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82 INTRODUCING SOCIOLOGY

I

INTROUDUCTION

Have you ever wondered why a subjectlike sociology is called a social science?More than any other discipline,sociology deals with things that arealready familiar to most people. All ofus live in society, and we already knowa lot about the subject matter ofsociology — social groups, institutions,norms, relationships and so on—through our own experience. It seemsfair, then, to ask what makes thesociologist different from othermembers of society. Why should sheor he be called a social scientist?

As with all scientific disciplines, thecrucial element here is method, or theprocedures through which knowledgeis gathered. For in the final analysis,sociologists can claim to be differentfrom lay persons not because of howmuch they know or what they know,but because of how they acquire theirknowledge. This is one reason for thespecial importance of method insociology.

As you have seen in the previouschapters, sociology is deeply interestedin the lived experience of people. Forexample, when studying socialphenomena like friendship or religionor bargaining in markets, thesociologist wants to know not onlywhat is observable by the bystander,but also the opinions and feelings ofthe people involved. Sociologists try toadopt the point of view of the peoplethey study, to see the world throughtheir eyes. What does friendship meanto people in different cultures? Whatdoes a religious person think he or sheis doing when performing a particularritual? How do shopkeeper andcustomer interpret each other’s wordsand gestures while bargaining for abetter price? The answers to suchquestions are clearly part of the livedexperience of actors involved, and theyare of great interest to sociology. Thisneed to understand both the outsider’sand the insider’s points of view isanother reason why method isparticularly important in sociology.

CHAPTER 5

DOING SOCIOLOGY : RESEARCH METHODS

83DOING SOCIOLOGY: RESEARCH METHODS

II

SOME METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

Although it is often used simply as asubstitute for (or synonym of) ‘method’,the word ‘methodology’ actually refersto the study of method. Methodologicalissues or questions are thus about thegeneral problems of scientific know-ledge-gathering that go beyond any oneparticular method, technique orprocedure. We begin by looking at theways in which sociologists try toproduce knowledge that can claim tobe scientific.

Objectivity and Subjectivityin Sociology

In everyday language, the word‘objective’ means unbiased, neutral, orbased on facts alone. In order to beobjective about something, we mustignore our own feelings or attitudesabout that thing. On the other hand,the word ‘subjective’ means somethingthat is based on individual values andpreferences. As you will have learntalready, all science is expected to be‘objective’, to produce unbiasedknowledge based solely on facts. Butthis is much harder to do in the socialsciences than in the natural sciences.

For example, when a geologiststudies rocks, or a botanist studiesplants, they must be careful not to lettheir personal biases or preferencesaffect their work. They must report thefacts as they are; they must not (forexample) let their liking for a particularscientific theory or theorist influence theresults of their research. However, the

geologist and the botanist are notthemselves part of the world they study,i.e., the natural world of rocks or ofplants. By contrast, social scientistsstudy the world in which theythemselves live — the social world ofhuman relations. This creates specialproblems for objectivity in a socialscience like sociology.

First of all, there is the obviousproblem of bias. Because sociologistsare also members of society, they willalso have all the normal likes anddislikes that people have. A sociologiststudying family relations will herselfbe a member of a family, and herexperiences are likely to influence her.Even when the sociologist has no directpersonal experience of the group sheor he is studying, there is still thepossibility of being affected bythe values and prejudices of one’sown social context. For example,when studying a caste or religiouscommunity other than her own, thesociologist may be influenced by theattitudes about that communityprevalent in her own past or presentsocial environment. How do sociologistsguard against these dangers?

One method is to rigorously andcontinuously examine one’s own ideasand feelings about the subject ofresearch. More generally, the sociologisttries to take an outsider’s perspectiveon her/his own work — she tries tolook at herself and her researchthrough the eyes of others. Thistechnique is called ‘self-reflexivity’, orsometimes just ‘reflexivity’. Thesociologist constantly subjects her own


attitudes and opinions to self-examination. She or he tries toconsciously adopt the point of view ofothers, specially those who are thesubjects of her research.

One of the practical aspects ofreflexivity is the importance of carefullydocumenting whatever one is doing.Part of the claims to superiorityof research methods lies in thedocumentation of all procedures andthe formal citing of all sources ofevidence. This ensures that others canretrace the steps we have taken to arriveat a particular conclusion, and see forthemselves if we are right. It also helpsus to check and re-check our ownthinking or line of argument.

But however self-reflexive thesociologist tries to be, there is alwaysthe possibility of unconscious bias. Todeal with this possibility, sociologistsexplicitly mention those features of theirown social background that might berelevant as a possible source of bias onthe topic being researched. This alertsreaders to the possibility of bias andallows them to mentally ‘compensate’for it when reading the research study.

(You could go back to Chapter 1, andre-read the section (pp. 8-9) which talksabout the difference between commonsense and sociology).

Another problem with objectivity insociology is the fact that, generally,there are many versions of the ‘truth’in the social world. Things look differentfrom different vantage points, and sothe social world typically involves manycompeting versions or interpretationsof reality. For example, a shopkeeperand a customer may have very differentideas about what is a ‘good’ price, ayoung person and an aged person mayhave very different notions of ‘goodfood’, and so on. There is no simpleway of judging which particularinterpretation is true or more correct,and often it is unhelpful to think inthese terms. In fact, sociology tries notto judge in this way because it is reallyinterested in what people think, andwhy they think what they think.

