled circumstances and compare the outcomes — a scientific approach.

There are two main types of experiments in sociology: lab-based experiments, and natural or field experiments. In a lab setting the research can be controlled so that, perhaps, more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled, but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher. As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result.

To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables. Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group . The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. This is similar to pharmaceutical drug trials in which the experimental group is given the test drug and the control group is given a placebo or sugar pill.

An Experiment in Action: Mincome

A real-life example will help illustrate the field experimental process in sociology. Between 1974 and 1979 an experiment was conducted in the small town of Dauphin, Manitoba (the “garden capital of Manitoba”). Each family received a modest monthly guaranteed income — a “mincome” — equivalent to a maximum of 60% of the “low-income cut-off figure” (a Statistics Canada measure of poverty, which varies with family size). The income was 50 cents per dollar less for families who had incomes from other sources. Families earning over a certain income level did not receive mincome. Families that were already collecting welfare or unemployment insurance were also excluded. The test families in Dauphin were compared with control groups in other rural Manitoba communities on a range of indicators such as number of hours worked per week, school performance, high school drop out rates, and hospital visits (Forget, 2011). A guaranteed annual income was seen at the time as a less costly, less bureaucratic public alternative for addressing poverty than the existing employment insurance and welfare programs. Today it is an active proposal being considered in Switzerland (Lowrey, 2013).

Intuitively, it seems logical that lack of income is the cause of poverty and poverty-related issues. One of the main concerns, however, was whether a guaranteed income would create a disincentive to work. The concept appears to challenge the principles of the Protestant work ethic (see the discussion of Max Weber in Chapter 1. An Introduction to Sociology ). The study did find very small decreases in hours worked per week: about 1% for men, 3% for married women, and 5% for unmarried women. Forget (2011) argues this was because the income provided an opportunity for people to spend more time with family and school, especially for young mothers and teenage girls. There were also significant social benefits from the experiment, including better test scores in school, lower high school drop out rates, fewer visits to hospital, fewer accidents and injuries, and fewer mental health issues.

Ironically, due to lack of guaranteed funding (and lack of political interest by the late 1970s), the data and results of the study were not analyzed or published until 2011. The data were archived and sat gathering dust in boxes. The mincome experiment demonstrated the benefits that even a modest guaranteed annual income supplement could have on health and social outcomes in communities. People seem to live healthier lives and get a better education when they do not need to worry about poverty. In her summary of the research, Forget notes that the impact of the income supplement was surprisingly large given that at any one time only about a third of the families were receiving the income and, for some families, the income amount would have been very small. The income benefit was largest for low-income working families, but the research showed that the entire community profited. The improvement in overall health outcomes for the community suggest that a guaranteed income would also result in savings for the public health system.

To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring while the control group does not receive tutoring. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. In a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for instance.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps one of the most famous sociological field experiments ever conducted. In 1971, 24 healthy, middle-class male university students were selected to take part in a simulated jail environment to examine the effects of social setting and social roles on individual psychology and behaviour. They were randomly divided into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. The prisoner subjects were arrested at home and transported, blindfolded, to the simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building on the campus of Stanford University. Within a day of arriving the prisoners and the guards began to display signs of trauma and sadism respectively. After some prisoners revolted by blockading themselves in their cells, the guards resorted to using increasingly humiliating and degrading tactics to control the prisoners through psychological manipulation. The experiment had to be abandoned after only six days because the abuse had grown out of hand (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973). While the insights into the social dynamics of authoritarianism it generated were fascinating, the Stanford Prison Experiment also serves as an example of the ethical issues that emerge when experimenting on human subjects. It was also not a true experiment in the sense that there was no comparison between a control group and the experimental group.

3. Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined experimental spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive approach rather than to positivist approaches. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In fieldwork, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element. The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people, gathering data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it is a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or a boxing club, a hospital or an airport, a mall or a beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting, the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviours in that setting. Fieldwork is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for developing causal explanations of why they behave that way. From the small size of the groups studied in fieldwork, it is difficult to make predictions or generalizations to a larger population. Similarly, there are difficulties in gaining an objective distance from research subjects. It is difficult to know whether another researcher would see the same things or record the same data. There are three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

When is sharing not such a good idea.

Choosing a research methodology depends on a number of factors, including the purpose of the research and the audience for whom the research is intended. The type of research that might go into producing a government policy document on the effectiveness of safe injection sites for reducing the public health risks of intravenous drug use, would be different than exploratory research into the meaning of drug use in specific subcultures. Public administrators likely want “hard” (i.e., quantitative) evidence of high reliability to help them make a policy decision. The most reliable data would come from an experimental research model in which a control group can be compared with an experimental group using quantitative measures.

This approach has been used by researchers studying InSite in Vancouver (Marshall et al., 2011; Wood et al., 2006). InSite is a supervised safe-injection site where heroin addicts and other intravenous drug users can go to inject drugs in a safe, clean, supervised environment. Clean needles are provided and health care professionals are on hand to intervene in the case of overdoses or other medical emergency. It is a controversial program both because heroin use is against the law (the facility operates through a federal ministerial exemption) and because the heroin users are not obliged to quit using or seek therapy. To assess the effectiveness of the program, researchers compared the risky usage of drugs in populations before and after the opening of the facility and geographically near and distant to the facility. The results from the studies have shown that InSite has reduced both deaths from overdose and risky behaviours, such as the sharing of needles, without increasing the levels of crime associated with drug use and addiction.

On the other hand, if the research question is more exploratory, the more nuanced approach of fieldwork is more appropriate. Graduate student Andrew Ivsins at the University of Victoria wanted to study the reasons why individuals in the crack smoking subculture engage in the risky activity of sharing pipes despite the known risks. The research needed to focus on the subcultural context, rituals, and meaning of sharing pipes, and why these phenomena override known health concerns. Ivsins studied the practice of sharing pipes among 13 habitual users of crack cocaine in Victoria, B.C. (Ivsins, 2010; Ivsins, Roth, Benoit, Fischer, 2013). He met crack smokers in their typical setting downtown, and used an unstructured interview method to try to draw out the informal norms that lead to sharing pipes. One factor he discovered was the bond that formed between friends or intimate partners when they shared a pipe. He also discovered that there was an elaborate subcultural etiquette of pipe use that revolved around the benefit of getting the crack resin smokers left behind. Both of these motives tended to outweigh the recognized health risks of sharing pipes (such as hepatitis) in the decision making of the users. This type of research was valuable in illuminating the unknown subcultural norms of crack use that could still come into play in a harm reduction strategy, such as distributing safe crack kits to addicts.

Participant Observation

Loïc Wacquant is a French sociologist who grew up in Montpellier in the south of France, but when he came to the U.S. to study life in Chicago’s south side ghetto he joined the Woodlawn boxing gym, as its only white member, “seeking an observation point from which to scrutinize, listen to, and touch up-close the everyday reality of the black American ghetto” (Wacquant, 2004). It was by accident then that he started his research into boxing. Over a period of three years of intensive practice he became an accomplished apprentice boxer, which also enabled him to participate in the lives of the club members, “accompany[ing] them in their everyday peregrinations outside of it, in search of a job or an apartment, hunting for bargains in ghetto stores, in their hassles with their wives, the local welfare office, or the police, as well as cruising with their “homies” from the fearsome housing projects nearby.” What he discovered was the “highly codified nature of pugilistic violence,” the various methods of building, risking, and protecting the boxer’s “bodily capital,” and the deeply embedded ways in which the boxing gym was integrated into the habitus of ghetto life. Wacquant coined the term carnal sociology to refer to a type of sociology that studies the social world from the point of view of the bodies and bodily practices of the participants (Wacquant, 2015).

Wacquant had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers study a naturally occurring social activity without imposing artificial or intrusive research devices, like fixed questionnaire questions, onto the situation. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behaviour. Researchers temporarily put themselves into “native” roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, or live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers often have a question that cannot be answered from the secondary literature: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” “What is it like to be homeless?” or “What is hip hop subculture like in the 21st century?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside. Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open-minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results.

Loïc Wacquant was upfront about his mission. The boxers of the Woodland’s club knew why he was in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviours of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behaviour. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job. Once inside a group, some researchers spend months, or even years, pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book, describing what they witnessed and experienced.

One of the most famous studies of this sort was Rosenhan’s (1973), “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” Unbeknownst to staff, Rosenhan and eight of his colleagues gained admission as patients into 12 different psychiatric hospitals. They wanted to test whether, and how, sanity could be distinguished from insanity in the institutions that had been created to make this distinction, and how people are treated on the basis of that distinction. As Rosenhan put it, although people generally believe they can tell the normal from the abnormal, “there are a great deal of conflicting data on the reliability, utility, and meaning of such terms as ‘sanity,’ ‘insanity,’ ‘mental illness,’ and ‘schizophrenia.'” Despite their normal behaviour, the pseudo-patients were not detected. Rosenhan noted that when diagnoses had been made, it was very difficult to reverse them. “Once a person is designated abnormal, all of his other behaviours and characteristics are coloured by that label.” Moreover, the psychological consequences for the pseudo-patients was distressing and far from therapeutic. All of the pseudo patients reported feelings of powerlessness, depersonalization, segregation, and mortification. “At times, depersonalization reached such proportions that pseudo-patients had the sense that they were invisible, or at least unworthy of account.”  Rosenhan concluded that the outcome for the pseudo patients was not the result of personal failings or callousness of staff — the “overwhelming impression of them was of people who really cared, who were committed and who were uncommonly intelligent” — but of the environment and structure of the hospitals themselves.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Researchers seek to immerse themselves in the life of a bounded group by living and working among them. Often ethnography involves participant observation — Loïc Wacquant’s research mentioned above is an ethnography — but the focus is the systematic observation of an entire community.

