- Why method is what makes a sociologist a social scientist, and why sociology needs both the insider’s and the outsider’s view
- Why objectivity is harder in sociology, and how sociologists deal with it: reflexivity, documentation, stating their own background
- The ways of classifying methods, how a method is chosen, and triangulation
- Participant observation (field work): what anthropologists and sociologists do in the field, Malinowski, Whyte, and India’s village studies
- The survey: sampling, stratification, randomisation, margin of error, the Census and NSO, and its weaknesses
- The interview: its flexibility, styles, recording, and its place beside other methods
| Board (2026-27) | Marks for this chapter | Paper |
|---|---|---|
| CBSE (039) | Not examined in 2026-27 (still in the NCERT book) | Theory 80 + project 20 |
| UP Board | 10 marks | One 100-mark theory paper, no project |
| Rajasthan Board (RBSE) | 10 marks | One 100-mark theory paper |
| MP Board | 8 marks | Theory 80 + project 20 |
CBSE 2026-27 does not examine this chapter (Unit 5 is missing from its course content). UP, Rajasthan and MP Boards examine it in full (10, 10 and 8 marks). A CBSE student still meets these ideas in the 20-mark project, which asks for a research question, a methodology and data analysis.
1 Introduction: Why Method Matters So Much in Sociology
Sociology studies things we already know a lot about from daily life: social groups, institutions, norms (accepted rules of behaviour) and relationships. So what makes the sociologist different from any other member of society? Why call her a social scientist?
Reason 1: how knowledge is gathered
- In all sciences the crucial element is method: the procedures through which knowledge is gathered.
- Sociologists differ from lay persons (ordinary people) not because of how much they know or what they know, but because of how they acquire their knowledge.
Reason 2: insider and outsider
- Sociology is interested in the lived experience of people (what life is actually like for them, as they feel it).
- It wants what a bystander can observe and the opinions and feelings of the people involved: to see the world through their eyes.
- So it needs both the outsider’s and the insider’s points of view.
Friendship
What does friendship mean to people in different cultures?
Religion
What does a religious person think he or she is doing when performing a ritual?
Bargaining
How do shopkeeper and customer interpret each other’s words and gestures while bargaining?
Method: the procedures through which knowledge is gathered.
2 Some Methodological Issues
Methodology: the study of method. It is often used simply as a substitute for (synonym of) “method”, but methodological questions are about the general problems of scientific knowledge-gathering that go beyond any one particular method, technique or procedure.
2.1 Objectivity and subjectivity
Objective
- Unbiased, neutral, or based on facts alone
- To be objective we must ignore our own feelings or attitudes about the thing studied
Subjective
- Something based on individual values and preferences
Objective: unbiased, neutral, or based on facts alone. Subjective: based on individual values and preferences.
Every science is expected to be objective, to produce unbiased knowledge based solely on facts. This is much harder in the social sciences than in the natural sciences.
| Natural scientist (geologist, botanist) | Social scientist (sociologist) |
|---|---|
| Studies rocks or plants; must not let personal bias, such as a liking for a particular theory or theorist, affect the results | Must also avoid bias |
| Is not part of the world being studied (the natural world) | Studies the world in which she herself lives: the social world of human relations |
| Objectivity is comparatively simpler | This creates special problems for objectivity |
2.2 Three problems for objectivity in sociology
Bias
Sociologists are members of society with normal likes and dislikes. One studying family relations is herself in a family. Even without direct experience, the values and prejudices of one’s own social context can affect her, for example when studying a caste or religious community other than her own.
Many versions of “truth”
Things look different from different vantage points (positions). A shopkeeper and a customer differ on a “good” price; a young and an aged person differ on “good food”. There is no simple way to judge which is truer, and sociology tries not to judge: it is interested in what people think, and why they think what they think.
Multi-paradigmatic science
Like its sister social sciences, sociology is “multi-paradigmatic”: competing and mutually incompatible schools of thought coexist within it, for example conflicting theories of society.