A further complication arises fromthe presence of multiple points of viewin the social sciences themselves. Likeits sister social sciences, sociology toois a ‘multi-paradigmatic’ science. This

Activity 1

Can you observe yourself as you observe others? Write a short description ofyourself as seen from the perspective of : (i) your best friend; (ii) your rival; (iii)your teacher. You must imagine yourself to be these people and think aboutyourself from their point of view. Remember to describe yourself in the thirdperson — as ‘he’ or ‘she’ rather than ‘I’ or ‘me’. Afterwards, you can share similardescriptions written by your classmates. Discuss each others’ descriptions —how accurate or interesting do you find them? Are there any surprising thingsin these descriptions?


means that competing and mutuallyincompatible schools of thoughtcoexist within the discipline (Recall thediscussion in Chapter 2 aboutconflicting theories of society).

All this makes objectivity a verydifficult and complicated thing insociology. In fact, the old notion ofobjectivity is widely considered to be anoutdated perspective. Social scientistsno longer believe that the traditionalnotion of an ‘objective, disinterested’social science is attainable; in fact suchan ideal can actually be misleading.This does not mean that there is nouseful knowledge to be obtained viasociology, or that objectivity is a uselessconcept. It means that objectivity hasto be thought of as the goal of acontinuous, ongoing process ratherthan an already achieved end result.

Multiple Methods and Choice ofMethods

Since there are multiple truths andmultiple perspectives in sociology, it ishardly surprising that there are alsomultiple methods. There is no singleunique road to sociological truth. Ofcourse, different methods are more orless suited to tackle different types ofresearch questions. Moreover, everymethod has its own strengths andweaknesses. It is thus futile to argueabout the superiority or inferiority ofdifferent methods. It is more importantto ask if the method chosen is theappropriate one for answering thequestion that is being asked.

For example, if one is interested infinding out whether most Indian

families are still ‘joint families’, then acensus or survey are the best methods.However, if one wishes to compare thestatus of women in joint and nuclearfamilies, then interviews, case studiesor participant observation may all beappropriate methods.

There are different ways ofclassifying or categorising the variousmethods commonly used bysociologists. It is conventional, forexample, to distinguish betweenquantitative and qualitative methods:the former deal in countable ormeasurable variables (proportions,averages, and the like) while the latterdeal with more abstract and hard tomeasure phenomena like attitudes,emotions and so on. A relateddistinction is between methods thatstudy observable behaviour and thosethat study non-observable meanings,values and other interpretational things.

Another way of classifying methodsis to distinguish the ones that rely on‘secondary’ or already existing data (inthe form of documents or other recordsand artefacts) from those that aredesigned to produce fresh or ‘primary’data. Thus historical methods typicallyrely on secondary material found inarchives, while interviews generateprimary data, and so on.

Yet another way of categorisation isto separate ‘micro’ from ‘macro’methods. The former are designed towork in small intimate settings usuallywith a single researcher; thus theinterview and participant observationare thought of as micro methods.Macro methods are those that are able


to tackle large scale research involvinglarge numbers of respondents andinvestigators. Survey research is the mostcommon example of a ‘macro’ method,although some historical methods canalso tackle macro phenomena.

Whatever the mode of classification,it is important to remember that it is amatter of convention. The dividing linebetween different kinds of methodsneed not be very sharp. It is oftenpossible to convert one kind of methodinto another, or to supplement one withanother.

The choice of method is usuallydictated by the nature of the researchquestion being addressed, by thepreferences of the researcher, and bythe constraints of time and/orresources. The recent trend in socialscience is to advocate the use ofmultiple methods to bear on the sameresearch problem from differentvantage points. This is sometimesreferred to as ‘triangulation’, that is, aprocess of reiterating or pinpointingsomething from different directions. Inthis way, different methods can beused to complement each other toproduce a much better result thanwhat might have been possible witheach method by itself.

Because the methods mostdistinctive of sociology are those thatare designed to produce ‘primary’ data,these are the ones stressed here. Evenwithin the category of ‘field work’ basedmethods, we shall introduce you toonly the most prominent, namely thesurvey, interview and participantobservation.

Participant Observation

Popular in sociology and speciallysocial anthropology, participantobservation refers to a particularmethod by which the sociologist learnsabout the society, culture and peoplethat he or she is studying (Recall thediscussion on sociology and socialanthropology from Chapter 1).

This method is different fromothers in many ways. Unlike othermethods of primary data collection likesurveys or interviews, field workinvolves a long period of interactionwith the subjects of research.Typically, the sociologist or socialanthropologist spends manymonths — usually about a year orsometimes more — living among thepeople being studied as one of them.As a non-native ‘outsider’, theanthropologist is supposed toimmerse himself/herself in the cultureof the ‘natives’ — by learning theirlanguage and participating intimatelyin their everyday life — in an effort toacquire all the explicit and implicitknowledge and skills of the ‘insider’.Although the sociologist or anthro-pologist usually has specific areas ofinterest, the overall goal of ‘participantobservation’ field work is to learnabout the ‘whole way of life’ of acommunity. Indeed the model is thatof the child: sociologists andanthropologists are supposed tolearn everything about their adoptivecommunities in just the holistic way thatsmall children learn about the world.

Participant observation is oftencalled ‘field work’. The term originated


in the natural sciences, speciallythose like botany, zoology, geologyetc. In these disciplines, scientistscould not only work in the laboratory,they had to go out into ‘the field’ tolearn about their subjects (like rocks,insects or plants).