The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. It aims at developing a thick description of people’s behaviour that describes not only the behaviour itself but the layers of meaning that form the context of the behaviour (Geertz, 1973). An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small Newfoundland fishing town, an Inuit community, a scientific research laboratory, a backpacker’s hostel, a private boarding school, or Disney World. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain unique ways and respect certain unique cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible, and keeping careful notes on their observations. A sociologist studying ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon might learn the language, watch the way shaman and apprentices go about their daily lives, ask individuals about the meaning of different aspects of the activity, study the group’s cosmology, and then write a paper about it. To observe a Buddhist retreat centre, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record how people experience spirituality in this setting, and collate the material into results.

Latour and Woolgar’s (1986) study of the Salk Institute Laboratory in California is an example of ethnography that detailed the social processes of science by following the paper trail involved in publishing articles of scientific research. How are the objective truths arrived at before they are stated in scientific papers? What do scientists actually do to produce objective science, especially when the factual “things” they seek to describe are complex, diffuse, and messy?

Latour and Woolgar watched the work of the Salk Institute scientists for two years as the scientists studied and isolated endocrinological (hormonal) processes in the body. They noted that the major product or focus of the lab was the creation of texts and that every activity, from the preparation of samples to the sweeping of the floors, was in some way involved in this process.  In the end, each scientific paper cost approximately $30,000 U.S. to produce — in 1979 dollars. Therefore, detailing each step in the process provided an overall picture of the culture of this tribe of scientists as they sought to provide accounts of reality.

From this vantage point, Latour and Woolgar were fascinated with the processes of inscription by which material substances, like the brain tissues of rats, were extracted, rendered as test tube samples and then turned into textual outputs like graphic arrays or numerical figures. On the basis of comparing mathematical curves of these textual “traces” of the original substances, scientists were able to say whether they had either isolated a “solid” substance or had been obliged to discard “elusive and transitory” substances as false artifacts of the inscription device. Latour and Woolgar concluded that the particular reality of hormones that the lab presented as an objective and factual reality “out there,” was the product of particular inscription devices and practices. The particular realities do not exist without the particular inscription devices and practices that produced them. With the use of different inscription devices and practices, a different objective reality would have been created. They caution that this does not mean that science is simply “made up” like a fiction, but that it is dependent on a network of individuals, accepted practices, and technical devices which are more or less precarious and uncertain. Scientists are a tribe, much like the tribes that anthropological ethnologists have studied, who have a culture, beliefs, and practices, who gossip and share meals together, and who produce accounts of reality based on their own unique ethnographical circumstances.

The Feminist Perspective: Institutional Ethnography

Dorothy Smith elaborated on traditional ethnography to develop what she calls institutional ethnography (2005). In modern society the practices of everyday life in any particular local setting are often organized at a level that goes beyond what an ethnographer might observe directly. Everyday life is structured by “extralocal,” institutional forms; that is, by the practices of institutions that act upon people from a distance.It might be possible to conduct ethnographic research on the experience of domestic abuse by living in a women’s shelter and directly observing and interviewing victims to see how they form an understanding of their situation. However, to the degree that the women are seeking redress through the criminal justice system, a crucial element of the situation would be missing.In order to activate a response from the police or the courts, a set of standard legal procedures must be followed, a case file must be opened, legally actionable evidence must be established, forms filled out, etc. All of this allows criminal justice agencies to organize and coordinate the response. The urgent and immediate experience of the domestic abuse victims needs to be translated into an abstract format that enables distant authorities to take action. Often this is a frustrating and mysterious process in which the immediate needs of individuals are neglected so that the needs of institutional processes are met. Therefore, to research the situation of domestic abuse victims, an ethnography needs to somehow operate at two levels: the close examination of the local experience of particular women, and the simultaneous examination of the extralocal, institutional world through which their world is organized.In order to accomplish this, institutional ethnography focuses on the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through “textually mediated” practices: the use of written documents, standardized bureaucratic categories, and formalized relationships (Smith, 1990). Institutional paperwork translates the specific details of locally lived experience into a standardized format that enables institutions to apply the institution’s understandings, regulations, and operations in different local contexts. A study of these textual practices reveals otherwise inaccessible processes that formal organizations depend on: their formality, their organized character, their ongoing methods of coordination, etc.An institutional ethnography often begins by following the paper trail that emerges when people interact with institutions: How does a person formulate a narrative about what has happened to him or her in a way that the institution will recognize? How is it translated into the abstract categories on a form or screen that enable an institutional response to be initiated? What is preserved in the translation to paperwork, and what is lost? Where do the forms go next? What series of “processing interchanges” take place between different departments or agencies through the circulation of paperwork? How is the paperwork modified and made actionable through this process (e.g., an incident report, warrant request, motion for continuance)?Smith’s insight is that the shift from the locally lived experience of individuals to the extralocal world of institutions is nothing short of a radical metaphysical shift in worldview. In institutional worlds, meanings are detached from directly lived processes and reconstituted in an organizational time, space, and consciousness that is fundamentally different from their original reference point. For example, the crisis that has led to a loss of employment becomes a set of anonymous criteria that determines one’s eligibility for Employment Insurance. The unique life of a child with a disability becomes a checklist that determines the content of an “individual education program” in the school system, which in turn determines whether funding will be provided for special aid assistants or therapeutic programs. Institutions put together a picture of what has occurred that is not at all the same as what was lived.The ubiquitous but obscure mechanism by which this is accomplished is textually mediated communication. The goal of institutional ethnography, therefore, is to make “documents or texts visible as constituents of social relations” (Smith, 1990). Institutional ethnography is very useful as a critical research strategy. It is an analysis that gives grassroots organizations, or those excluded from the circles of institutional power, a detailed knowledge of how the administrative apparatuses actually work. This type of research enables more effective actions and strategies for change to be pursued.

The Case Study

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person, group or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, social setting, organization, group, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like biographical documents and archival records, conducts interviews, and engages in direct observation and even participant observation, if possible.

Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim, with the idea that the individual case exemplifies something important about a larger topic or social phenomenon: the problems of “aging out” of foster care, the operation of power outside the law, the relation to rebellious bodies in the cancer patient, etc. Case studies also enable researchers to document particular social processes in action, such as the implementation of a social policy or the roll out of a dating app; they would explore, in detail, how they are interpreted by participants, how they develop step by step, and their effects in a particular socio-political context. However, a major criticism of the case study as a research method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person or event, since one person or event does not verify a pattern.

However, case studies are especially useful when the single case is unique. Little (2012) used the autobiographical materials of ex-neo-Nazi leader, Ingo Hasselbach, to study the process and difficulties of leaving a tight-knit, neo-Nazi group, and a life of political violence. What were the stages of leaving and what were the various ways in which Hasselbach acted upon himself to transform himself into a “normal” democratic citizen? From the outside, the attraction to neo-Nazism, the thrills of street violence and the difficulties of leaving this political subculture behind might seem incomprehensible to most people. The difficulties that Hasselbach had in changing his identity, even after having made the decision to “step out,” are therefore informative for thinking about the problems of responding to political extremism.

4. Secondary Data or Textual Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data or textual analysis . Secondary data do not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are drawn from the already-completed work of other researchers, as well as from sources like newspapers, social media, pop culture, archives, census statistics, sales records, letters, and so on.

One of the most famous studies in early American sociology was Znaniecki and Thomas’ The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-1920), which explored the formation of the immigrant Polish ethnic community in Chicago, in the early 20th century, by examining personal documents, letters, immigration brochures, newspaper articles, and church and court documents.

Using available information not only saves time and money, but it can add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way — a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might review movies, televisions shows, pop psychology articles, and women’s magazines from that period. Or, to research changes in behaviour and attitudes due to the emergence of social media, a sociologist would rely on texts, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, Twitter trends, and the like.

One methodology that sociologists employ with secondary data is content analysis . The quantitative approach to content analysis is a form of textual research that selects an item of textual content (i.e., a variable) that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. For example, Gilens (1996) wanted to find out why survey research shows that the American public substantially exaggerates the percentage of African Americans among the poor. He examined whether media representations influence public perceptions, and did a content analysis of photographs of poor people in American news magazines. He coded and then systematically recorded incidences of three variables in the photos: (1) race: white, black, indeterminate; (2) employed: working, not working; and (3) age. Gilens discovered that not only were African Americans markedly overrepresented in news magazine photographs of poverty, but that the photos also tended to under represent “sympathetic” subgroups of the poor — the elderly and working poor — while over representing less sympathetic groups — unemployed, working age adults. Gilens (1996) concluded that by providing a distorted representation of poverty, U.S. news magazines “reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks as mired in poverty and contribute to the belief that poverty is primarily a ‘black problem.’”

