Christina Maimone
PS311 – Week 10
The Rules of Sociological Method
Emile Durkheim
1895
Designing Social Inquiry
Gary King, Robert Keohane, Sidney Verba
1994
Qualitative Research and Social Facts: Then and Now
Durkheim and King, Keohane, and Verba (KKV) share a purpose and a perspective in
writing their respective books on qualitative research methods in the social sciences. The
purpose is to improve qualitative research so that it is actually able to produce social facts that
tell us something about the world. The perspective is one of an objective observer presenting
something that should be known to those participating in an enterprise but which is long overdue
and severely needed. Writing a century apart, Durkheim and KKV both push qualitative
researchers to make the most of their method and thereby improve the quality of information we
have about the social world. This paper highlights some of the significant contributions of both
works and then discusses what can be learned from the similarity of the two approaches a
century apart.
Durkheim
Durkheim sets forth the basis for good qualitative research that KKV build upon a
century later. He touches on the themes that KKV take up and expand upon in detail in a general
manner appropriate for the state of social science at the time. Durkheim offers three principle
rules that must be followed in order to gain knowledge of social facts that exist in the world.
These rules are:1
1.
2.
3.
All preconceptions must be eradicated.
The subject matter of every sociological study should comprise a group of
phenomena defined in advance by certain common external characteristics,
and all phenomena so defined should be included within this group.
When, then, the sociologist undertakes the investigation of some order of
social facts, he must endeavor to consider them from an aspect that is
independent of their individual manifestations.
These rules are sufficient to take the researcher quite far in doing methodologically solid work in
the social sciences.
1
Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, Trans. Solovay, Mueller, Ed. 8, The Free Press: 1938. Pages 31-46.
The first rule relates to KKV in terms of selection bias, clearly defining a research
question, and developing a theory that is related to the reality of the data. The second rule
addresses the selection of cases or observations and the clear definition of independent and
dependent variables. The third rule is referring to drawing correct inferences from data, which
KKV fully develop. In using these rules, Durkheim advocates doing research that can be done
realistically given the current state of a field or question in order to develop knowledge about the
issue under investigation. “We must approach the social realm where it offers the easiest access
to scientific investigation. Only subsequently will it be possible to push research further.”2
In addition to offering methodological rules for good research, Durkheim makes an
important contribution to defining the object of study of social science. Durkheim asserts that
social facts exist in the world as real things, separate from and unlike ideas. It is these social
facts that social science is attempting to reveal and understand. He starts by defining the social
in terms of the external relations and obligations that individuals fulfill by law and custom, such
as those of brother, husband, or citizen, which are inherited through education in a given
system.3 The distinction he is making is similar to Geertz’s consideration of the difference
between a twitch and a wink;4 a wink has social meaning while a twitch does not, and thus is an
object of interest to social science whereas a twitch is not. This delineates social science on the
side of human aggregation by preventing everything that occurs in society from being the proper
object of study by social scientists.
On the side of the individual, Durkheim explicitly differentiates social science from
psychology by positing that social facts are the result of the collectivity of individuals and do not
originate with the individual. This belief in the existence of a collective being separate from the
individuals that comprise the collective seems almost silly from current perspectives about how
the social world operates, however two ideas relevant for conceptualizing the social world today
result from it. The first is that an association or collective is greater than the sum of its parts.
This, like several other of Durkheim’s ideas, is a concept appropriated from biology.5 There are
2
Durkheim, page 46
Durkheim, page 1
4
Geertz, An Interpretation of Cultures
5
Durkheim is heavily influenced by evolutionary biology. In some instances, like the one above, valuable analogies
can be drawn from biology. In others, however, Durkheim’s arguments fail to transfer from the biological to the
social world successfully. His focus on the normal vs. the pathological in the social world as the primary focus of
social science is an inappropriate description of the simple variation in some phenomena that is the actual object of
social scientific investigation. Judgments of normal and pathological, as scientific as Durkheim attempts to make
3
phenomena that exist with groups of people that cannot be found in just individuals themselves.
While there may be a psychological basis for mob action, mobs do not exist separate from a
collectivity of individuals; we do not observe mob behavior in one individual acting alone. The
second concept is that social facts have a coercive power that constrains individuals in their
actions. Individuals in society are forced to deal with social facts, such as the obligations of
family, expected behavior in social interactions, or language conventions, by conforming to them
or resisting them. There are social realities that cannot be simply ignored by individuals living in
society.