III

FIELD WORK IN SOCIAL

ANTHROPOLOGY

Field work as a rigorous scientificmethod played a major role inestablishing anthropology as a socialscience. The early anthropologists wereamateur enthusiasts interested inexotic primitive cultures. They were‘armchair scholars’ who collected andorganised information about distantcommunities (which they had neverthemselves visited) available from thereports and descriptions written bytravellers, missionaries, colonialadministrators, soldiers and other ‘menon the spot’. For example, JamesFrazer’s famous book, The GoldenBough, which inspired many earlyanthropologists was based entirely onsuch second hand accounts, as was thework of Emile Durkheim on primitivereligion. Towards the end of the 19thand in the first decade of the 20thcentury many early anthropologists,some of whom were natural scientistsby profession, began to carry outsystematic surveys and first handobservation of tribal languages,customs, rituals and beliefs. Relianceon second hand accounts began to bethought of as unscholarly, and the good

results obtained from first hand workhelped cement this growing prejudice(See Box on next page).

Since the 1920s, participantobservation or field work has beenconsidered an integral part of socialanthropological training and theprincipal method through whichknowledge is produced. Almost all ofthe influential scholars in the disciplinehave done such field work — in fact,many communities or geographicalplaces have become famous in thediscipline because of their associationwith classic instances of field work.

What did the social anthropologistactually do when doing fieldwork?Usually, he or she began by doing acensus of the community they werestudying. This involved making adetailed list of all the people who livedin a community, including informationsuch as their sex, age group and family.This could be accompanied by anattempt to map the physical layout ofthe village or settlement, including thelocation of houses and other sociallyrelevant sites. One of the importanttechniques anthropologists use,specially in the beginning stages oftheir field work is to construct agenealogy of the community. This maybe based on the information obtainedin the census, but extends much furthersince it involves creating a family tree forindividual members, and extending thefamily tree as far back as possible. Forexample, the head of a particularhousehold or family would be askedabout his relatives — brothers, sisters,cousins — in his or her own generation;


Bronislaw Malinowski and the ‘Invention’ of Field Work

Although he was not the first to use this method — different versions of it hadbeen tried out all over the world by other scholars — Bronislaw Malinowski, aPolish anthropologist settled in Britain, is widely believed to have establishedfield work as the distinctive method of social anthropology. In 1914, when theFirst World War broke out in Europe, Malinowski was visiting Australia, whichwas a part of the British Empire at that time. Because Poland was annexed byGermany in the war, it was declared an enemy country by Britain, andMalinowski technically became an ‘enemy alien’ because of his Polish nationality.He was, of course, a respected professor at the London School of Economics andwas on very good terms with the British and Australian authorities. But sincehe was technically an enemy alien, the law required that he be “interned” orconfined to a specific place.

Malinowski had anyway wanted to visit several places in Australia and theislands of the South Pacific for his anthropological research, so he requestedthe authorities to allow him to serve his internment in the Trobriand Islands, aBritish-Australian possession in the South Pacific. This was agreed to — theAustralian government even financed his trip and Malinowski spent a yearand a half living in the Trobriand Islands. He lived in a tent in the native villages,learnt the local language, and interacted closely with the ‘natives’ in an effort tolearn about their culture. He maintained careful and detailed records of hisobservations and also kept a daily diary. He later wrote books on Trobriandculture based on these field notes and diaries; these books quickly becamefamous and are considered classics even today.

Even before his Trobriand experience, Malinowski had been converted tothe belief that the future of anthropology lay in direct and unmediated interactionbetween the anthropologist and the native culture. He was convinced that thediscipline would not progress beyond the status of an intellectual hobby unlessits practitioners engaged themselves in systematic first-hand observationpreceded by intensive language learning. This observation had to be done incontext — that is, the anthropologist had to live among the native people andobserve life as it happened rather than interviewing individual nativessummoned to the town or outpost for this purpose. The use of interpreters wasalso to be avoided — it was only when the anthropologist could interact directlywith the natives that a true and authentic account of their culture could beproduced.

His influential position at the London School of Economics and the reputationof his work in the Trobriand enabled Malinowski to campaign for theinstitutionalisation of field work as a mandatory part of the training imparted tostudents of anthropology. It also helped the discipline to gain acceptance as arigorous science worthy of scholarly respect.


then about his/her parentsgenerations — father, mother, theirbrothers and sisters etc. — then aboutthe grandparents and their brothers,sisters and so on. This would be donefor as many generations as the personcould remember. The informationobtained from one person wouldbe cross-checked by asking otherrelatives the same questions, and afterconfirmation, a very detailed family treecould be drawn up. This exercise helpedthe social anthropologist to understandthe kinship system of the community —what kinds of roles different relativesplayed in a person’s life and how theserelations were maintained.

A genealogy would help acquaintthe anthropologist with the structureof the community and in a practicalsense would enable him or her to meetwith people and become familiar withthe way the community lives. Buildingon this base, the anthropologist wouldconstantly be learning the language ofthe community. He or she would alsobe observing life in the community andmaking detailed notes in which thesignificant aspects of community lifewould be described. Festivals, religiousor other collective events, modes ofearning a living, family relations, modesof child rearing — these are examplesof the kinds of topics thatanthropologists would be speciallyinterested in. Learning about theseinstitutions and practices requires theanthropologist to ask endless questionsabout things that are taken for grantedby members of the community. This isthe sense in which the anthropologist

would be like a child, always askingwhy, what and so on. In doing this,the anthropologist usually depends onone or two people for most of theinformation. Such people are called‘informants’ or ‘principal informants’; inthe early days the term nativeinformant was also used. Informantsact as the anthropologist’s teachers andare crucially important actors in thewhole process of anthropologicalresearch. Equally important are thedetailed field notes that theanthropologist keeps during field work;these notes have to written up every daywithout fail, and can be supplementedby, or take the form of, a daily diary.