Social scientists can also do statistical research by analyzing the data provided by a variety of agencies. Governmental departments, public interest research groups, and global organizations like Statistics Canada, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic that measures inequality of incomes might be useful for studying who benefited and who lost as a result of the 2008 recession; a demographic profile of different immigrant groups might be compared with data on unemployment to examine the reasons why immigration integration is more effective for some communities than for others.

One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is non-reactive (or unobtrusive) research, meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher needs to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. In some cases there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy, for example, to count how many drunk drivers are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it is possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their high school diplomas later. Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed, or do not address the precise question the researcher is asking. For example, the salaries paid to professors at universities are often published, but the figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach that salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they have been teaching.

In his qualitative research, sociologist Richard Sennett (2008) uses secondary data to shed light on current trends from contemporary urban life to material culture. In The Craftsman , he studied homo faber (the human as maker): the human desire to perform quality work, from carpentry to computer programming. “What [does] the process of making concrete things reveal to us about ourselves[?]” He studied the line between craftsmanship and skilled manual labour. He also studied changes in attitudes toward craftsmanship that occurred not only during and after the Industrial Revolution, but also in ancient times. Obviously, he could not have firsthand knowledge of periods of ancient history, so he had to rely on secondary data for his study. For example, Sennett describes technique as a key component of human life. It is a product of bodily practices, resistant materials, and powers of the imagination. However,  specific techniques, like the “hand habits of striking a piano key or using a knife,” have disappeared and have to be reconstructed through close study of historical instruction manuals, descriptions, and the like. The research problem is to be able to go from historical texts about craftmanship, and sometimes from the crafted artifacts themselves, to understand how the process of skills development occurs and why it was a prominent component of public status in some eras and not in others.

Reading Tables

One of the common forms in which one encounters secondary data is the contingency table . A contingency table provides a frequency distribution of at least two variables that allows the researcher to see at a glance how the variables are related. Table 2.3 shows the frequency of different types of firearm crime for Canada and the United States. In this table, the independent variable (the causal variable) is the country, either Canada or the United States. The dependent variable, displayed in the columns, is the frequency of offenses that involve firearms in the two countries. This is given as an absolute number (“Number”), as a percentage of the total number of crimes in that category (i.e., as a percentage of the total number of homicides, major assaults and robberies; “Percent of total offenses”), and as rate calculated per 100,000 population (“Rate”). To interpret the table, the researcher has to pay attention to what adds up to 100%. This table does not provide the complete information in each column, but it is straight forward to recognize that if 33% of the homicides in Canada involved the use of a firearm, another 67% of homicides did not. The table, for instance, does not say that 33% of all firearm crimes in Canada were homicides. From these figures one can also calculate the total number of homicides that took place in Canada in 2012 by a simple ratio: If the 172 homicides that involved firearms represents 33% or 1/3 of all the Canadian homicides, then there were (approximately) 516 homicides in Canada in 2012.

Table 2.3 suggests that there is a definite correlation between country and firearm-related violent crime. This is most clearly demonstrated by percentages and rates per capita rather than absolute numbers, because the United States has a population approximately 9 times the size of Canada’s. Comparisons of absolute numbers are difficult to interpret. Violent crime in the United States tends to involve firearms much more frequently than violent crime in Canada. With respect to homicides, there were 8,813 homicides involving firearms in the United States in 2012, accounting for 69% of all homicides, while in Canada, firearms accounted for 33% of homicides. The column that gives the rates of firearm violence per 100,000 population allows the researcher to identify a comparison figure that takes into account the different population sizes of the two countries. The rate of firearm-related homicide in the United States was about seven times higher than in Canada in 2012 (0.5 per 100,000 compared to 3.5 per 100,000), firearm-related major assault was about ten times higher (53 per 100,000 compared to 5 per 100,000), and firearm-related robbery was about five times higher (8.9 per 100,000 compared to 45.1 per 100,000).

The question that this data raises is about causation. Why are firearm-related violent crimes so much lower in Canada than in the United States? One key element are the legal restrictions on firearm possession in the two countries. Canadian law requires that an individual has a valid licence under the Firearms Act, in order to own or possess a firearm or to purchase ammunition. Until 2012, all firearms also had to be registered, but with the repeal of the national gun registry provisions for long guns (rifles and shot guns), currently only hand guns and prohibited weapons (assault weapons, fully automatic firearms, and sawed-off rifles or shotguns) have to be registered. In the United States firearm regulations are state-specific, and only a few states place restrictions on the possession of firearms. In 2007, there were 89 firearms for every 100 citizens in the United States, which is the highest rate of gun ownership of any country (Cotter, 2014). By contrast, figures from 1998 show that there 24 firearms for every 100 citizens in Canada (Department of Justice, 2015). Nevertheless, as Canada’s firearm-related homicide rate is higher than several peer countries, most notably Japan and the United Kingdom, variables other than gun control legislation might be a factor.

Research Methods Summary

As noted above, there is not only a variety of theoretical perspectives in sociology, but also a diversity of research methodologies that can be used in studying the social. In large part, the choice of research methodology follows from the choice of the research question. Of course, the choice of the research question itself depends on the same sort of underlying values and decisions about the nature of the world that divide the theoretical perspectives in sociology. In addition, the choice of the research question involves both the character of the social phenomenon being studied and the purpose of the research in the first place.

Again, it is useful to map out the different methodologies in a diagram. They can be positioned along two axes according to: (a) whether the subject matter or purpose of the research calls for highly reliable findings — consistent between research contexts (high reliability) — or for highly valid and nuanced findings true to the specific social situation under observation (unique observation), and (b) whether the nature of the object of research can be meaningfully operationalized and measured using quantitative techniques (quantitative data) or is better grasped in terms of the texture of social meanings that constitute it (qualitative data). The advantages and disadvantages of the different methodologies are summarized in Table 2.4 below.

Image Descriptions

Figure 2.18 Long Description: A sociology for women would offer a knowledge of the social organization and determinations of the properties and events of our directly experienced world. [Return to Figure 2.18]

Figure 2.19 Long description: Different Research Methods: Textual analysis uses qualitative data and is highly reliable. Participant observation uses qualitative data and is a unique observation. Experiments and survey research use quantitative data and are highly reliable. Journalism uses quantitative data and is a unique observation. [Return to Figure 2.19]

Media Attributions

• Figure 2.10 Hawthorne Works factory of the Western Electric Company, 1925. By Western Electric Company  by Western Electric Company, Photograph Album, 1925,  via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.11 Didn’t they abolish the mandatory census? Then what’s this? by Khosrow Ebrahimpour, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.12 Dauphin Canadian Northern Railway Station by Bobak Ha’Eri, via Wikimedia Commons, is used under CC BY 3.0 licence.
• Figure 2.13   Punk Band by Patrick, via Flickr, is used under CC BY 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.14   Crack Cocaine Smokers in Vancouver Alleyway by [name invalid], is in the public domain .
• Figure 2.15  Loïc Wacquant at the Woodlands Gym used by permission of Loïc Wacquant.
• Figure 2.16   Dormitory at Longue Pointe Asylum, Montreal, 1911 by the McCord Museum, VIEW-11279 , via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
• Figure 2.17 Jonas Salk – Polio by Sanofi Pasteur used under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence.
• Figure 2.18   Sociology for Women by Zuleyka Zevallos is used under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.

Introduction to Sociology – 3rd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2023 by William Little is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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2.3 Research Design in Sociology

Learning objective.

• List the major advantages and disadvantages of surveys, experiments, and observational studies.

We now turn to the major methods that sociologists use to gather the information they analyze in their research. Table 2.2 “Major Sociological Research Methods” summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Table 2.2 Major Sociological Research Methods

Types of Sociological Research

The survey is the most common method by which sociologists gather their data. The Gallup Poll is perhaps the best-known example of a survey and, like all surveys, gathers its data with the help of a questionnaire that is given to a group of respondents. The Gallup Poll is an example of a survey conducted by a private organization, but it typically includes only a small range of variables. It thus provides a good starting point for research but usually does not include enough variables for a full-fledged sociological study. Sociologists often do their own surveys, as does the government and many organizations in addition to Gallup.

The survey is the most common research design in sociological research. Respondents either fill out questionnaires themselves or provide verbal answers to interviewers asking them the questions.

The Bees – Surveys to compile – CC BY-NC 2.0.

The General Social Survey, described earlier, is an example of a face-to-face survey, in which interviewers meet with respondents to ask them questions. This type of survey can yield a lot of information, because interviewers typically will spend at least an hour asking their questions, and a high response rate (the percentage of all people in the sample who agree to be interviewed), which is important to be able to generalize the survey’s results to the entire population. On the downside, this type of survey can be very expensive and time-consuming to conduct.

Because of these drawbacks, sociologists and other researchers have turned to telephone surveys. Most Gallup Polls are conducted over the telephone. Computers do random-digit dialing, which results in a random sample of all telephone numbers being selected. Although the response rate and the number of questions asked are both lower than in face-to-face surveys (people can just hang up the phone at the outset or let their answering machine take the call), the ease and low expense of telephone surveys are making them increasingly popular.

