The Science in Social Science

The Science in Social Science

1.1 INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK is about research in the social sciences. Our goal is practical: designing research that will produce valid inferences about social and political life. We focus on political science, but our argument applies to other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, economics, and psychology and to non-disciplinary areas of study such as legal evidence, education research, and clinical reasoning.

This is neither a work in the philosophy of the social sciences nor a guide to specific research tasks such as the design of surveys, conduct of field work, or analysis of statistical data. Rather, this is a book about research design: how to pose questions and fashion scholarly research to make valid descriptive and causal inferences. As such, it occupies a middle ground between abstract philosophical debates and the hansom techniques of the researcher and focuses on the essential logic underlying

all social scientific research.

Two Styles of Research,

One Logic of Inference Our main goal is to connect the traditions of what are conventionally

denoted “quantitative” and “qualitative” research by applying a unified logic of inference to both. The two traditions appear quite different; indeed they sometimes seem to be at war. Our view is that these differences are mainly ones of style and specific technique. The same underlying logic provides the framework for each research approach. This logic tends to be explicated and formalized clearly in discussions of quantitative research methods. But the same logic of inference underlies the best qualitative research, and all qualitative and quantitative researchers would benefit by more explicit attention to this logic in the course of designing research.

The styles of quantitative and qualitative research are very different. Quantitative research uses numbers and statistical methods. It tends to be based on numerical measurements of specific aspects of phenomena; it abstracts from particular instances to seek general description or to test causal hypotheses; it seeks measurements and analyses that are easily replicable by other researchers.

The Science in Social Science

Qualitative research, in contrast, covers a wide range of approaches, but by definition, none of these approaches relies on numerical measurements. Such work has tended to focus on one or a small number of cases, to use intensive interviews or depth analysis of historical materials, to be discursive in method, and to be concerned with a rounded or comprehensive account of some event or unit. Even though they

have a small number of cases, qualitative researchers generally unearth enormous amounts of information from their studies. Sometimes this kind of work in the social sciences is linked with area or case studies where the focus is on a particular event, decision, institution, location, issue, or piece of legislation. As is also the case with quantitative research, the instance is often important in its own right: a major change in a nation, an election, a major decision, or a world crisis. Why did the East German regime collapse so suddenly in 1989? More generally, why did almost all the communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapse in 1989? Sometimes, but certainly not always, the event may be chosen as an exemplar of a particular type of event, such as a political revolution or the decision of a particular community to reject a waste disposal site. Sometimes this kind of work is linked to area studies

where the focus is on the history and culture of a particular part of the world. The particular place or event is analyzed closely and in full detail.

 For several decades, political scientists have debated the merits of case studies versus statistical studies, area studies versus comparative studies, and “scientific” studies of politics using quantitative methods versus “historical” investigations relying on rich textual and contextual understanding. Some quantitative researchers believe that systematic statistical analysis is the only road to truth in the social sciences.

Advocates of qualitative research vehemently disagree. This difference of opinion leads to lively debate; but unfortunately, it also bifurcates the social sciences into a quantitative-systematic-generalizing branch and a qualitative-humanistic-discursive branch. As the former becomes more and more sophisticated in the analysis of statistical data (and their work becomes less comprehensible to those who have not studied the techniques), the latter becomes more and more convinced of the irrelevance of such analyses to the seemingly nonreplicable and non-generalizable events in which its practitioners are

Interested.

A major purpose of this book is to show that the differences between the quantitative and qualitative traditions are only stylistic and are methodologically and substantively unimportant. All good research

can be understood—indeed, is best understood—to derive from the same underlying logic of inference. Both quantitative and qualitative research can be systematic and scientific. Historical research can be analytical, seeking to evaluate alternative explanations through a process of valid causal inference. History, or historical sociology, is not incompatible with social science (Skocpol 1984: 374–86).

Breaking down these barriers requires that we begin by questioning the very concept of “qualitative” research. We have used the term in our title to signal our subject matter, not to imply that “qualitative”

research is fundamentally different from “quantitative” research, except in style.