Activity 2

Some famous instances of fieldwork include the following:Radcliffe-Brown on theAndaman Nicobar islands;Evans Pritchard on the Nuerin the Sudan; Franz Boas onvarious Native American tribesin the USA; Margaret Mead onSamoa; Clifford Geertz on Balietc.

Locate these places on amap of the world. What dothese places have in common?What would it have been likefor an anthropologist to live inthese places in a ‘strange’culture? What could be someof the difficulties they faced?


IV

FIELD WORK IN SOCIOLOGY

More or less the same techniques areused by sociologists when they dofield work. Sociological field workdiffers not so much in its content —what is done during fieldwork — butin its context — where it is done —and in the distribution of emphasisacross different areas or topics ofresearch. Thus, a sociologist wouldalso live among a community andattempt to become an ‘insider’.However, unlike the anthropologistwho typically went to a remote tribalcommunity to do field work,sociologists did their field workamong all sorts of communities.Moreover, sociological field work didnot necessarily involve ‘living in’,although it did involve spending most

of one’s time with the members of thecommunity.

For example, William Foote Whyte,an American sociologist, did his fieldwork among members of a street‘gang’ in an Italian-American slum ina large city and wrote a famous bookStreet Corner Society. He lived in thearea for three and half years ‘hangingout’ — just spending time together —with members of the gang or group,who were mostly poor unemployedyouth, the first American-borngeneration in a community ofimmigrants. While this example ofsociological field work is very close toanthropological field work, there areimportant differences (See Box). Butsociological field work need not onlybe this kind — it can take differentforms, as in the work of MichaelBurawoy, for example, another

Field Work in Sociology – Some Difficulties

Compared to the anthropologist who studies a primitive tribe in a remote part ofthe world, the student of a modern American community faces distinctly differentproblems. In the first place, he is dealing with a literate people. It is certainthat some of these people, and perhaps many of them, will read his researchreport. If he disguises the name of the district as I have done, many outsidersapparently will not discover where the study was actually located... The peoplein the district, of course, know it is about them, and even the changed names donot disguise the individuals for them. They remember the researcher and knowthe people with whom he associated and know enough about the various groupsto place the individuals with little chance of error.

In such a situation the researcher carries a heavy responsibility. He wouldlike his book to be of some help to the people of the district; at least, he wants totake steps to minimise the chances of it doing any harm, fully recognising thepossibility that certain individuals may suffer through the publication.

— William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society, p.342


American sociologist who worked forseveral months as a machinist in aChicago factory and wrote about theexperience of work from the perspectiveof workers.

In Indian sociology, an importantway in which fieldwork methods havebeen used is in village studies. In the1950s, many anthropologists andsociologists, both Indian and foreignbegan working on village life andsociety. The village acted as theequivalent of the tribal communitystudied by the earlier anthropologists.It was also a ‘bounded community’,and was small enough to be studied bya single person — that is, the sociologistcould get to know almost everyone inthe village, and observe life there.Moreover, anthropology was not verypopular with nationalists in colonialIndia because of its excessive concernwith the primitive. Many educatedIndians felt that disciplines likeanthropology carried a colonial biasbecause they emphasised the non-

modern aspects of colonised societiesrather than their progressive or positiveside. So, studying villages and villagersseemed much more acceptable andworthwhile for a sociologist thanstudying tribes only. Questions werealso being asked about the linksbetween early anthropology andcolonialism. After all, the classicinstances of field work like that ofMalinowski, Evans Pritchard andcountless others were made possibleby the fact that the places andpeople where field work was done werepart of colonial empires ruled by thecountries from where the Westernanthropologists came.

However, more than themethodological reasons, village studieswere important because they providedIndian sociology with a subject that wasof great interest in newly independentIndia. The government was interestedin developing rural India. The nationalmovement and specially MahatmaGandhi had been actively involved in

Activity 3

If you live in a village: Try to describe your village to someone who has neverbeen there. What would be the main features of your life in the village that youwould want to emphasise? You must have seen villages as they are shown infilms or on television. What do you think of these villages, and how do theydiffer from yours? Think also of the cities you have seen which are shown infilm or on television: would you want to live in them? Give reasons for youranswer.If you live in a town or a city: Try to describe your neighbourhood to someonewho has never been there. What would be the main features of your life in theneighbourhood that you would want to emphasise? How does yourneighbourhood differ from (or resemble) city neighbourhoods as shown in filmor on television? You must have seen villages being shown in film or on television:would you want to live in them? Give reasons for your answer.


what were called ‘village uplift ’programmes. And even urbaneducated Indians were very interestedin village life because most of themretained some family and recenthistorical links to the villages. Aboveall, the villages were the places wheremost Indians lived (and still do). Forthese reasons village studies became

a very important part of Indiansociology, and field work methods werevery well suited for studying villagesociety.