Mailed surveys, done by mailing questionnaires to respondents, are still used, but not as often as before. Compared with face-to-face surveys, mailed questionnaires are less expensive and time consuming but have lower response rates, because many people simply throw out the questionnaire along with other junk mail.

Whereas mailed surveys are becoming less popular, surveys done over the Internet are becoming more popular, as they can reach many people at very low expense. A major problem with Web surveys is that their results cannot necessarily be generalized to the entire population, because not everyone has access to the Internet.

Experiments

Experiments are the primary form of research in the natural and physical sciences, but in the social sciences they are for the most part found only in psychology. Some sociologists still use experiments, however, and they remain a powerful tool of social research.

The major advantage of experiments is that the researcher can be fairly sure of a cause-and-effect relationship because of the way the experiment is set up. Although many different experimental designs exist, the typical experiment consists of an experimental group and a control group , with subjects randomly assigned to either group. The researcher makes a change to the experimental group that is not made to the control group. If the two groups differ later in some variable, then it is safe to say that the condition to which the experimental group was subjected was responsible for the difference that resulted.

Experiments are very common in the natural and physical sciences and in sociology. A major advantage of experiments is that they are very useful for establishing cause-and-effect-relationships.

biologycorner – Science Experiment – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Most experiments take place in the laboratory, which for psychologists may be a room with a one-way mirror, but some experiments occur in “the field,” or in a natural setting. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the early 1980s, sociologists were involved in a much-discussed field experiment sponsored by the federal government. The researchers wanted to see whether arresting men for domestic violence made it less likely that they would commit such violence again. To test this hypothesis, the researchers had police do one of the following after arriving at the scene of a domestic dispute: they either arrested the suspect, separated him from his wife or partner for several hours, or warned him to stop but did not arrest or separate him. The researchers then determined the percentage of men in each group who committed repeated domestic violence during the next 6 months and found that those who were arrested had the lowest rate of recidivism, or repeat offending (Sherman & Berk, 1984). This finding led many jurisdictions across the United States to adopt a policy of mandatory arrest for domestic violence suspects. However, replications of the Minneapolis experiment in other cities found that arrest sometimes reduced recidivism for domestic violence but also sometimes increased it, depending on which city was being studied and on certain characteristics of the suspects, including whether they were employed at the time of their arrest (Sherman, 1992).

As the Minneapolis study suggests, perhaps the most important problem with experiments is that their results are not generalizable beyond the specific subjects studied. The subjects in most psychology experiments, for example, are college students, who are not typical of average Americans: they are younger, more educated, and more likely to be middle class. Despite this problem, experiments in psychology and other social sciences have given us very valuable insights into the sources of attitudes and behavior.

Observational Studies and Intensive Interviewing

Observational research, also called field research, is a staple of sociology. Sociologists have long gone into the field to observe people and social settings, and the result has been many rich descriptions and analyses of behavior in juvenile gangs, bars, urban street corners, and even whole communities.

Observational studies consist of both participant observation and nonparticipant observation . Their names describe how they differ. In participant observation, the researcher is part of the group that she or he is studying. The researcher thus spends time with the group and might even live with them for a while. Several classical sociological studies of this type exist, many of them involving people in urban neighborhoods (Liebow, 1967, 1993; Whyte, 1943). Participant researchers must try not to let their presence influence the attitudes or behavior of the people they are observing. In nonparticipant observation, the researcher observes a group of people but does not otherwise interact with them. If you went to your local shopping mall to observe, say, whether people walking with children looked happier than people without children, you would be engaging in nonparticipant observation.

A related type of research design is intensive interviewing . Here a researcher does not necessarily observe a group of people in their natural setting but rather sits down with them individually and interviews them at great length, often for one or two hours or even longer. The researcher typically records the interview and later transcribes it for analysis. The advantages and disadvantages of intensive interviewing are similar to those for observational studies: intensive interviewing provides much information about the subjects being interviewed, but the results of such interviewing cannot necessarily be generalized beyond the subjects.

A classic example of field research is Kai T. Erikson’s Everything in Its Path (1976), a study of the loss of community bonds in the aftermath of a flood in a West Virginia mining community, Buffalo Creek. The flood occurred when an artificial dam composed of mine waste gave way after days of torrential rain. The local mining company had allowed the dam to build up in violation of federal law. When it broke, 132 million gallons of water broke through and destroyed several thousand homes in seconds while killing 125 people. Some 2,500 other people were rendered instantly homeless. Erikson was called in by the lawyers representing the survivors to document the sociological effects of their loss of community, and the book he wrote remains a moving account of how the destruction of the Buffalo Creek way of life profoundly affected the daily lives of its residents.

Intensive interviewing can yield in-depth information about the subjects who are interviewed, but the results of this research design cannot necessarily be generalized beyond these subjects.

Fellowship of the Rich – Interview – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Similar to experiments, observational studies cannot automatically be generalized to other settings or members of the population. But in many ways they provide a richer account of people’s lives than surveys do, and they remain an important method of sociological research.

Existing Data

Sometimes sociologists do not gather their own data but instead analyze existing data that someone else has gathered. The U.S. Census Bureau, for example, gathers data on all kinds of areas relevant to the lives of Americans, and many sociologists analyze census data on such topics as poverty, employment, and illness. Sociologists interested in crime and the legal system may analyze data from court records, while medical sociologists often analyze data from patient records at hospitals. Analysis of existing data such as these is called secondary data analysis . Its advantage to sociologists is that someone else has already spent the time and money to gather the data. A disadvantage is that the data set being analyzed may not contain data on all the variables in which a sociologist may be interested or may contain data on variables that are not measured in ways the sociologist might prefer.

Nonprofit organizations often analyze existing data, usually gathered by government agencies, to get a better understanding of the social issue with which an organization is most concerned. They then use their analysis to help devise effective social policies and strategies for dealing with the issue. The “Learning From Other Societies” box discusses a nonprofit organization in Canada that analyzes existing data for this purpose.

Learning From Other Societies

Social Research and Social Policy in Canada

In several nations beyond the United States, nonprofit organizations often use social science research, including sociological research, to develop and evaluate various social reform strategies and social policies. Canada is one of these nations. Information on Canadian social research organizations can be found at http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/index.htm .

The Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy (CRISP) at the University of New Brunswick is one of these organizations. According to its Web site ( http://www.unb.ca/crisp/index.php ), CRISP is “dedicated to conducting policy research aimed at improving the education and care of Canadian children and youth…and supporting low-income countries in their efforts to build research capacity in child development.” To do this, CRISP analyzes data from large data sets, such as the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, and it also evaluates policy efforts at the local, national, and international levels.

A major concern of CRISP has been developmental problems in low-income children and teens. These problems are the focus of a CRISP project called Raising and Leveling the Bar: A Collaborative Research Initiative on Children’s Learning, Behavioral, and Health Outcomes. This project at the time of this writing involved a team of five senior researchers and almost two dozen younger scholars. CRISP notes that Canada may have the most complete data on child development in the world but that much more research with these data needs to be performed to help inform public policy in the area of child development. CRISP’s project aims to use these data to help achieve the following goals, as listed on its Web site: (a) safeguard the healthy development of infants, (b) strengthen early childhood education, (c) improve schools and local communities, (d) reduce socioeconomic segregation and the effects of poverty, and (e) create a family enabling society ( http://www.unb.ca/crisp/rlb.html ). This project has written many policy briefs, journal articles, and popular press articles to educate varied audiences about what the data on children’s development suggest for child policy in Canada.

Key Takeaways

• The major types of sociological research include surveys, experiments, observational studies, and the use of existing data.
• Surveys are very common and allow for the gathering of much information on respondents that is relatively superficial. The results of surveys that use random samples can be generalized to the population that the sample represents.
• Observational studies are also very common and enable in-depth knowledge of a small group of people. Because the samples of these studies are not random, the results cannot necessarily be generalized to a population.
• Experiments are much less common in sociology than in psychology. When field experiments are conducted in sociology, they can yield valuable information because of their experimental design.

For Your Review

• Write a brief essay in which you outline the various kinds of surveys and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
• Suppose you wanted to study whether gender affects happiness. Write a brief essay that describes how you would do this either with a survey or with an observational study.

Erikson, K. T. (1976). Everything in its path: Destruction of community in the Buffalo Creek flood . New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Liebow, E. (1967). Tally’s corner . Boston, MA: Little, Brown.

Liebow, E. (1993). Tell them who I am: The lives of homeless women . New York, NY: Free Press.

Sherman, L W. (1992). Policing domestic violence: Experiments and dilemmas . New York, NY: Free Press.

Sherman, L. W., & Berk, R. A. (1984). The specific deterrent effects of arrest for domestic assault. American Sociological Review, 49 , 261–272.

Whyte, W. F. (1943). Street corner society: The social structure of an Italian slum . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Experiments

Experiments are the primary means of conducting research in the natural sciences.

• Experiments are used to test a hypothesis (a testable statement/an educated assertion that we do not know is true).
• Experiments are seldom used in sociology by either positivists or interpretivists.

Types of experiments

• Laboratory experiments control variables and, as such, are usually conducted in artificial environments.
• Field experiments are conducted in real-world settings, but variables remain tightly controlled.