King, Keohane, and Verba
KKV divide research design into four components: the research question, theory, data,
and use of the data. This division is not substantively different from the standard scientific
model, but their presentation of the process of research is significantly unique. One of the
objections made about the application of the scientific method to qualitative research is that the
model of 1) hypothesis, 2) testing and data collection, and 3) drawing conclusions does not fit the
way researchers actually do qualitative research. KKV allow for the possibility that the
components of research may not always come in the same order. Even more valuable is that they
discuss the implications of doing research where the theory comes after the data as opposed to
being developed beforehand.
KKV offer four characteristics of scientific research:6
1.
2.
3.
4.
The goal is inference.
The procedures are public.
The conclusions are uncertain.
The content is the method.
The first characteristic distinguishes scientific inquiry from the simple accumulation of facts or
description of phenomena. The second characteristic is especially important for qualitative
research where the method by which a researcher comes to conclusions, evaluates observations,
and develops impressions upon which inferences are based is often left out of presentations of
projects. Despite the difficulties of detailing the mental processes involved in drawing
inferences from qualitative work, strong efforts should be made to make these procedures public
so judgments can be made about the validity of the work. The third characteristic requires an
them, introduce bias to social research that is harmful rather than helpful. Further, the survival of the fittest view of
social facts has been shown by North (1990) and others as simply invalid in a social context.
6
King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, Princeton University Press: 1994. Pages 7-9
admission on the part of the researcher that perfect certainty cannot exist and that accurate
estimates of the uncertainty of conclusions increase, rather than diminish, the validity of the
work. The fourth characteristic reminds us that without solid methodology, the object of study is
irrelevant because we will not be able to learn anything about it. Durkheim would agree with
these characterizations of scientific research, especially the focus on proper method. He also
acknowledges the uncertainty of scientific research and the fact that research produces
successively better approximations to a reality that we may never be able to understand perfectly.
KKV limit the domain of what is an appropriate object for social scientific research less
severely than Durkheim. They require that for theories to be scientific they need to have
observable implications that can be tested. This qualification serves to exclude purely
philosophical theories as well as interpretive pursuits that do not have grounding in social facts.
KKV also expect that social scientists will research problems that are relevant for understanding
political, social, or economic life in reality. This, like Durkheim’s definition of the social,
excludes social science from researching what color shoes people wear, unless the outcome of
the research is expected to aid in understanding socially relevant problems and events.
Conclusion
The similarity of Durkheim and KKV is important because it confirms the strength of the
method they both lay out, and it provides an argument against those who may criticize KKV as
sacrificing meaning in favor of reason. The method by which social facts can be discovered is
necessarily and properly grounded in the logic by which humans can come to know any fact,
social or not. If social science is genuinely concerned with “producing valid inferences about
social and political life,”7 then the methodology of Durkheim and KKV is crucial. As
demonstrated by Durkheim writing a century ago, the qualitative methodology endorsed by
Durkheim and KKV is not an adaptation of quantitative methodology. The logic behind the
methods of drawing inferences is as natural to qualitative data as to quantitative.
The similarity of Durkheim and KKV is disturbing because it implies that after a century
of social science research, the scientific methodology of these authors is not standard practice in
the social sciences. While the scientific nature of social research has undoubtedly improved over
the course of the century, KKV’s book brings into question some of the things we may have
7
KKV, page 3
taken for granted as established social facts. It asks us to examine research we may have
previously accepted again in terms of the methodology KKV detail, which is exactly what
Durkheim was asking researchers to do with his first rule of research listed above. Durkheim
was encouraging researchers to forget the common sense, everyday knowledge they had about
the definitions of terms and causality in the social world. KKV are asking us to do the same and
bring into question the common sense that has developed in the social sciences since Durkheim.
This is a valid request on their part, and one that if undertaken will not only aid future research
but also allow the social sciences to assess their own scientific nature. Doing so will hopefully
help remove the persisting characterization of the social sciences, and especially qualitative
work, as undeveloped or pseudoscientific within the scientific world, which, KKV show, is an
unfair characterization of properly conducted qualitative research.
KKV’s work is exciting, even though the methodology they present has been known in
its essential form since Durkheim. The presence of their work now serves as a challenge to
researchers to ensure that social science realizes its potential as a scientific discipline. It is a
reminder of what it is that social science does and how we learn about the social world.