Some Limitations of ParticipantObservation

You have already seen what participantobservation can do — its main strength

Different Styles of Doing Village Studies

Village studies became the main preoccupation of Indian sociology during the1950s and 1960s. But long before this time, a very well known village study,Behind Mud Walls, was written by William and Charlotte Wiser, a missionarycouple who lived for five years in a village in Uttar Pradesh. The Wisers’ bookemerged as a by-product of their missionary work, although William Wiser wastrained as a sociologist and had earlier written an academic book on the jajmanisystem.

The village studies of the 1950s grew out of a very different context and weredone in many different ways. The classical social anthropological style wasprominent, with the village substituting for the ‘tribe’ or ‘bounded community’.Perhaps the best known example of this kind of field work is reported in M.N.Srinivas’s famous book, The Remembered Village. Srinivas spent a year in avillage near Mysore that he named Rampura. The title of his book refers to thefact that Srinivas’s field notes were destroyed in a fire, and he had to writeabout the village from memory.

Another famous village study of the 1950s was S.C. Dube’s Indian Village.As a social anthropologist at Osmania University, Dube was part of a multi-disciplinary team — including the departments of agricultural sciences,economics, veterinary sciences and medicine — that studied a village calledShamirpet near Secunderabad. This large collective project was meant not onlyto study the village but also to develop it. In fact, Shamirpet was meant to be asort of laboratory where experiments in designing rural development programmescould be carried out.

Yet another style of doing village studies is seen in the Cornell Village StudyProject of the 1950s. Initiated by Cornell University, the project brought togethera group of American social anthropologists, psychologists and linguists to studyseveral villages in the same region of India, namely eastern Uttar Pradesh. Thiswas an ambitious academic project to do multi-disciplinary studies of villagesociety and culture. Some Indian scholars were also involved with this project,which helped train many Americans who later became well known scholars ofIndian society.


is that it provides a very rich anddetailed picture of life from theperspective of the ‘insider’. It is thisinsider perspective that is the greatestreturn on the substantial investment oftime and effort that field work demands.Most other research methods cannotclaim to have a detailed knowledge ofthe ‘field’ over a fairly long period oftime — they are usually based on ashort and quick field visit. Field workallows for the correction of initialimpressions, which may often bemistaken or biased. It also permits theresearcher to track changes in thesubject of interest, and also to see theimpact of different situations orcontexts. For example, different aspectsof social structure or culture may bebrought out in a good harvest year andin a bad harvest year; people couldbehave differently when employed orunemployed, and so on. Because sheor he spends a long period in ‘full time’engagement with the field, a participantobserver can avoid many of the errorsor biases that surveys, questionnairesor short term observation are inevitablysubject to.

But like all research methods, fieldwork also has some weaknesses —otherwise all social scientists would beusing this method alone!

Field work by its very natureinvolves very long drawn out andintensive research usually by a singlescholar working alone. As such, it canonly cover a very small part of theworld — generally a single village orsmall community. We can never be surewhether what the anthropologist orsociologist observed during fieldwork

is really very common in the largercommunity (i.e., in other villages, in theregion, or in the country) or whether itis exceptional. This is probably thebiggest disadvantage of field work.

Another important limitation of thefield work method is that we are neversure whether it is the voice of theanthropologist we are hearing or thatof the people being studied. Of course,the aim is to represent the views of thepeople being studied, but it is alwayspossible that the anthropologist —whether consciously or unconsci-ously — is selecting what will be writtendown in his/her notes, and how it willbe presented to the readers of his/herbooks or articles. Because there is noother version available to us except thatof the anthropologist, there is alwaysthe chance of bias or error. However,this risk is present in most researchmethods.

More generally, field work methodsare criticised because of the one-sidedrelationship they are based on. Theanthropologist/sociologist asks thequestions and presents the answersand speaks for ‘the people’. To counterthis, some scholars have suggested aremore ‘dialogic’ formats — that is, waysof presenting field work results wherethe respondents and people can bemore directly involved. In concreteterms, this involves translating thework of the scholar into the languageof the community, and asking theiropinion of it, and recording theirresponses. As the social, economic andpolitical distance or gap between theresearcher and the researched becomesless wide, there is greater and greater


chance that the scholar’s version will bequestioned, qualified, or corrected bythe people themselves. This will surelymake sociological research morecontroversial and much more difficult.But in the long run this can only be agood thing because it will help to takesocial science forward and make it moredemocratic, thus allowing many morepeople to participate in producing andcritically engaging with ‘knowledge’.

Surveys

The survey is probably the best knownsociological method, one that is now somuch a part of modern public life thatit has become commonplace. Today itis used all over the world in all sorts ofcontexts going well beyond theconcerns of sociology alone. In India,too, we have seen the increasing use ofsurveys for various non-academicpurposes, including the prediction ofelection results, the devising ofmarketing strategies for sellingproducts, and for eliciting popularopinions on a wide variety of subjects.

As the word itself suggests, a surveyis an attempt to provide an overview. Itis a comprehensive or wide-rangingperspective on some subject based oninformation obtained from a carefullychosen representative set of people.Such people are usually referred to as‘respondents’ — they respond to thequestions asked of them by theresearchers. Survey research is usuallydone by large teams consisting of thosewho plan and design the study (theresearchers) and their associates andassistants (the latter are called

‘investigators’ or ‘research assistants’).The survey questions may be askedand answered in various forms. Often,they are asked orally during personalvisits by the investigator, andsometimes through telephoneconversations. Responses may also besought in writing, to ‘questionnaires’brought by investigators or sentthrough the post. Finally, with theincreasing presence of computers andtelecommunication technology, thesedays it is also possible for surveys tobe conducted electronically. In thisformat, the respondent receives andresponds to questions by email, theInternet, or similar electronic medium.

