Martin Bulmer

CONCEPTS IN THE ANALYSIS OF QUALITATIVE DATA

The question arises: do problems of concept-formation in such research differ from those in quantitative social research? It has often been maintained that this is so. While in quantitative social research concepts tend to be pre-formed and fixed (it is argued), in qualitative research they tend to be fluid and emergent. Herbert Blumer’s classic paper, ‘What is wrong with social theory?’ (1954), in which he distinguished between definitive and sensitising concepts provides a clear statement of this view.

When is disguise justified? Alternatives to covert participant observation

The ethical and practical merits of disguised, secret, or covert participant observation continue to be debated. This article suggests the need to recognize a wider variety of observational research strategies than are captured by this “either/or” debate. Such strategies include retrospective participant observation, “experience recollected in academic tranquility” the native as stranger, in which participants observe milieux with which they have long familiarity; adoption of the role of “covert outsider,” occupying a nonresearch position in an organization in order to do research; and the “overt insider,” deliberately adopting a particular occupational role, and undergoing training in it, to gain research access to otherwise closed research settings. Such alternative possibilities suggest that the need for covert observational strategies may be exaggerated.

The rejuvenation of community studies? Neighbours, networks and policy

Why have community studies in Britain undergone such a decline? Several reasons are suggested for the decrease in popularity of this type of research since the mid-1960s, but several signs of possible resurgence are detected. Sociologists may also have something to learn from applied work in this area. The definition of the field is shifting from the geographical community to the study of primary group relations among neighbours, friends and kin. An effective methodological strategy which avoids hypostatising geographical space is social network analysis. Current theoretical issues are exemplified from Philip Abramss work. There is revival too in the study of local-level political action.

Why Don't Sociologists Make More Use of Official Statistics?

This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of using official statistics - from administrative sources, vital registration, population censuses and government social surveys - in sociological inquiry. In recent years influential critiques of such data by Cicourel, J. D. Douglas, Hindess and other have come to hold powerful sway in sociology. Yet their criticisms have been exaggerated, overdrawn and extended illegitimately far beyond fields such as suicide and crime in which they were originally developed. The advantages of such official data are here reasserted, by means of examples drawn from the study of health, wealth, occupation, social class and race and ethnicity. Significant and meaningful empirical regularities have been shown using such data. Facts do not speak for themselves, but neither does theory speak for itself. The conceptual difficulties are not so intractable as critics of the use of official data tend to suggest. Traditions of the use of official statistics in social science stemming from the works of Ernest Burgess, William F. Ogburn, S. R. Steinmetz and Oscar Morgenstern are discussed. The past achievements and future potential of research using such data are suggested.

The methodology of early social indicator research: William Fielding Ogburn and ‘Recent social trends’, 1933

Sociologist William Fielding Ogburn was director of research for President Hoovers Research Committee on Social Trends, 1929–1933, one of the earliest major pieces of social indicator research. A memorandum written by Ogburn in 1932 on the methodology of Recent Social Trends is published for the first time with an introduction describing the background to the work and the methodological controversies which it engendered. Ogburns Note on Method emphasises the importance of ensuring factual accuracy and objectivity and of eliminating opinions, recommendations and biases from the work of the Presidents Committee.

Problems of Theory and Measurement

Social indicators have not fulfilled their promise, or at least have not lived up to the expectations held of them in the late 1950s and 1960s. Despite the continued growth of social statistics, produced both by governments and other organisations, the aim of producing precise, concise and evaluatively neutral measures of the state of society and of change in society has apparently eluded some of the best minds of the social science and governmental statistics communities. Whereas a wide range of economic indicators and data are readily available, if not without their problems (cf. Johnson, 1988), and integrated into the concepts of economic theory, standard measures of crime, health, well-being, education and many other social characteristics have proven much more difficult to construct and establish as standard yardsticks of social conditions. This note considers some of the reasons for these difficulties. It relates specifically to the aspiration to construct social indicators, not to social statistics more generally (as reviewed in, for example, Carley, 1981).

Successful Applications of Sociology

Too many sociologists in the last quarter of a century have, like Moliere’s famous character Monsieur Jourdain, been speaking prose without realising it. Their work has had considerable impact on the practical world, but for much of the time they have been steadfastly denying its usefulness, even in one case going to the lengths of writing a book entitled Why Sociology Does Not Apply (Scott and Shore, 1979). Starting from the view that a dominant theme of American sociology has been the argument that knowledge can transform society in obvious, self-evident and desirable ways, Robert Scott and Arnold Shore hold that many sociologists have a mistaken conception of the influence of research on policy. They see a schism opening up between social scientists doing routine disciplinary research and policy researchers doing work on policy questions.

A comment on: The relation of theory and method: causal relatedness, historical contingency and beyond

My central disagreement is with Layder’s statement (p. 459) that ‘the distinction between method and methodology is basically false in the sense that specific methods are always saturated with methodological prescriptions and thus, theoretical assumptions’. On the contrary, there are good grounds for arguing that there is no necessary connection between the use of a particular method and a particular general methodological standpoint. Consider, for example, the use of ‘pure’ observation in empirical inquiry by Lyn Lofland in her study of behaviour in public places (1973), by MassObservation in their pioneering studies in the 1930s, and by Nobel Laureate Nico Tinbergen in his studies of birds in their natural habitats. In certain respects the methods of inquiry used closely resemble one another, yet the epistemological and general methodological assumptions underlying each of the three sets of work are quite different. Or consider debates among historians and historical sociologists over the standard of living in England during the Industrial Revolution. The protagonists such as Eric Hobsbawm and R.M. Hartwell employed quite different interpretative frameworks but relied upon similar kinds of simple statistical methods to examine changes in price levels and the purchasing power of wages over time. When specific methodsor, as in Jennifer Platt’s article, specific periods in the history of sociology are closely examined, the degree of ‘saturation’ which Layder postulates is frequently lacking. Alan Bryman (1984, 1988) for example, has convincingly suggested that there is a much less close fit between the practice of either quantitative or qualitative research and the supposed epistemological assumptions which underlie them than is often thought. Nicholas Bateson (1984) has shown for survey research how survey data are not ‘given’ by the procedures that are used but

Chicago sociology and the society for social research: A comment

Lester R. Kurtzs introduction to Robert Parks “Notes on the Origins of the Society for Social Research” (JHBS, October 1982) contains several errors of fact and understates the significance of the society for an understanding of the achievement of Chicago sociology. The role of the society as an institutional mechanism for consolidating and integrating a research group into a “school” is discussed.

And that was the future …: Where will society go? Looking into the future of social welfare

Abstract The emergence of sociology was one response to the industrial revolution. In the 20th century, applied sociologists and social researchers have carried out important studies which have helped to shape government action. Since the 1942 Beveridge Report in the UK, students of social administration and social welfare have made a major contribution to the development of social policy. Yet after the pioneering example set by Beveridge, and with the exception of demographic forecasting, there has been a curious reluctance to engage in futures thinking.