Sociology

Increasingly refined and adapted to computer technology, quantitative methods continue to play a central role in the discipline of sociology. Quantitative sociology includes the presentation of large numbers of descriptive statistical data, sampling techniques, and the use of advanced mathematical models and computer simulations of social processes. Quantitative analysis has become popular in recent years as a means of revealing possible causal relations, especially in research on social mobility and status attainment.

The term survey research means the collection and analysis of responses of large samples of people to polls and questionnaires designed to elicit their opinions, attitudes, and sentiments about a specific topic. For a time in the 1940s and 1950s, the construction and administration of surveys, and statistical methods for tabulating and interpreting their results, were widely regarded as the major sociological research technique. Opinion surveys, especially in the form of pre-election polling and market research, were first used in the 1930s; today they are standard tools of politicians and of numerous organizations and business firms concerned with mass public opinion.

Sociologists use surveys for scholarly or scientific purposes in nearly all subfields of the discipline, although surveys have most often been used in the study of voting behaviour, ethnic prejudice, responses to mass communications, and other areas in which the probing of subjective attitudes is appropriate. Although surveys are an important sociological research tool, their suitability for many types of investigation has been widely criticized. Direct observation of social behaviour cannot be replaced by verbal answers to an interviewer's standard list of questions, even if such answers lend themselves easily to statistical tabulation and manipulation. Observation enables a sociologist to obtain in-depth information about a certain group; the sample survey, on the other hand, allows the sociologist to secure uniform but superficial information about a much larger portion of the population. Survey research usually does not take into account the complex structure of relations and interactions among individuals that shapes their social behaviour.

Sociology expanded enormously in both Europe and the United States in the 1960s and thereafter. In addition to theoretical diversification, new subfields came into being, such as the sociology of gender (spurred especially by feminist movements), which includes analysis of gender-based social roles and inequalities, and the study of emotions, ageing, and the life course. Older subfields, such as historical and comparative sociology, were revitalized, as was the broad movement towards sociological practice, which encompasses applied sociology, and policy analysis. Sociological practitioners apply their knowledge through their roles as consultants, planners, educators, researchers, and managers in local and national government, in non-profit-making organizations, and in business—especially in the fields of marketing, advertising, insurance, human resources, and organizational analysis.

Since the 1960s sociologists have made greater use both of traditional research methods associated with other disciplines, such as the analysis of historical source materials, and of more sophisticated statistical and mathematical techniques adapted to the study of social phenomena. Development of increasingly complex computers and other devices for handling and storing information has facilitated the processing of sociological data.

Because of the wide diversity in research methods and theoretical approaches, sociologists working in a particular subfield often have more in common with workers in a complementary discipline than with sociologists specializing in other subfields. A sociologist of art, for example, stands much closer in interests and methods to an art historian or art critic than to a sociologist who constructs mathematical models of occupational mobility. In theory, methods, and subject matter, no single school of thought or topic dominates sociology today.