The survey’s main advantage as asocial scientific method is that it allowsus to generalise results for a largepopulation while actually studyingonly a small portion of this population.Thus a survey makes it possible tostudy large populations with amanageable investment of time, effortand money. That is why it is such apopular method in the social sciencesand other fields.

The sample survey is able to providea generalisable result despite beingselective by taking advantage of thediscoveries of a branch of statisticscalled sampling theory. The keyelement enabling this ‘shortcut’ is therepresentativeness of the sample. Howdo we go about selecting a representativesample from a given population?Broadly speaking, the sample selectionprocess depends on two mainprinciples.


The first principle is that all therelevant sub-groups in the populationshould be recognised and representedin the sample. Most large populationsare not homogenous — they belong todistinct sub-categories. This is calledstratification (Note that this is astatistical notion of stratification whichis different from the sociologicalconcept of stratification that you havestudied in Chapter 4). For example,when considering the population ofIndia, we must take account of the factthat this population is divided into ruraland urban sectors which are verydif ferent from each other. Whenconsidering the rural population of any

one state, we have to allow for the factthat this population lives in villages ofdifferent sizes. In the same way, thepopulation of a single village may bestratified by class, caste, gender, age,religion or other criteria. In short, thenotion of stratification tells us that therepresentativeness of a sample dependson its being able to reflect thecharacteristics of all the relevant stratain a given population. Which kinds ofstrata are considered relevant dependson the specific objectives of the researchstudy. For example, when doingresearch on attitudes towards religion,it would be important to includemembers of all religions. When

The Census and the National Sample Survey Organisation

The population Census of India conducted every ten years is the largest suchexercise in the world. (China, the only country with a larger population, doesnot conduct a regular census.) It involves literally lakhs of investigators and astupendous amount of logistical organisation not to speak of the hugeexpenditure incurred by the Government of India. However, in return for thisoutlay, we get a genuinely comprehensive survey in which every household inIndia and every one of the more than one billion people living in India get included.Obviously, it is not possible to conduct such a gigantic survey very often; in fact,many developed countries no longer conduct a full census; instead they dependon sample surveys for their population data, because such surveys have beenfound to be very accurate. In India, the National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO) conducts sample surveys every year on the levels of poverty andunemployment (and other subjects). Every five years it also conducts a biggersurvey involving about 1.2 lakh households covering more than 6 lakh personsall over India. In absolute terms this is considered a large sample, and theNSSO surveys are among the biggest regularly conducted surveys in the world.However, since the total population of India is over 100 crore persons, you cansee that the five-yearly survey of the NSSO involves a sample that is only about0.06 per cent or just over one twentieth of one per cent — of the Indian population!But because it is scientifically selected to be representative of the totalpopulation, the NSSO sample is able to estimate population characteristicsdespite being based on such a tiny proportion.


researching attitudes towards tradeunions it would be important toconsider workers, managers andindustrialists, and so on.

The second principle of sampleselection is that the actual unit — i.e.,person or village or household —should be based purely on chance. Thisis referred to as randomisation, whichitself depends on the concept ofprobability. You may have come acrossthe idea of probability in mathematicscourse. Probability refers to the chance(or the odds) of an event happening. Forexample, when we toss a coin, it canfall with the ‘head’ side up or the ‘tail’side up. With normal coins, thechance — or probability — of heads ortails appearing is exactly the same, thatis 50 per cent each. Which of the twoevents actually happens when you tossthe coin — i.e., whether it comes upheads or tails — depends purely onchance and nothing else. Events likethis are called random events.

We use the same idea in selecting asample. We try to ensure that the actualperson or household or village chosento be part of the sample is chosenpurely by chance and nothing else.Thus, being chosen in the sample is amatter of luck, like winning a lottery.It is only if this is true that the samplewill be a representative sample. If asurvey team chooses only villages thatare near the main highway in theirsample, then the sample is not arandom or chance sample but a biasedone. Similarly, if we choose mostlymiddle class households, or house-holds that we know, then the sample is

again likely to be biased. The point isthat after the relevant strata in apopulation are identified, the actualchoosing of sample households orrespondents should be a matter of purechance. This can be ensured in variousways. Different techniques are used toachieve this, the common ones beingdrawing of lots (or lottery), rolling ofdice, the use of random number tablesspecially produced for this purpose,and more recently, random numbersgenerated by calculators or computers.

To understand how a surveysample is actually selected, let us takea concrete example. Suppose we wishto examine the hypothesis that livingin smaller, more intimate communitiesproduces greater intercommunityharmony than living in larger, moreimpersonal communities. For the sakeof simplicity, let us suppose we areinterested only in the rural sector of asingle state in India. The simplestpossible sample selection processwould begin with a list of all villages inthe state along with their population(Such a list could be obtained from thecensus data). Then we would decide onthe criteria for defining ‘small’ and‘large’ villages. From the original list ofvillages we now eliminate all the‘medium’ villages, i.e., those that areneither small nor big. Now we have arevised list stratified by size of village.Given our research question, we wantto give equal weightage to each of thestrata, i.e., small and big villages, so wedecide to select 10 villages from each.To do this, we number the list of smalland big villages, and randomly select


10 numbers from each list by drawinglots. We now have our sample,consisting of 10 big and 10 smallvillages from the state, and we canproceed to study those villages to see ifour initial hypothesis was true or false.