Strengths of experiments

• The hypothesis can be tested in a controlled environment.
• It is easy to isolate and manipulate variables to identify the causes of events (except in field experiments).
• High reliability.

Strengths cont.

• Experiments allow for comparisons to be made with other experimental research.
• The researcher is seen as a detached, objective observer which is considered to be more scientific.

Field experiments

• Field experiments are conducted in real-world environments and are therefore considered to be high in validity.
• Field experiments are seen by interpretivists as producing more valid information.

Experiments & the Comparative Method

The experimental method has several weaknesses, making it inappropriate for some research projects. The Comparative method can be an option in these cases.

Weaknesses of experiments

• It’s difficult to isolate a single cause of a social issue.
• There are ethical problems, in that the researcher needs to treat one group of participants differently to another, raising the possibility of negative consequences on one group.

Weaknesses cont.

• Experiments often involve deception, where the researcher isn’t honest with the participants about certain aspects of the experiment, this makes it difficult to obtain informed consent.
• Experiments are often only practical in small-scale settings, which may be unrepresentative.

Weaknesses part 3

• Conditions are often artificial so they cannot always be applied to real-world settings.
• The risk of the Hawthorne effect can undermine validity.
• In field experiments, researchers can’t control all variables, making it difficult to establish cause and effect.

The comparative method

• The comparative method retains the main principles of the experiment but collects data on different societies or social groups and then compares them with another society or group.

1 Theory & Methods

1.1 Sociological Theories

1.1.1 Marxism

1.1.2 Feminism

1.1.3 Social Action Theories

1.2 Sociological Methods

1.2.1 Types of Data

1.2.2 Positivism & Interpretivism

1.2.3 Research Design

1.2.4 Research Considerations

1.2.5 Values in Research

1.2.6 Modernity & Post-Modernity

1.2.7 Sociology as a Science

1.2.8 Sociology & Social Policy

1.2.9 End of Topic Test - Sociology Methods & Theories

1.3 Sources of Data

1.3.1 Introduction

1.3.2 Experiments

1.3.3 Surveys

1.3.4 Longitudinal Studies

1.3.5 Questionnaires

1.3.6 Types of Questionnaires

1.3.7 Interviews

1.3.8 Observation

1.3.9 Case Studies

1.3.10 Documents

1.3.11 Official Statistics

1.3.12 End of Topic Test - Sources of Data

2 Education with Methods in Context

2.1 Role & Function of the Education System

2.1.1 Introduction

2.1.2 Functionalist Theories

2.1.3 Marxist & Feminist Theories

2.1.4 The New Right

2.2 Educational Achievement

2.2.1 Social Class: Internal Factors

2.2.2 Social Class: External Factors

2.2.3 Social Class: Attitudes to Education

2.2.4 Social Class: Difference in Achievement

2.2.5 Gender

2.2.6 Ethnicity

2.3 Relationships & Processes Within Schools

2.3.1 Processes

2.3.2 Labelling

2.3.3 Categorisations

2.3.4 Student Experience

2.3.5 End of Topic Test -Education with Methods

2.4 Educational Policies

2.4.1 Equality

2.4.2 Privatisation

2.4.3 Marketisation

2.4.4 Government Policies by Party

2.4.5 Globalisation

2.4.6 End of Topic Test- Educational Policies

2.4.7 Practice Exam Question - Social Policies

3 Option 1: Culture & Identity

3.1 Conceptions of Culture

3.1.1 Culture

3.1.2 Mass Culture

3.1.3 Popular Culture

3.1.4 Global Culture

3.1.5 End of Topic Test - Culture and Identity

3.2 Identity & Socialisation

3.2.1 Identities

3.2.2 Socialisation

3.2.3 Secondary Socialisation

3.2.4 Theories of Socialisation

3.2.5 End of Topic Test - Identity

3.2.6 Practice Exam Question - Socialisation & Equality

3.3 Social Identity

3.3.1 Social Class

3.3.2 Upper & Middle Class

3.3.3 Working & Underclass

3.3.4 Social Class Evaluation

3.3.5 Gender

3.3.6 Changing Gender Identities

3.3.7 Ethnicity

3.3.9 Disability

3.3.10 Nationality

3.3.11 End of Topic Test - Social Identity

3.4 Production, Consumption & Globalisation

3.4.1 Production & Consumption

3.4.2 Globalisation

3.4.3 Evaluation

3.4.4 End of Topic Test - Production

4 Option 1: Families & Households

4.1 Families & Households

4.1.1 Definitions

4.1.2 Functionalist & New Right Perspectives

4.1.3 Marxist & Feminist Perspectives

4.1.4 Postmodernist Perspective

4.1.5 End of Topic Test - Families & Households

4.1.6 Practice Exam Question - Function of Family

4.2 Changing Patterns

4.2.1 Marriage

4.2.2 Divorce

4.2.3 LAT Relationships

4.2.4 Child-Bearing

4.2.5 Lone Parenthood

4.2.6 Diversity

4.2.7 The Sociology of Personal Life

4.2.8 Government Policies Post-WW2

4.2.9 End of Topic Test - Changing Patterns

4.3 The Symmetrical Family

4.3.1 The Symmetrical Family

4.3.2 Evaluation

4.4 Children & Childhood

4.4.1 Childhood

4.4.2 Childhood in the UK

4.4.3 Childhood as a Social Construct

4.4.4 The Disappearance of Childhood

4.4.5 Child Abuse

4.4.6 Domestic Violence

4.4.7 End of Topic Test - Family & Childhood

4.5 Demographic Trends UK

4.5.1 Introduction

4.5.2 Birth Rates

4.5.3 Death Rates

4.5.4 The Ageing Population

4.5.5 Studies on the Ageing Population

4.5.6 Migration

4.5.7 Globalisation

4.5.8 End of Topic Test - Demographics UK

5 Option 1: Health

5.1 Social Constructions

5.1.1 The Body

5.1.2 Health, Illness & Disease

5.1.3 Disability

5.1.4 Models of Health & Illness

5.1.5 End of Topic Test - Social Constructions

5.2 Social Distribution of Healthcare

5.2.1 Social Class

5.2.2 Gender

5.2.3 Ethnicity

5.2.4 Regional

5.3 Provision & Access to Healthcare

5.3.1 The NHS

5.3.2 Inequalities in Provision

5.3.3 Sociological Explanations

5.3.4 Inequalities in Access

5.3.5 Inequalities in Access 2

5.3.6 End of Topic Test - Distribution Health

5.4 Mental Health

5.4.1 The Biomedical Approach

5.4.2 Social Patterns

5.4.3 Social Constructionist Approach

5.5 The Globalised Health Industry

5.5.1 The Functionalist Approach

5.5.2 The Postmodernist Approach

5.5.3 The Globalised Health Industry

5.5.4 End of Topic Test - Mental Health & Globalisation

6 Option 1: Work, Poverty & Welfare

6.1 Poverty & Wealth

6.1.1 Types of Poverty

6.1.2 Types of Poverty 2

6.1.3 Distribution of Wealth UK

6.1.4 Sociological Theories

6.1.5 Sociological Theories 2

6.1.6 Distribution of Poverty UK

6.1.7 End of Topic Test - Poverty & Wealth

6.2 Welfare

6.2.1 The Welfare State

6.2.2 Theoretical Approaches to Welfare

6.3 Labour Process

6.3.1 Nature of Work

6.3.2 Technology & Control

6.3.3 Work & Life

6.3.4 The Effects of Globalisation

6.3.5 Globalisation & Worklessness

6.3.6 End of Topic Test - Welfare & Labour

7 Option 2: Beliefs in Society

7.1 Ideology, Science & Religion

7.1.1 Types of Religion

7.1.2 Ideology & Belief Systems

7.1.3 Social Stability & Religion

7.1.4 Social Change & Religion

7.1.5 End of Topic Test - Ideology, Science & Religion

7.2 Religious Movements

7.2.1 Religious Organisations

7.2.2 New Religious Movements

7.2.3 New Age Movements

7.2.4 Practice Exam Question - Growth of NRMs

7.3 Society & Religion

7.3.1 Social Groups & Religion

7.3.2 Gender & Religion

7.3.3 End of Topic Test- Religious Movements & Society

7.4 Contemporary Religion

7.4.1 Secularisation UK

7.4.2 Against Secularisation

7.4.3 Secularisation US

7.4.4 Fundamentalism

7.4.5 Economic Development & Religion

7.4.6 End of Topic - Contemporary Religion

8 Option 2: Global Development

8.1 Development, Underdevelopment & Global Inequality

8.1.1 Development

8.1.2 Underdevelopment & Global Inequality

8.2 Globalisation & Global Organisations

8.2.1 Globalisation

8.2.2 Transnational Corporations & International Agency

8.2.3 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs)