Multi-paradigmatic (science): one in which competing and mutually incompatible schools of thought coexist within the discipline.
2.3 How sociologists guard against bias
Reflexivity (also self-reflexivity): the researcher’s ability to observe and analyse oneself. The sociologist takes an outsider’s perspective on her own work and constantly subjects her own attitudes and opinions to self-examination.
Can you observe yourself as you observe others? Describe yourself as seen by (i) your best friend, (ii) your rival, (iii) your teacher, in the third person (“he” or “she”, not “I”). This is a small exercise in reflexivity: seeing yourself through the eyes of others.
2.4 So is objectivity impossible?
The old notion of an “objective, disinterested” (uninvolved) social science is now widely considered outdated: it is not attainable, and the ideal can actually be misleading. This does not mean sociology gives no useful knowledge or that objectivity is useless.
Objectivity has to be thought of as the goal of a continuous, ongoing process rather than an already achieved end result.
The chapter’s conclusion on objectivity
2.5 Multiple methods and the choice of method
- Since there are multiple truths and perspectives, there are also multiple methods: there is no single unique road to sociological truth.
- Every method has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it is futile (useless) to argue about which is superior. The real question: is the method appropriate for the question being asked?
| Research question (book’s example) | Suitable method |
|---|---|
| Are most Indian families still “joint families”? | Census or survey is the best method |
| Compare the status of women in joint and nuclear families | Interviews, case studies or participant observation |
Four ways of classifying methods
| Basis | One kind | The other kind |
|---|---|---|
| What is measured | Quantitative: countable or measurable variables (things that can vary and be counted: proportions, averages and the like) | Qualitative: abstract, hard-to-measure phenomena like attitudes and emotions |
| What is studied | Observable behaviour | Non-observable meanings, values and other interpretational things |
| Kind of data | Secondary: already existing data (documents, records, artefacts, that is, objects made by people); historical methods rely on archives (stored old records) | Primary: fresh data the research produces; interviews generate primary data |
| Scale | Micro: small intimate settings, usually a single researcher: interview, participant observation | Macro: large-scale research with many respondents and investigators: survey research is the most common; some historical methods too |
Any classification is a matter of convention (an accepted practice, not a fixed law). The dividing line between kinds of methods need not be very sharp; one method can often be converted into another, or supplemented by another.
What decides the choice of method? (1) The nature of the research question, (2) the preferences of the researcher, and (3) the constraints of time and/or resources.
Triangulation: the recent trend of using multiple methods to bear on the same research problem from different vantage points; a process of reiterating or pinpointing something from different directions, so that the methods complement each other and give a much better result than each method by itself.
The methods most distinctive of sociology are those that produce primary data. Among field-work based methods, the chapter introduces the three most prominent: participant observation, survey and interview.
3 Participant Observation
Popular in sociology and specially in social anthropology (the study of societies and cultures, traditionally of tribal communities), participant observation is the method by which the sociologist learns about the society, culture and people she is studying.
- Unlike surveys or interviews, it involves a long period of interaction with the subjects of research: usually about a year or sometimes more, living among the people “as one of them”.
- As a non-native “outsider”, the anthropologist immerses (fully absorbs) herself in the culture of the “natives” by learning their language and participating intimately in everyday life, to acquire the explicit (stated) and implicit (unspoken, taken-for-granted) knowledge and skills of the “insider”.
- The overall goal is to learn about the “whole way of life” of a community.
- The model is that of the child: researchers learn everything about their adoptive community in the holistic way (taking in everything as a whole) small children learn about the world.
Participant observation (field work): a method in which the researcher spends a long period, usually about a year or more, living among the people studied as one of them, learning their language and taking part in their daily life, to learn the “whole way of life” of the community from the insider’s point of view.
Participant observation is often called “field work”. The term came from natural sciences like botany, zoology and geology, whose scientists could not work only in the laboratory but had to go out into “the field” to learn about rocks, insects or plants.