Of course, this is an extremelysimple design; actual research studiesusually involve more complicateddesigns with the sample selectionprocess being divided into many stagesand incorporating many strata. But thebasic principles remain the same — asmall sample is carefully selected suchthat it is able to represent or stand forthe entire population. Then the sampleis studied and the results obtained forit are generalised to the entirepopulation. The statistical propertiesof a scientifically selected sampleensure that the characteristics of thesample will closely resemble thecharacteristics of the population it isdrawn from. There may be smalldifferences, but the chance of suchdeviations occuring can be specified.This is known as the margin of error,or sampling error. It arises not due toany mistakes made by researchers but

because we are using a small sampleto stand for a large population. Whenreporting the results of sample surveys,researchers must specify the size anddesign of their sample and the marginof error.

The main strength of the surveymethod is that it is able to provide abroad overview representative of a largepopulation with relatively small outlaysof time and money. The bigger thesample the more chance it has of beingtruly representative; the extreme casehere is that of the census, whichincludes the entire population. Inpractice, sample sizes may vary from30-40 to many thousands. (See the boxon the National Sample Survey). It isnot only the size of the sample thatmatters; its mode of selection is evenmore important. Of course, decisionson sample selection can often be basedon practical considerations.

In situations where a census is notfeasible the survey becomes the onlyavailable means of studying thepopulation as a whole. The uniqueadvantage of the survey is that itprovides an aggregated picture, that is,

Activity 4

Discuss among yourselves some of the surveys you have come across. Thesemay be election surveys, or other small surveys by newspapers or televisionchannels. When the results of the survey were reported, was the margin oferror also mentioned? Were you told about the size of the sample and how it wasselected? You must always be suspicious of surveys where these aspects of theresearch method are not clearly specified, because without them, it is not possibleto evaluate the findings. Survey methods are often misused in the popularmedia: big claims are made on the basis of biased and unrepresentative sample.You could discuss some specific surveys you have come across from this point ofview.


Activity 5

How would you go about selecting a representative sample for a survey of all thestudents in your school if the objective of the survey were to answer the followingquestions:

(i) Do students with many brothers and sisters do better or worse in studiescompared to those with only one brother or sister (or none)?

(ii) What is the most popular break-time activity for students in the primaryschool (Classes I-V), middle school (Classes VI-VIII), secondary school(Classes IX-X) and senior secondary school (Classes XI-XII)?

(iii) Is a student’s favourite subject likely to be the subject taught by thefavourite teacher? Is there any difference between boys and girls in thisregard?

(Note: Make different sample designs for each of these questions).

Aggregate Statistics: the Alarming Decline in the Sex Ratio

You have read about the sharp fall in the sex ratio in Chapter 3. In recentdecades, fewer and fewer girls are being born relative to the number of boys,and the problem has reached worrying levels in states such as Punjab, Haryana,Delhi and Himachal Pradesh.

The (juvenile, or child) sex ratio is expressed as the number of girls per1,000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years. This ratio has been falling steadilyover the decades both for India as a whole and for many states. Here are someof the average juvenile sex ratios for India and selected states as recorded in theCensus of 1991 and 2000.

Number of girls per 1,000 boys in the age group of 0-6 years1991 2001

India 945 927Punjab 875 793

Haryana 879 820Delhi 915 865

Gujarat 928 878Himachal Pradesh 951 897

The child sex ratio is an aggregate (or macro) variable that only becomesvisible when you collate (or put together) statistics for large populations. Wecannot tell by looking at individual families that there is such a severe problem.The relative proportion of boys and girls in any individual family could alwaysbe compensated by a different proportion in other families we have not lookedat. It is only by using methods like a census or large scale survey that theoverall ratio for the community as a whole can be calculated and the problemcan be identified. Can you think of other social issues that can only be studiedby surveys or censuses?


a picture based on a collectivity ratherthan on single individuals takenseparately. Many social problems andissues become visible only at thisaggregative level — they cannot beidentified at the more micro levels ofinvestigation.

However, like all research methods,the survey also has its disadvantages.Although it offers the possibility ofwide coverage, this is at the cost ofdepth of coverage. It is usually notpossible to get in-depth informationfrom respondents as part of a largesurvey. Because of the large numberof respondents, the time spent on eachmust be limited. Moreover, since thesurvey questionnaire is being takenaround to respondents by a relativelylarge number of investigators, itbecomes difficult to ensure thatcomplicated questions or thoserequiring detailed prompting will beasked of all respondents in exactly thesame way. Differences in the wayquestions are asked or answersrecorded could introduce errors intothe survey. That is why thequestionnaire for a survey (sometimescalled a ‘survey instrument’) has to bedesigned very carefully — since it willbe handled by persons other than theresearchers themselves, there is littlechance of corrections or modificationsin the course of its use.

Given that there is no long-termrelationship between investigator andrespondent and hence no familiarityor trust, questions that can be askedin a survey have to be of the kind thatcan be asked and answered betweenstrangers. Questions of a personal or

sensitive kind cannot be asked, or ifasked are likely to be answered‘safely’ rather than truthfully. Thesekinds of problems are sometimesrefered to as ‘non-sampling errors’,that is, errors due not to the samplingprocess but to faults or shortcomingsof the research design or the mannerin which it was implemented.Unfortunately, some of these errors aredifficult to foresee and guard against,so that it is possible for surveys to gowrong and produce misleading or falseestimates of the characteristics of apopulation. Ultimately, the mostimportant limitation of the survey isthat, in order to be successful,they must depend on a tightlystructured inflexible questionnaire.Moreover, howsoever well designed thequestionnaire might be, its successdepends finally on the nature of theinteractions between investigators andrespondents, and specially on thegoodwill and cooperation of the latter.