8.3 Aid, Trade, Industrialisation, Urbanisation

8.3.1 Development: Aid & Trade

8.3.2 Development: Industrialisation & Urbanisation

8.3.3 Development: Environment & War

9 Option 2: The Media

9.1 Contemporary Media

9.1.1 New Media

9.1.2 Control of the Media

9.1.3 Sociological Approaches: New Media

9.1.4 Globalisation

9.1.5 News Selection

9.1.6 Moral Panics

9.1.7 End of Topic Test - Contemporary Media

9.2 Media Representations

9.2.2 Social Class & Ethnicity

9.2.3 Gender

9.2.4 Sexuality & Disability

9.2.5 Practice Exam Questions - Presentation of Women

9.3 Audiences

9.3.1 Media Theories

9.3.2 Media Theories 2

9.3.3 Media Representations & Audiences

10 Crime & Deviance

10.1 Crime & Society

10.1.1 Functionalism

10.1.2 Subcultural Theory

10.1.3 Marxism

10.1.4 Realism

10.1.5 Other Approaches

10.1.6 End of Topic Test - Crime & Society

10.1.7 Practice Exam Questions - Social Construction

10.2 Social Distribution of Crime

10.2.1 Ethnicity

10.2.2 Gender

10.2.3 Globalisation & Crime

10.2.4 Media & Crime

10.2.5 Types of Crimes

10.2.6 End of Topic Test - Social Distribution of Crime

10.3 Prevention & Punishment

10.3.1 Surveillance

10.3.2 Prevention

10.3.3 Punishment

10.3.4 Victimology

10.3.5 End of Topic Test - Prevention & Punishment

Jump to other topics

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Introduction

Learning Materials

• Business Studies
• Combined Science
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• English Literature
• Environmental Science
• Human Geography
• Macroeconomics
• Microeconomics
• Experiments

Think of the times when you were a child and wanted to try new things by asking 'what if?' .  We all loved our fun science projects in school - mixing baking soda with a clementine to make orange fizz, for example.

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• Cell Biology

What are experiments?

What is the difference between the positivist and interpretivist approaches in conducting experiments?

Are experiments primary or secondary research instruments?

Why is the location important for experiments?

What is a variable?

Provide examples of famous experiments.

What are the advantages of lab experiments?

What are the disadvantages of lab experiments?

What are the advantages of field experiments?

What are the disadvantages of field experiments?

What kind of data do experiments produce?

• American Identity
• Beliefs in Society
• Crime and Deviance
• Cultural Identity
• Education With Methods in Context
• Families and Households
• Famous Sociologists
• Global Development
• Research Methods in Sociology
• Social Institutions
• Social Relationships
• Social Stratification
• Sociological Approach
• Sociology of Education
• Sociology of Family
• Stratification and Differentiation
• Theories and Methods
• American Sociological Association
• Case Studies
• Ethnography
• Field Research
• Founders of Sociology
• Functionalism
• Interpretivism
• Longitudinal Studies
• Observation
• Official Statistics
• Postmodernism
• Questionnaire
• Research Considerations
• Research Design
• Social Action Theory
• Social Policy
• Sociological Imagination
• Sociological Research Methods
• Sociological Theories
• Sociology as a Science
• Sources of Data
• Types of Data
• Value Neutrality
• Values in Research
• What is the Study of Sociology?
• Work Poverty And Welfare

The 'what if?' question followed by an action to trace cause and effect is classified as an experiment.

' What if I pour water on the sand? ' would be an experiment question for a young natural scientist. ' What if I disobeyed my teacher? ' would be an experiment question to a young social scientist.

In the Research Design article, we briefly touched upon the nature of the experimental research design . Researchers begin their investigations with a hypothesis that must be tested.

Once we have a hypothesis, we can test it using an experiment. Therefore, we will be looking at:

• The definition of experiments, what they are and the types of experiments there are
• Laboratory experiments, famous examples and their advantages and disadvantages
• Field experiments, famous examples and their advantages and disadvantages
• The differences between laboratory and field experiments
• Ethnographic research

There's a lot to get through, so let's start!

Experiments in Sociology: examples and types

An experiment is a research method used in experimental research design. It uses the scientific method and seeks to establish a cause-effect relationship between two variables by testing a hypothesis . In sociology , we test the relationship between social phenomena.

Experiments typically produce quantitative results. However, if it is a social experiment, it could also yield qualitative data.

One of the key factors that affect experiments is location. An experiment can either occur in controlled laboratory conditions or the field .

Norman Triplett conducted one of the first known experiments in 1895, focusing on social facilitation. He observed that cyclists tend to perform better when cycling in the presence of someone else, as opposed to cycling alone. He recreated this effect in his laboratory experiment, where he demonstrated how children complete a task faster when working in pairs than when working individually.

However, before we consider the differences in experiment locations, we need to assess the extent to which researchers exercise control over them. Researchers distinguish between natural and controlled experiments.

A natural experiment is an empirical or observational study in which researchers do not artificially manipulate the variables of interest. Instead, they can be influenced by nature or factors outside the researchers' control.

On the other hand, a controlled experiment is one in which the independent variable is manually manipulated to see if it will influence the dependent variable and cause it to change. This eliminates any alternative explanations of observed relationships and traces a direct cause-effect .

We will now look at two types of experiments: laboratory and field experiments.

Laboratory Experiments in Sociology

These are experiments that take place in controlled environments and aim to use the scientific method to test a specific hypothesis. This is then used to find a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables.

Proponents of the positivist research philosophy advocate controlled laboratory experiments because that is the only way to ensure that the relationship being tested is not affected by any external factors.

They define the relationship between factors using mathematical terms: dependent and independent variables.

A variable is a factor in an experiment that may be subject to change.

• A dependent variable is the subject of the study, for example, fluency in Spanish.
• An independent variable is being manipulated to see the effect on the dependent variable. For example, using a native Spanish speaker and a native English speaker to teach Spanish to ascertain if there is a difference between Spanish language attainment under different teachers.

Randomised controlled trials

The most well-known example of lab experiments is randomised controlled trials (RCTs), which are commonly used to test the effectiveness of drugs. Participants are randomly selected and divided into those who received the drug (the treatment/intervention group) and those who got a placebo (the control group).

Researchers record participants' health conditions before and after the experiment to see whether there is any difference in outcome between the two groups. This allows a high degree of confidence in determining if there is a causal relationship between taking the drug and getting better or worse (for instance, if the drug does not work and produces side effects).

Laboratory experiments in social research

It is difficult to use laboratory experiments in social research to conduct experiments . Social experiments differ because they study social rather than biological phenomena. T he nature and context of social experiments are also different from natural science experiments like the drug test described above.

There is an ongoing debate in the scientific community about the extent to which it is possible to recreate authentic social scenarios in controlled environments. Therefore, social scientists frequently lean towards field experiments.

Famous sociology experiments in the lab

We will go through some famous sociological experiments.

Milgram (1963) and obedience

Milgram's obedience experiment (1963) is a famous example of laboratory conditions in social research. The experiment divided participants into 'learner' and 'teacher' groups, where the 'learners' were Milgram's confederates and purposely gave wrong answers. The test was to see how far the 'teachers' (the participants) would go to be obedient - even if it involved punishing the learners by subjecting them to (fake) electric shocks.

The result of the initial experiment was that 65 percent of participants (i.e. teachers) went on to administer the highest level of electric shock - 450 volts. All of the participants continued to 300 volts. This experiment took place in Milgram's lab at Yale University.

Asch (1951) and conformity

Another illustration of a sociological experiment conducted in a lab is Solomon Asch's conformity experiment (1951). He was interested in the extent to which the social pressure of a majority could make a person conform. He invited 50 people to take part in his vision test, demonstrated in the image below, and asked them to assess in groups whether the line on the left is the same length as line A, line B or line C.

The participants did not know that Asch's associates were purposefully giving wrong answers among them. Asch wanted to see if the actual participants would change their opinion in line with others. 75 percent of the participants conformed to the popular opinion once or more, even though they knew that the answers were incorrect. This experiment took place in Asch's lab at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Laboratory experiments in Sociology: Advantages and Disadvantages

It is important to understand not only the strengths of a research method but also its shortcomings. Read below for an outline of the advantages and disadvantages of laboratory experiments in sociology .

Advantages of laboratory experiments in Sociology

There is control over the experiment and the ability to isolate the targeted variables.

Researchers can trace 'cause and effect' relationships.

They have high degrees of reliability as the lab conditions can be replicated.

Positivist sociologists favour them as they use the scientific method.

Disadvantages of laboratory experiments in Sociology

The lab environment is not conducive to people acting authentically; they could put on a facade if they know they are being studied. This is called a 'demand characteristic' and could render the results invalid.

Participants could give answers they think the researcher wants to hear because they fear being ridiculed or “letting the researcher down” by producing “incorrect” answers. This is also an example of a demand characteristic.

Behaviour is rarely caused by a single factor, so isolating one variable may not be possible or useful.

Some lab experiments are morally and ethically questionable. For example, the method and results of Milgram's obedience experiment were controversial due to the distress caused to the participants.

In social research, some sociologists prefer conducting field experiments. We will now consider these.

Field Experiments in Sociology

Field experiments are conducted in real-world social scenarios. They emerged due to the interpretivism critique of lab experiments, which argues that authentic social interaction cannot be reproduced in a lab.

Field experiments in social research

Let's look at examples of sociological field experiments.

Zimbardo (1971)

A great example of a social experiment conducted in the field was one we touched upon briefly in the Research Considerations article - Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment (1971). Zimbardo invited volunteers to be prisoners and guards in the mock prison he created. Participants were randomly assigned roles of 'prisoner' and 'guard' and studied to test why prison guards can be brutal with prisoners - namely, whether they are naturally sadistic or are influenced by the environment.