4 Field Work in Social Anthropology
4.1 From armchair to field
Field work as a rigorous scientific method played a major role in establishing anthropology as a social science. Many communities and places became famous in the discipline because of classic field work done there.
4.2 What did the anthropologist actually do in the field?
Building a genealogy. The head of a household is asked about relatives in his or her own generation (brothers, sisters, cousins), then the parents’ generation (father, mother, their brothers and sisters), then the grandparents’ generation, for as many generations as the person can remember. Other relatives are asked the same questions to cross-check, and then a detailed family tree is drawn.
- It helps the anthropologist understand the kinship system (the network of relations by blood and marriage): what roles different relatives play in a person’s life and how the relations are maintained.
- It acquaints her with the structure of the community, and practically lets her meet people and become familiar with the way the community lives.
Genealogy: an extended family tree outlining familial relations across generations.
Topics of special interest: festivals, religious or other collective events, modes of earning a living, family relations and modes of child rearing. Learning about these means asking endless questions about things community members take for granted: this is the sense in which the anthropologist is like a child.
Informants (principal informants; in the early days, “native informant”): the one or two people on whom the anthropologist depends for most of the information. They act as the anthropologist’s teachers and are crucially important in the whole research process.
Equally important are the detailed field notes, written up every day without fail, supplemented by or in the form of a daily diary.
- Who: a Polish anthropologist settled in Britain, a respected professor at the London School of Economics. He was not the first to use field work, but is widely believed to have established it as the distinctive method of social anthropology.
- 1914: when the First World War broke out he was visiting Australia (then part of the British Empire). Poland was annexed (taken over) by Germany and declared an enemy country by Britain, so Malinowski technically became an “enemy alien”, and the law required that he be “interned” (confined to a specific place).
- He asked to serve his internment in the Trobriand Islands, a British-Australian possession in the South Pacific. The Australian government agreed and even financed the trip. He spent a year and a half there.
- He lived in a tent in the native villages, learnt the local language, interacted closely with the “natives”, kept careful records and a daily diary. His books on Trobriand culture are classics even today.
- His belief: the future of anthropology lay in direct and unmediated interaction with the native culture, or it would stay an “intellectual hobby”. This meant systematic first-hand observation preceded by intensive language learning; observation in context (living among the people, not interviewing natives summoned to the town or outpost); and no interpreters.
- Result: using his position at the LSE and his reputation, he campaigned to make field work a mandatory part of training for anthropology students, and helped the discipline gain acceptance as a rigorous science.
4.3 Famous instances of field work (Activity 2)
| Anthropologist | Field work (as the book lists it) |
|---|---|
| Radcliffe-Brown | On the Andaman Nicobar islands |
| Evans Pritchard | On the Nuer in the Sudan |
| Franz Boas | On various Native American tribes in the USA |
| Margaret Mead | On Samoa |
| Clifford Geertz | On Bali |
The activity asks you to find these places, think what they have in common, and imagine the difficulties of living in a “strange” culture.
5 Field Work in Sociology
Sociologists use more or less the same techniques. Sociological field work differs not so much in its content (what is done) as in its context (where it is done) and in the distribution of emphasis across topics.
Anthropological field work
- Typically in a remote tribal community
- Involves “living in” among the people
- Goal: become an insider
Sociological field work
- Among all sorts of communities
- Does not necessarily involve “living in”, though most of the time is spent with the community’s members
- Goal: also become an insider
5.1 Two examples
William Foote Whyte
American sociologist. Studied a street “gang” in an Italian-American slum in a large city and wrote the famous book Street Corner Society. He lived in the area three and half years, “hanging out” (just spending time) with gang members, who were mostly poor unemployed youth, the first American-born generation in a community of immigrants.
Michael Burawoy
American sociologist. Worked several months as a machinist in a Chicago factory and wrote about the experience of work from the perspective of the workers.
- Unlike an anthropologist among a remote tribe, the student of a modern American community deals with a literate people: some, perhaps many, will read the research report.