Interview

An interview is basically a guidedconversation between the researcherand the respondent. Although it hasfew technicalities associated with it, thesimplicity of the format can bedeceptive because it actually takes alot of practice and skill to become agood interviewer. The interviewoccupies the ground between astructured questionnaire of the typeused in surveys, and the completelyopen-ended interactions typicalof participant observation methods.Its chief advantage is the extreme


flexibility of the format. Questions canbe re-phrased or even stated differently;the order of subjects or questions canbe changed according to the progress(or lack of progress) in the conver-sation; subjects that are producinggood material can be extended andbuilt upon others that provokeunfavourable reactions can be cutshort or postponed to a later occasion,and all this can be done during thecourse of the interview itself.

On the other hand, many of thedisadvantages of the interview as aresearch method are also related to itsadvantages. The very same flexibilitycan also make the interview vulnerableto changes of mood on the part of therespondent, or to lapses ofconcentration on the part of theinterviewer. It is in this sense anunstable and unpredictable format —it works very well when it works, andfails miserably when it doesn’t.

There are different styles ofinterviewing and opinions andexperiences differ as to their relativeadvantages. Some prefer a very looselystructured format, with only a check-list of topics rather than actualquestions; others like to have morestructure, with specific questions to beasked of all respondents. How theinterview is recorded can also differaccording to circumstances andpreferences, ranging from actual videoor audio recording, detailed note takingduring the interview, or relying onmemory and writing up the interview

after it is concluded? The introductionof equipment like recorders and so onfrequently makes the respondentuneasy and introduces a degree offormality into the conversation. On theother hand, important information cansometimes go unnoticed or not berecorded at all when other lesscomprehensive methods of recordkeeping are being employed.Sometimes the physical or socialcircum-stances in which the interviewis being conducted determine the modeof recording. The way in which theinterview is later written for publicationor as part of a research report can alsodiffer widely. Some researchers preferto edit the transcript and present a‘cleaned up’ continuous narrative;others wish to retain the flavour of theoriginal conversation as much aspossible and therefore include all theasides and digressions as well.

The interview is often used alongwith or as a supplement to othermethods, specially participant obser-vation and surveys. Long conversationswith ‘key informants’ (the maininformant in a participant observationstudy) can often provide a concentratedaccount that situates and clarifies theaccompanying material. Similarly,intensive interviews can add depth anddetail to the findings of a survey.However, as a method, the interview isdependent on personalised access andthe degree of rapport or mutual trustbetween the respondent and theresearcher.


GLOSSARY

Census : A comprehensive survey covering every single member of apopulation.

Genealogy : An extended family tree outlining familial relations acrossgenerations.

Non-sampling Error : Errors in survey results due to mistakes in the designor application of methods.

Population : In the statistical sense, the larger body (of persons, villages,households, etc.) from which a sample is drawn.

Probability : The likelihood or odds of an event occuring (in the statisticalsense).

Questionnaire : A written list of questions to be asked in a survey orinterview.

Randomisation : Ensuring that an event (such as the selection of aparticular item in the sample) depends purely on chance and nothing else.

Reflexivity : The researcher’s ability to observe and analyse oneself.

Sample : A subset or selection (usually small) drawn from and representinga larger population.

Sampling Error : The unavoidable margin of error in the results of a surveybecause it is based on information from only a small sample rather thanthe entire population.

Stratification : According to the the statistical sense, the subdivision of apopulation into distinct groups based on relevant criteria such as gender,location, religion, age etc.

EXERCISES

1. Why is the question of a scientific method particularly important insociology?

2. What are some of the reasons why ‘objectivity’ is more complicated inthe social sciences, particularly disciplines like sociology?

3. How do sociologists try to deal with these difficulties and strive forobjectivity?

4. What is meant by ‘reflexivity’ and why is it important in sociology?

5. What are some of the things that ethnographers and sociologists doduring participant observation?


6. What are the strengths and weaknesses of participant observationas a method?

7. What are the basic elements of the survey method? What is chiefadvantage of this method?

8. What are some of the criteria involved in selecting a representativesample?

9. What are some of the weaknesses of the survey method?

10. Describe the main features of the interview as a research method.

READINGS

BAUMAN, ZYGMUNT. 1990. Thinking Sociologically. Basil Blackwell, OxfordUniversity Press, New Delhi.

BECKER, HOWARD S. 1970. Sociological Work : Method and Substance. ThePenguin Press, Allen Lane.

BETEILLE, ANDRE and MADAN, T.N. ed. 1975. Encounter and experience : PersonalAccounts of Fieldwork. Vikas Publishing House, Delhi.

BURGESS, ROBERT G. ed. 1982. Field Research : A Sourcebook and Field Manual.George Allen and Unwin, London.

COSER, LEWIS. RHEA, A, B. STEFFAN, P.A. and NOCK, S.L. 1983. Introduction toSociology. Harcourt Brace Johanovich, New York.

SRINIVAS. M.N. SHAH, A.M. and RAMASWAMY, E.A. ed. 2002. The fieldworker andthe Field : Problems and Challenges in Sociological Investigation. 2ndEdition. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

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