Zimbardo found that even though the participants were thoroughly vetted for behaviour/anger issues, the 'guards' started to treat the 'prisoners' aggressively and abusively from early on. The experiment showed how easily people would conform to the roles they are expected to play in society.

UK DWP (2010)

A more recent example was commissioned by the UK's Department for Work and Pension (DWP) and conducted by a team of researchers from the National Centre for Social Research in 2010. The experiment's objective was to figure out if employers are biased against vacancy candidates with ethnic minority names.

They sent applications for 987 real job vacancies across the UK under names commonly associated with ethnic minorities. For each job, they sent three applications with equivalent background and qualifications: one used a 'white' name and the other two had names from different ethnic origins.

The results were that ethnic minorities faced considerable name discrimination in the hiring process - despite having identical CVs and cover letters to the majority white candidates, they needed to send 74 percent more applications to secure an interview.

Field Experiments in Sociology: Advantages and Disadvantages

Field experiments have their benefits but are not always suitable. Read below for an outline of the advantages and disadvantages of field experiments in sociology.

Advantages of field experiments in Sociology

The researcher is more likely to see the ' real deal' instead of an act as the scenarios are authentic.

Social interactions show genuine behaviours, which can help researchers consider other factors that would not have been discovered in a controlled lab setting.

They are favoured by interpretivist sociologists.

Disadvantages of field experiments in Sociology

Researchers cannot control the environment where their experiment occurs, which could mean that there are other influencing factors.

It is ethically questionable to conduct field experiments if the subjects are unaware that they are being studied.

Ethnographic Research

We will briefly consider ethnographic research and how it may be helpful in sociological research.

Ethnographic research is an immersive methodology whereby a researcher collects data whilst being part of the community under investigation. They do so with the goal of producing a narrative account of that particular community, against a theoretical backdrop.

One could argue that ethnographic research is a form of a natural experiment .

The first ethnographic researchers were anthropologists - they joined the community, learned the language, and noted their observations. Some researchers such as Margaret Mead also conducted interviews and psychological tests.

Characteristics of ethnographic research:

small-scale immersive fieldwork

produces qualitative data

includes primary data from observations, case studies or focus groups

includes secondary data from diaries, documents or letters

Evaluation of ethnographic research

The immersion of the research process allows for in-depth insights from an ' insider ' perspective. Research subjects may be more inclined to open up or behave naturally if they do not perceive the researcher as an outsider force.

The high validity of findings stems from studying behaviour in natural settings.

However, the quality of such research can be called into question due to the findings being subject to the researchers' interpretation , which is likely to bring bias into the investigation. M ore importantly, the findings may not always accurately reflect the authenticity of social interactions .

At the beginning of the article, we pointed out that experiments are typically considered as primary sources of data . However, if you are using someone else's raw data from their experiment, you are using it as a secondary source.

Experiments - Key Takeaways

• Experiments test the researchers' hypotheses by trying to establish a causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
• Milgram's obedience and Aschs' conformity experiments are famous examples of social experiments in controlled conditions.
• Zimbardo 's Stanford Prison experiment and research into discrimination in the job application process by the National Centre for Social Research show how social experiments can occur naturally in the field.
• There are advantages and disadvantages of using both lab and field experiments. A researcher should be able to assess which would be most suitable for their research needs.
• Ethnographic research could also be a form of a natural experiment as it involves immersive fieldwork.

Flashcards in Experiments 26

In sociological research, an experiment aims to test a hypothesis by identifying 'cause and effect' between social phenomena. It is used to eliminate any alternative explanations of observed relationships.

Positivists argue that experiments should be conducted according to the rigorous standards of the scientific methods and should be in a lab. Interpretivists argue that it is impossible to recreate authentic social scenarios in a lab;  therefore, they prefer to study people 'in the field'.

Experiments are typically conducted by the researchers first hand, which makes their data primary. However, if a researcher is using the outputs of someone else's experiment - that makes their data secondary.

In the lab, researchers are able to control the environment and thus eliminate the possibility that other variables will impact the tested relationship.  In the field, researchers have no control over the environment. It is important for a researcher to consider what type of location is the most suitable.

Variable is defined as a factor in an experiment that may be subject to change. There are two types of variables: dependent and independent variables.

Any of the following answers are correct:

• Milgram's obedience experiment 
• Aschs' Conformity    experiment
• Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment

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Frequently Asked Questions about Experiments

What is an experiment in social research?

In social research, an experiment tests a hypothesis. Laboratory and field experiments are two types of experiments in social research.

What does an experiment mean?

In sociological research, an experiment uses the scientific method and seeks to establish a cause-effect relationship between two variables by testing a hypothesis. In sociology, we test the relationship between social phenomena. 

What is a field experiment in sociology?

Field experiments are those conducted in real-world social scenarios in order to access the most authentic social interaction. 

What are the two types of experiments in sociology? 

The two types of experiments in sociology are laboratory and field experiments.

What is an example of experiment in sociology?

An example of an experiment in sociology was commissioned by the UK's Department for Work and Pension (DWP). It was conducted by a team of researchers from the National Centre for Social Research. The experiment's objective was to determine if employers are biased against vacancy candidates with ethnic minority names.  

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The Sociology Teacher

RESEARCH METHODS

The 'nutshells' provide concentrated summaries. use the arrows or swipe across to explore topics in more detail, including key perspectives  and sociologists ..

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Topic 1 - Choosing a research method

In a nutshell

Positivists and interpretivists differ on their choice of research methods, depending on the type of data they produce, as well as their theoretical issues. Positivists prefer scientific, quantifiable data that is quick and easy to obtain, and is rich in reliability and validity. Interpretivists, on the other hand, value qualitative data that provides in-depth meaning of a small-scale research group, and is therefore rich in validity. The choice of research method is also determined by the practical, ethical and theoretical issues associated with it.

Topic 2 - EXPERIMENTS

An experiment is characterised by its high degree of control that the researcher has over the situation. In an experiment, the researcher identifies and controls all variables that might affect the outcome. By manipulating the variables and observing what happens, the researcher can discover cause and effect relationships. There are two main types of experiments: laboratory experiments and field experiments.

Topic 3 - Questionnaires

Favoured by positivists, written or self-completed questionnaires are a form of social survey and can be distributed in a range of ways - notably, via post, email or handed out in person. Questionnaires are typically a list of pre-set questions that are closed-end questions with pre-coded answers.

Topic 4 - Interviews

In sociological research, there are different types of interviews: structured interviews and unstructured interviews (including group interviews). Sociologists sometimes use semi-structured interviews to combine the elements of both. Structured interviews are favoured by positivists because they are rich in reliability and representativity, whereas unstructured interviews are favoured by interpretivists because they are rich in validity.

topic 5 - Observations

Observations in sociological research take several different forms; they can either be participant or non-participant, meaning that the researcher is directly involved in one but not the other. Although participating in observations gives a direct insight into social behaviour, this is likely to produce the Hawthorne effect due to how participants are aware they are being studied and will change their behaviour accordingly. Additionally, observations can be either covert or overt; the former means the research group are aware the observation is taking place, whereas the latter means the research group do not know they are being researched.

topic 6 - official statistics

Official statistics are quantitative data collected by government bodies. This method is favoured by positivists because data is quick, cheap and easy to access, and it covers a wide range of social issues.

topic 7 - Documents

Documents are secondary data, favoured by interpretivists, which are created by individuals, groups and organisations. They mainly contain qualitative data that expresses beliefs and meanings held by an individual and/or organisation. Different types of documents include personal private documents and historical documents.

topic 8 - Methods in Context

Education is a unique setting for research and includes specific elements that may change the way in which research is conducted. This will all depend on the theme, the method and the topic involved.

Chapter 2: Sociological Research

Research methods: experiments, learning outcomes.

• Describe and give examples of how sociologists utilize experiments

Experiments

You’ve probably tested some of your own theories: “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. Causation is difficult to establish, so even if we seem to find evidence in our own lives that appears to prove our hypotheses, this is not sociological research nor is it evidence of causation. Sociologists set up specific studies in controlled environments in order to examine relationships between variables. Some studies are correlational, meaning they examine how two variables change together, while others are experimental, meaning they use controlled conditions to attempt to explain cause and effect. The primary difference between our everyday observations and sociological research is the systematic approach researchers use to collect data.

E xperiments aim to measure the relationship of the independent variable to the dependent variable, and the researcher or research team will attempt to control all other variables in the experimental process. This is often done in a lab-based setting, but can also be done as a field experiment. As discussed in the section on ethics, there are many considerations to address before  any  experimental work can occur. Sociologists must obtain approval from a review board (sometimes called an Internal Review Board or IRB) before they commence any type of sociological experiment.