- Disguising the name of the district hides it from outsiders, but the people of the district know it is about them; even changed names do not disguise individuals for them.
- So the researcher carries a heavy responsibility: he wants the book to help the people, or at least to minimise the chances of harm, knowing that certain individuals may suffer through the publication.
5.2 Village studies in Indian sociology
In the 1950s many Indian and foreign anthropologists and sociologists began working on village life. Why the village?
| Reason | What the book says |
|---|---|
| Methodological | The village was the equivalent of the tribal community: a “bounded community” (one with clear limits), small enough to be studied by one person who could know almost everyone |
| Nationalist objection to anthropology | Anthropology was unpopular with nationalists in colonial India for its excessive concern with the primitive. Many educated Indians felt it carried a colonial bias (the slant of the ruling colonial powers), emphasising the non-modern aspects of colonised societies rather than their progressive side. Studying villages seemed more acceptable than studying only tribes. |
| Anthropology and colonialism | The classic field work of Malinowski, Evans Pritchard and others was possible because the places studied were part of colonial empires ruled by the anthropologists’ own countries |
| Main reason: a subject of great interest in newly independent India | The government wanted to develop rural India; the national movement, specially Mahatma Gandhi, had been involved in “village uplift” programmes; urban educated Indians had family and historical links to villages; and villages were where most Indians lived (and still do) |
For these reasons village studies became a very important part of Indian sociology, and field work methods suited them very well.
Village studies were the main preoccupation of Indian sociology in the 1950s and 1960s.
| Study | Who and where | Style |
|---|---|---|
| Behind Mud Walls (much earlier) | William and Charlotte Wiser, a missionary couple, lived five years in a village in Uttar Pradesh | By-product of missionary work; William Wiser was trained as a sociologist and had earlier written an academic book on the jajmani system (a village system of service relations between castes) |
| The Remembered Village | M.N. Srinivas, a year in a village near Mysore that he named Rampura | Classical social anthropological style (village in place of the “tribe”); perhaps the best known example. The title: his field notes were destroyed in a fire, so he wrote about the village from memory |
| Indian Village | S.C. Dube, social anthropologist at Osmania University; village Shamirpet near Secunderabad | A multi-disciplinary team (agricultural sciences, economics, veterinary sciences, medicine) to study and develop the village: a sort of laboratory for designing rural development programmes |
| Cornell Village Study Project (1950s) | Cornell University; American social anthropologists, psychologists and linguists; several villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh | Ambitious academic multi-disciplinary project; some Indian scholars were involved; it helped train many Americans who later became well-known scholars of Indian society |
Describe your village (or your town neighbourhood) to someone who has never been there. How does it differ from villages and cities shown in films or on television? Would you want to live in them? This trains you to look at your own surroundings as an insider explaining to an outsider.
5.3 Strengths and limitations of participant observation
Strengths
- A very rich and detailed picture of life from the insider’s perspective: the greatest return on the large investment of time and effort
- Detailed knowledge of the field over a long period; most other methods rest on a short, quick field visit
- Allows correction of initial impressions, which may be mistaken or biased
- Lets the researcher track changes and see the impact of different situations: a good harvest year vs a bad harvest year; people employed vs unemployed
- Full-time engagement avoids many errors that surveys, questionnaires or short-term observation cannot escape
Weaknesses
- Long, intensive work by usually a single scholar, so it covers only a very small part of the world (a single village or small community)
- We can never be sure whether what was observed is common or exceptional in the larger community: probably the biggest disadvantage
- Whose voice? The researcher may, consciously or unconsciously, select what is written and how it is presented; with no other version available, bias or error is possible (a risk present in most methods)
- A one-sided relationship: the researcher asks the questions, presents the answers and speaks for “the people”
Some scholars suggest more “dialogic” (based on two-way dialogue) formats, in which the people studied are directly involved: translating the scholar’s work into the language of the community, asking their opinion and recording their responses. As the social, economic and political distance between researcher and researched narrows, the scholar’s version will be questioned, qualified or corrected by the people. Research becomes more controversial and difficult, but in the long run social science becomes more democratic, with many more people producing and critically engaging with “knowledge”.
