Social research strategies: quantitative research and qualitative research

All of these answers reveal something about the interpretivist view of the social sciences. The approach is based on a reaction to positivism, insisting that people are not objects that can be studied by means of natural science’s methodologies. Most social phenomena are produced through human interaction and their meanings are formed through human discourse. Consequently, what things mean to human actors is an essential part of social research. Some research philosophers hold that this is the only proper object of social research; the study of what things mean to people and how people feel and react to that interpretation.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 26-28

Answer (c) is the correct answer because of its ability to force us to transcend the constraints imposed by scarcity of time and money. At the outset, we might persuade ourselves to tackle something we can achieve well, even if it is not very exciting, rather than producing poor research on a fascinating or ‘important’ topic. Furthermore, we will be forced to consider the target population and the likelihood of being able to construct probability samples. Practicality has to do with how you would implement your theoretical approach and the colour of the ring binder, while certainly an important issue, is an aesthetic choice.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 36-37

A deduction is a conclusion drawn logically from an argument or a discussion of things previously established or known. Deductions can be expressed as hypotheses which can then be tested, so answer (a) must be incorrect. However, when we have gathered and analysed the research data, the research findings can be fed back into our existing knowledge, which is a form of induction. This is because induction means moving from the particular to the general. So answer (b) cannot be correct either. The usual application of inductive theory, however, is to allow theory to emerge from our findings. We find an interesting question, we gather data on it and we ‘theorise’ from our findings. It may be that these ‘theories’ are, in reality, simply ‘interesting insights’ rather than ‘grand theories’ but they can be valuable for all that. The methods used are “neither here nor there” although it may be more likely for deductive theory to use quantitative methods and for inductive approaches to use qualitative methods.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 22-24

“Values reflect either the personal beliefs or the feelings of a researcher.” (Bryman, p39) Clearly, since answers (a) and (b) are indicative of values they cannot be correct. Unstructured interviewing is a research method, typically used in qualitative research strategies. But a method by itself cannot be regarded as value-free or value-laden, so it must also be incorrect, making answer (d) the correct answer by default. Can there be such a thing as ‘value-free’ research might have been a more pertinent question, considering the tone of some of the earlier questions for this chapter. Modern thinking suggests it is an impossibility, prompting a new approach of identifying our values and declaring them as part of our research report, so that readers can interpret our findings in the light of our biases.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 34-36

The importance of ‘theory’, of whatever type in social research, is predominantly for us to understand more clearly how we look upon the world. Then we can begin to understand how the world might seem different if we used another theory. A theory just means an explanation of things, how they come to be the way they are. We elaborate on the definition to show how close to the immediate day-to-day world we are attempting to come in our research. However, when we discuss our research with others, we need to stand back a bit more from our own focus in order to be able to understand that of another. In other words, we abstract further from the immediate, concrete circumstances. A ‘grand theory’ gets its name from its ability to cover a multitude, making broad generalizations about the world we live in. Unfortunately, too much so to be directly useful for us to formulate our own research objectives. For that, we need at least to come down to the level suggested by answer (c).
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 18

How do we actually know the things we know? People told us some of them, we read about some of them and others we saw, or felt for ourselves. This is at the heart of empiricism – we acquire knowledge through our sensory perceptions. It follows that the empiricist approach to research is to gather information through observation of the ‘real’ world and let theory emerge as a kind of conclusion. We should not start out with a theory, an empiricist might say, and find facts which seem to suit. Now, although this discussion might seem a bit too philosophical for some and consequently, a bit esoteric, most social research depends on ’empirical’ data. What this means is that most research studies include quite a bit of primary data gathering, and are not just limited to musings about what others have said.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 20

Ontology means the study of things outside ourselves, an external reality. Whereas this might seem reasonably straightforward as far as the natural world is concerned, it is far more complicated in the social world. Here, the study is concerned with figuring out whether the place we work in, or the university we study in, actually exists “outside” of the workers and students, say. We might say that the buildings fairly obviously exist (although some philosophers feel we shouldn’t be too sure about this!) but what about the nature, or the culture, or the ‘atmosphere’ of those organizations. Surely these depend a lot on the people in them? So the fundamental ontological question in the social sciences is as shown in answer (d).
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 28

Positivism holds that only those phenomena that can be perceived by our senses are ‘real’ and that knowledge of them is somehow ‘real’ knowledge. Positivists believe that the methods used in the natural sciences can, indeed should, be used in the social sciences. Essentially this means being completely objective, in other words ‘value-free’, while gathering empirical data. Although mostly deductive, it allows inductivism as a means of disproving previously held theories or, perhaps more likely, widely-shared hypotheses. Positivists believe they can come to explain human behaviour, whereas the hermeneutic approach to knowledge suggests we can attempt merely to understand it.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 24

The two main ontological positions in the social sciences are ‘objectivism’ and ‘constructivism’. Whereas the first considers social phenomena to exist independent of people somehow, the second position considers them as a product of social interaction, in a constant state of revision. Answers (b) and (d) state the objectivist viewpoint and answer (a) gives the constructionist position. Both positions have merit when we come to a consideration of how concepts can be operationalized. In more recent times, researchers have come to question their own impact on the development of meaning in a social sense, to the point that research of any type can be argued to affect the nature of the research object, so that we can never research a social phenomenon without altering it. This kind of thinking has come to symbolise the ‘post-modernist’ approach.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 29

We expect all research to be carried out according to the highest quality standards, tested for validity and reliability and subjected to ethical considerations. Some research studies numbers of things, like their instances and frequencies of occurrence and the relationship of some things to others along these dimensions. We call these studies ‘quantitative’. ‘Qualitative’ studies, on the other hand, study the reasons people do the things they do, how they feel about that, their general likes and dislikes. The problem is that quantitative studies frequently are interested in how many people feel the same way about something and qualitative studies might want to show what percentage of respondents indicated particular feelings, for example. The real difference between them is more likely to be found in their underlying research orientations, with quantitative approaches being associated with positivism and objectivism and qualitative approaches linked to interpretivism and constructionism.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 32, 33