Fundamentals of Sociological Research

 

Fundamentals of Sociological Research

...Sociological imagination and thinking are primary part of sociological research and researcher should practice theory in their research. Theory is not just a chapter to read or a section in thesis. Formulation of abstract ideas in relation to concrete realities is essential. 

By: Mahmudul Hasan Laskar

In the essay “What is sociological Research”, it is stated that sociological research is the combination of effective thinking guided by philosophical approaches like hermeneutics, phenomenology, positivism among others; keen observation over society and phenomena that occurs in social as well as natural world; empirical experience not merely based on superficial statistical data collected from the respondents but also based on scientific observation; and most importantly researchers argumentative capacity with proper justification (Laskar, 2020). One thing should be clear here is that ‘thinking’ may not be a deliberate action rather a free state of imagination, perception, anticipation and assumption of a person about society and phenomena. In today’s time, researchers of sociology are just running after data collection without even understanding the actual essence of it. Data is not something what your respondents say in replying to your question but the actual condition behind the reply and the context in which the reply is given.

For example, we often find the topic_ ‘educational condition of a village or a society’, which involves a common question for respondents, ‘whether you are interested in study?’ and the respondents do reply by choosing the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option. The answer is not the data but actual condition or context behind the response, which a sociological researcher can understand only if reason being applied.

You may say that another question_ ‘why are you not interested in study?’ is also included in the interview schedule; respondents can choose from the given options like poverty, lack of schools and so on. But for sociological research, these are not data too why because it is essential to understand the problem in question, in relation to other social systems of this particular group or society. Respondent may reply poverty as the reason but researcher need to understand the actual state of mind of the respondents towards future; whether they have ambition, whether they have any planning to get rid of poverty, how other social systems like marriage (early marriage in this case), religion etc. affect them and what is their perception towards education in general.

I have observed in the villages that many people particularly youths blame poverty as the reason behind their lack of interest in education but spend time unnecessarily by loitering, doing gossip and they even mock the education by saying “what will happen with so much education, we can earn money even without education”. Now if poverty is an obstacle why they are not working or trying to get rid of poverty and aspire for education.

My point is that how mere reply “poverty is the reason behind lack of interest in education” will justify the research on the problem? So mere reply is not data rather analysis of condition and contexts may provide data. But often researchers are just engrossed in statistical technique to compile data and present an attractive table.

Another fundamental aspect we need to focus on is the research problem or topic of our study. We just cannot randomly take a problem and make it a topic of research by attaching the word ‘sociological’ either as a suffix or as a prefix. Foremost task is to visualize the research problem and the scope of developing new outcome. It has been observed that topic like ‘child marriage’ chooses by academic sociological researcher. Point is that it is already proved universally that child marriage do exists in society because of certain reasons like religious orthodoxy, cultural superstition, illiteracy, poverty etc. So what our researchers are doing is that they pick a new society or a community or a group or a geographical place as their area of study and conduct the research and eventually reach the same conclusion that was already deduced. Purpose of sociological research is not to reproduce the same conclusions or findings from studies on new places or societies.

Most essential element of sociological research is the theory building and its universality. Here there is misconception attached in this issue that theories has to mention and to show which theory you are following in the study. But theory building is different; your study should have strong reasoning based interpretation and argument to initiate a process of theory or to exhibit either the influence of existing theory or contradiction of existing theory. This process may lead towards a new episteme or addition to an existing episteme. In the procedural academic practice, often rejection is faced by the study if it has the author’s own argument contradictory to existing intellectual trend. It regarded that presenting first hand information (no matter whether it has credibility to be called sociological) is the only way of doing research. If any author presents own interpretation, arguments and new concepts based on the existing literature, they often faces academic procedural backlash.

In order to develop sociological imagination, researchers need to study rigorously the works of the sociological thinkers. It is a harsh reality that many researchers have never shed light on works of thinkers of sociology and allied fields. In present day we have a bundle of thesis but we lack thought because writing is preferred over thinking and writing of thought gets no place in dominant intellectual current of the time.

 {The discussion will be continued in the blog__ ‘Sociological Study’. Follow the blog for more insightful essays and articles on topics of sociology}.

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Author of the essay is Mahmudul Hasan Laskar, Assistant Prof. Dept. of Sociology, University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya. He is the editor of this blog ‘Sociological Study’. For any communication write to Mahmudul Hasan Laskar <hasanlaskaramu@gmail.com