6 Surveys
The survey is probably the best known sociological method, now commonplace in public life. In India it is used for non-academic purposes too: predicting election results, devising marketing strategies, and eliciting popular opinions on many subjects.
Survey: an attempt to provide an overview; a comprehensive or wide-ranging perspective on some subject based on information obtained from a carefully chosen representative set of people, called respondents.
6.1 Basic elements of a survey
| Element | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Respondents | The people who respond to the questions asked of them |
| Researchers | Those who plan and design the study |
| Investigators (research assistants) | Associates and assistants who take the questions to respondents; survey research is usually done by large teams |
| Modes of asking | Orally in personal visits; by telephone; written questionnaires brought by investigators or sent by post; electronically (email, the Internet); filling a form on a website through links |
Questionnaire: a written list of questions to be asked in a survey or interview. A survey’s questionnaire is sometimes called the “survey instrument”.
Main advantage: a survey lets us generalise results for a large population while studying only a small portion of it, with a manageable investment of time, effort and money.
Population: in the statistical sense, the larger body (of persons, villages, households, etc.) from which a sample is drawn. Sample: a subset or selection (usually small) drawn from and representing a larger population.
6.2 Selecting a representative sample
The survey’s “shortcut” works through sampling theory, a branch of statistics. The key element is the representativeness of the sample, which rests on two principles.
Principle 1: Stratification
- All relevant sub-groups of the population must be recognised and represented in the sample.
- Large populations are not homogeneous: India has rural and urban sectors; a state’s rural people live in villages of different sizes; one village may be stratified by class, caste, gender, age, religion.
- Which strata matter depends on the research objective: on attitudes to religion, include members of all religions; on attitudes to trade unions, include workers, managers and industrialists.
Principle 2: Randomisation
- The actual unit (person, village or household) must be chosen purely by chance.
- It rests on probability: a normal coin falls heads or tails with exactly the same chance, 50 per cent each; which happens is purely chance (a random event).
- Being chosen is a matter of luck, like winning a lottery.
- Techniques: drawing lots (lottery), rolling dice, random number tables, and random numbers generated by calculators or computers.
Here stratification is a statistical notion: dividing a population into sub-groups. The book stresses that it is different from the sociological concept of stratification .
Stratification (statistical sense): the subdivision of a population into distinct groups based on relevant criteria such as gender, location, religion, age etc. Randomisation: ensuring that an event (such as the selection of a particular item in the sample) depends purely on chance and nothing else. Probability: the likelihood or odds of an event occurring (in the statistical sense).
| Random (chance) sample | Purposive sample (not random) |
|---|---|
| Units chosen purely by chance after the relevant strata are identified | Choosing only villages near the main highway (a purposive sample is picked by the researcher’s choice, not by chance) |
| Representative of the population | Choosing mostly middle-class households, or households that we know |
The book’s worked example
Hypothesis (an idea to be tested): living in smaller and more intimate communities produces greater intercommunity harmony than living in larger, more impersonal communities. Only the rural sector of a single state is studied.
Equal weightage (importance) is given to each stratum, so 10 villages are chosen from each. Real studies use more complicated designs, with many stages and many strata, but the principle stays the same: a small, carefully selected sample stands for the whole population, and its results are generalised to the population.
6.3 Margin of error
Sampling error (margin of error): the unavoidable margin of error in the results of a survey because it is based on information from only a small sample rather than the entire population. It arises not from mistakes by researchers, and the chance of such deviations can be specified.
When reporting sample survey results, researchers must state the size and design of the sample and the margin of error.
Activity 4: when newspapers or TV report an election survey, check whether the margin of error, the sample size and the way it was chosen were mentioned. Be suspicious of surveys that hide these: the media often make big claims on biased, unrepresentative samples. Activity 5: design a different sample for each of three school questions (many vs one or no siblings and studies; the most popular break-time activity in Classes I-V, VI-VIII, IX-X and XI-XII; whether a student’s favourite subject is the one the favourite teacher teaches, and whether boys and girls differ).