Lab Settings

In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that perhaps more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables. Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group. The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. This is similar to pharmaceutical drug trials in which the experimental group is given the test drug and the control group is given a placebo or sugar pill. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring while the control group does not receive tutoring. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for example.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps one of the most famous sociological experiments ever conducted. In 1971, 24 healthy, middle-class male university students were selected to take part in a simulated jail environment to examine the effects of social setting and social roles on individual psychology and behavior. They were randomly divided into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. The prisoner subjects were arrested at home and transported blindfolded to the simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building on the campus of Stanford University. Within a day of arriving the prisoners and the guards began to display signs of trauma and sadism, respectively. After some prisoners revolted by blockading themselves in their cells, the guards resorted to using increasingly humiliating and degrading tactics to control the prisoners through psychological manipulation. The experiment had to be abandoned after only six days because the abuse had gotten out of hand (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo, 1973).

While the insights into the social dynamics of authoritarianism it generated were fascinating, the Stanford Prison Experiment also serves as an example of the ethical issues that emerge when experimenting on human subjects and the types of emotional harm that subjects can endure as a result of participating in research. Additionally, this classic experiment, which is cited in most sociology and psychology textbooks, has recently been called out as being “theatre” rather than rigorous science. Some social scientists have even provided evidence to show that Zimbardo and his team coached research subjects into being cruel (guards) and dramatic (prisoners). The experiment has also been criticized for its small sample size and unrepresentative sample population.

Natural or Field-Based Experiments

In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled, but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher. As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result.

Sociologists Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski wanted to examine discrimination in the low-wage job market. They recruited white, black, and Latino “testers,” who were assigned equivalent resumés and who were matched on a variety of characteristics such as age, education, physical appearance, and interpersonal skills. The testers applied to real job openings and recorded responses from employers. Because black and white testers were sent to the same firms, and testers were matched on a wide variety of characteristics, “much of the unexplained variation that confounds residual estimates of discrimination [was] experimentally controlled”  [1]  The testers were college-educated males that comprised field teams that included a white, Latino, and black tester; the Latino testers spoke in unaccented English and were U.S. citizens of Puerto Rican descent and claimed no Spanish language ability. They also examined the effect of a criminal record (felony drug offense) for different racial groups in job applications, building upon Pager’s research in 2003. Some resumés included a checked box to indicate a felony conviction and also listed prison labor as part of the applicant’s employment history. The teams applied for 340 real entry-level jobs throughout New York City over nine months in 2004.

As with many of the most insightful sociological studies, Pager, Western & Bonikowski included qualitative data based on the testers’ interactions with employers, which provided a rich supplement to the empirical data acquired through this field experiment. Like Matthew Desmond’s multi-method approach to evictions (empirical— secondary resources; interpretive—ethnography), we see a similar approach here (empirical—field experiment; interpretive—testers’ narratives of interactions with employers). In this study, blacks were only half as likely to receive a callback or job offer, and whites, blacks, and Latinos with clean criminal backgrounds were no more likely to receive a callback as a white applicant just released from prison. Moreover, the testers did not perceive any signs of clear prejudice (Pager, Western, & Bonikowski, 2009).

Sociologists have long been interested in inequality and discrimination. Read the study below to see how one sociology professor sent her students to the field.

An Experiment in Action

Figure 1. Sociologist Frances Heussenstamm conducted an experiment to explore the correlation between traffic stops and race-based bumper stickers. This issue of racial profiling remains a hot-button topic today. (Photo courtesy of dwightsghost/flickr)

A real-life example will help illustrate the experiment process. In 1971, Frances Heussenstamm, a sociology professor at California State University, Los Angeles, had a theory about police prejudice. To test her theory she conducted an experiment. She chose fifteen students from three ethnic backgrounds: black, white, and Latino. She chose students who routinely drove to and from campus along Los Angeles freeway routes, and who’d had perfect driving records for longer than a year. Those were her control variables—students, good driving records, same commute route. These students signed all had safe, up-to-date cars and signed a pledge to drive safely.

Next, she placed a Black Panther bumper sticker on each car. That sticker, a representation of a social value, was the independent variable. Founded in Oakland, California in 1966, the Black Panthers were a revolutionary African-American group actively fighting racism. Heussenstamm asked the students to follow their normal driving patterns. She wanted to see whether seeming to support the Black Panthers would change how these good drivers were treated by the police patrolling the highways (the dependent variable).

The first citation, for an incorrect lane change, was made two hours after the experiment began. One participant was pulled over three times in three days. He quit the study. After seventeen days, the fifteen drivers had collected a total of thirty-three traffic citations and the funding to pay traffic fines had run out. The experiment was halted (Heussenstamm 1971).

Think It Over

• Do the findings in the Pager, Western & Bonikowski field experiment surprise you? Why or why not? In what ways can studies about discrimination inform public policy?
• What kinds of ethical issues are present in Heussenstamm’s experiment? Were some students at greater risk than others? How do you think the experiences of each group (black, white, and Latino) differed? Do you think gender would influence the interaction between student and police officer?
• Imagine your sociology professor asked you to place a “Black Lives Matter” bumper sticker on your vehicle and asked you to sign an informed consent before participating in the study. Would you do it? Why or why not? How does geographic location and personal identity affect one’s experience and potential risk factors?
• Pager, D., Western, B. and B. Bonikowski. 2009. “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market:  A Field Experiment.” American Sociological Review. Vol. 74 (October:  777-799). ↵

• Types of Research in Sociology

In this section, you will find an overview of different research methods in sociology. You will find links to tools and resources in the library related to the different types of research and writing.

Qualitative vs Quantitative Research

• What's the Difference?
• Qualitative Research
• Quantitative Research

Research in Psychology is categorized into two general methods:

Non-numerical evidence, usually examined in its raw form

Used when a researcher wants to understand people's  opinions, idiosyncratic responses to an event, motivations, or underlying reasons for actions or decisions.

Learn about the Types of Qualitative Research Methods. link will open in a new window

Example: Interviewing the victims of a natural disaster to gather a range of emotional responses.

Numbers!  Collected as numerical data or converted into numerical data and examined using statistical methods of analysis.

Used to examine trends and compare populations.

Learn about the Types of Quantitative Research Methods. link will open in a new window

Example: Asking victims of a natural disaster to rank their feelings of anxiety using a pre-determined scale.

When to use them

Psychological research is best when it uses complementary quantitative and qualitative approaches together in the same study, a method called  triangulation.

Example:  Observing parent-child interactions while watching tv then comparing those observations to measured rates of social and cognitive development in the children who participated in the study.

The Research Continuum

The researchers record data by studying participants at a distance.   Researchers try not to influence the participants or their actions.

Types of observational studies include:  Naturalistic Observation link will open in a new window , Participant Observation link will open in a new window ,  or Ethnography. link will open in a new window

The researcher will collect and write detailed accounts of individual lives. A case study can combine a few research approaches, including interviews, observational data, and archival data.

Examples of Case Studies include Freud's history of Anna O link will open in a new window ., and the stories related in Oliver Sacks's best selling book  The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat .

A researcher applies their own analytical model to data that has already been collected.  They attempt to answer a new question or discover a new trend by looking at old data.

Typical sources of archival data include:  census data link will open in a new window , court records will open in a new window , medical records,  and even  case files  from other researchers.

Participants are asked a standard set of questions.  These questions may be delivered in writing or through an interview format.

There are three main types of questionnaire methods:   Random Sampling link will open in a new window , Stratified Sampling link will open in a new window , and Convenience Sampling link will open in a new window .

Researchers are trying to find a solution to an immediate, practical problem.  Examples include reducing drug use or improving worker happiness. 

Field research is a type of applied research that is undertaken in a non-laboratory setting. These settings may include a hospital or workplace.

Research conducted in a controlled environment.  The results help scholars in the field to learn more about psychological processes such as cognition or emotional development.

Common Research Methods

Types of observational studies include:  Non-Participant Observation   window or   Participant Observation .

A classic example of Case Studies in sociology is Erving Goffman's classic  Asylums. link will open in a new window

Information is gathered one-on-one by asking questions orally.   Structured Interviews can sometimes be used to gather quantitative data, because the structure allows the interview to function like a questionnaire.  

More qualitative types of interviewing range from the  Unstructured Interview  which functions like a conversation based around a set list of topics, to the  In-Depth Interview  which may range widely with only a loose guide to direct it.  

In-depth studies of groups in their natural setting.  These studies utilize multiple type of research to create a multi-layered report.  In addition to Participant Observation, a researcher may use interviews, questionnaires, or analysis of secondary research related to the group.

Some good examples of ethnographies available through the Library's online resources include:  Recovery's Edge : An Ethnography of Mental Health Care and Moral Agency Link will open in a new window by Neely Laurenzo Meyers, Sex Work and the City Link will open in a new window by Ysmina Katsulis, and The breakup 2.0 : disconnecting over new media Link will open in a new window by Ilana Gershon.

Experimental Research Methods

What is Experimental Research?

Experimental Research is a sub-type of research in sociology.  It may utilize the same methods as other research, but it differs in that it attempts measure variables as precisely as possible.

Experimental Research starts with a hypothesis  and uses a variety of research methods to  test  that hypothesis.  Ususally involves testing  causal relationships.

Researchers study the cause and effect of variables in a natural setting , such as a classroom or workplace.

This allows the researcher to study participants or phenomena in their natural setting, so results might be more accurate . But they have less control over the variables, so results might not be as precise .

Research conducted in a controlled environment.  

Participants' reactions may be influenced by the unnatural setting, but researchers have more control over variables.

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