6.4 Strengths of the survey
- A broad overview representative of a large population with relatively small outlays of time and money.
- The bigger the sample, the better its chance of being representative; the extreme case is the census, which covers the entire population. In practice sample sizes vary from 30-40 to many thousands.
- The mode of selection is even more important than size; decisions can also rest on practical considerations.
- Where a census is not feasible, the survey is the only means of studying the population as a whole.
- Its unique advantage: an aggregated picture, based on a collectivity rather than single individuals. Many social problems become visible only at this aggregate level.
Census: a comprehensive survey covering every single member of a population.
- India’s population census, held every ten years, is the largest such exercise in the world (China, the only country with a larger population, does not conduct a regular census). It needs lakhs of investigators and huge expense, but includes every household and every one of the more than one billion people in India.
- Many developed countries no longer conduct a full census; they depend on sample surveys, found to be very accurate.
- The National Statistical Organisation (NSO) conducts sample surveys every year on family expenditure, employment and unemployment and other subjects.
- Every five years it conducts a bigger survey of about 1.2 lakh households covering more than 6 lakh persons: among the biggest regularly conducted surveys in the world. Yet this is only about 0.06 per cent (just over one twentieth of one per cent) of India’s population. Because it is scientifically selected to be representative, it can still estimate population characteristics.
Aggregate statistics: the decline in the child sex ratio
The (juvenile, or child) sex ratio is the number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group 0-6 years. The book gives these Census figures and says the problem has reached worrying levels in states such as Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Himachal Pradesh.
| Girls per 1,000 boys (0-6 years) | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 945 | 927 | 914 |
| Punjab | 875 | 798 | 846 |
| Haryana | 879 | 819 | 830 |
| Delhi | 915 | 868 | 866 |
| Gujarat | 928 | 883 | 890 |
| Himachal Pradesh | 951 | 896 | 906 |
The child sex ratio is an aggregate (or macro) variable: it becomes visible only when statistics for large populations are collated (put together). Looking at single families tells us nothing, because the proportion of boys and girls in one family can always be balanced by other families we have not looked at. Only a census or large-scale survey can calculate the ratio for the whole community and identify the problem.
6.5 Weaknesses of the survey
Breadth, not depth
Wide coverage comes at the cost of depth: with many respondents, the time spent on each is limited, so in-depth information is usually not possible.
Many investigators
Hard to ensure that complicated questions, or those needing detailed prompting, are asked of all respondents in exactly the same way; differences in asking or recording introduce errors.
Fixed instrument
The questionnaire (“survey instrument”) is handled by persons other than the researchers, with little chance of corrections during use, so it must be designed very carefully.
Strangers
No long-term relationship, so no familiarity or trust: only questions that can be asked between strangers. Personal or sensitive questions cannot be asked, or are answered “safely” rather than truthfully.
Inflexible questionnaire
The most important limitation: to succeed it must depend on a tightly structured, inflexible questionnaire, and its success finally depends on the nature of the interactions between investigators and respondents, specially on the goodwill and cooperation of respondents.
Non-sampling error: errors in survey results due to mistakes in the design or application of methods, that is, not due to the sampling process but to faults of the research design or the way it was implemented. Some are hard to foresee, so surveys can produce misleading or false estimates.
| Sampling error | Non-sampling error |
|---|---|
| Comes from using a small sample to stand for a large population | Comes from faults in the research design or its implementation |
| Unavoidable, but its size can be specified and is reported | Some are difficult to foresee and guard against |
| Not anyone’s mistake | Example: sensitive questions answered “safely”; questions asked differently by different investigators |
7 Interview
Interview: basically a guided conversation between the researcher and the respondent. It has few technicalities, but the simple format is deceptive: it takes a lot of practice and skill to become a good interviewer.
Chief advantage: extreme flexibility
- Questions can be re-phrased or stated differently
- The order of subjects or questions can be changed as the conversation progresses (or fails to)
- Subjects producing good material can be extended; those provoking unfavourable reactions can be cut short or postponed
- All this can be done during the interview itself
Disadvantage: the same flexibility
- Vulnerable to changes of mood of the respondent
- Vulnerable to lapses of concentration of the interviewer
- An unstable and unpredictable format: it works very well when it works, and fails miserably when it does not
7.1 Styles, recording and writing up
| Aspect | Options in the book |
|---|---|
| Style | A very loosely structured format with only a checklist of topics, or a more structured one with specific questions for all respondents |
| Recording | Video or audio recording; detailed note taking during the interview; or relying on memory and writing it up afterwards. Recorders often make the respondent uneasy and bring formality; less complete methods may miss important information. Physical or social circumstances may decide the mode. |
| Writing up | A “cleaned up” continuous narrative from an edited transcript, or retaining the flavour of the original conversation with all its asides and digressions |
7.2 The interview alongside other methods
- Often used with or as a supplement to participant observation and surveys.
- Long conversations with key informants (the main informant in a participant observation study) give a concentrated account that situates and clarifies other material.
- Intensive interviews add depth and detail to a survey’s findings.
- But it depends on personalised access and the degree of rapport (a friendly, trusting relationship) or mutual trust between respondent and researcher.
8 The Three Methods Side by Side
| Feature | Participant observation | Survey | Interview |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale | Micro: one village or small community | Macro: large population via a sample | Micro |
| Time with each person | Long, about a year or more in the field | Limited; a short meeting with strangers | A guided conversation |
| Structure | Completely open-ended | Tightly structured questionnaire | In between; flexible |
| Main strength | Rich insider’s perspective | Generalise to a large population; aggregate picture | Extreme flexibility |
| Main weakness | Cannot tell if findings are common or exceptional | No depth; inflexible questionnaire; non-sampling errors | Unstable; depends on rapport |
9 Quick Revision
- Method makes the sociologist a social scientist: not how much she knows, but how she acquires knowledge; sociology needs the insider’s and outsider’s views.
- Objectivity is harder in sociology: bias (she lives in the world she studies), many versions of truth, a multi-paradigmatic discipline. Guards: reflexivity, documentation, stating one’s background. Objectivity is an ongoing process.
- Methods: quantitative/qualitative, behaviour/meanings, primary/secondary, micro/macro (a matter of convention). Choice: research question, researcher’s preference, time and resources. Triangulation combines methods.
- Participant observation (field work): about a year living as one of the people; census, map, genealogy, language, informants, daily field notes. From armchair scholars (Frazer, Durkheim) to field work, integral since the 1920s; Malinowski, interned in the Trobriand Islands after the war broke out in 1914.
- Sociological field work: Whyte’s Street Corner Society, Burawoy in a Chicago factory; village studies of the 1950s: Wisers, Srinivas (Rampura), Dube (Shamirpet), Cornell project.
- Participant observation: rich insider view, but small coverage, unsure if typical (biggest disadvantage), whose voice, one-sided; dialogic formats.
- Survey: overview from a representative sample; stratification + randomisation; purposive samples are not random; margin of error; Census every ten years, NSO 1.2 lakh households (0.06 per cent); aggregate picture (child sex ratio). Weaknesses: no depth, investigators, strangers, non-sampling errors, inflexible questionnaire.
- Interview: guided conversation between questionnaire and participant observation; flexibility is both its advantage and weakness; depends on rapport.
- Can I give the three problems of objectivity and the three ways sociologists deal with them?
- Can I classify the methods in four ways with an example each?
- Can I list the five things an anthropologist does in the field, in order?
- Can I tell Malinowski’s story with the year, place and his three rules?
- Can I name the four village-study styles with author, book and village?
- Can I explain stratification and randomisation with the book’s village example?
- Can I tell sampling error from non-sampling error?
- Can I give two strengths and two weaknesses each of participant observation, survey and interview?