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About Social Research

Social research refers to research conducted by social scientists, within sociology, cultural/social anthropology, social policy, communication studies, human geography, political science, and social psychology.


Social scientists study diverse objects: from census data derived from hundreds of thousands of human beings, to the in-depth analysis of one individual social life; from monitoring what is happening on a street today, to the historical analysis of what was happening hundreds of years ago.

Social scientists use many different methods in order to describe, explore and understand social life. Social methods can generally be subdivided into two broad categories. Quantitative methods are concerned with attempts to quantify social phenomena and collect and analyse numerical data, and focus on the links among a smaller number of attributes across many cases. Qualitative methods, on the other hand, emphasise personal experiences and interpretation over quantification, are more concerned with understanding the meaning of social phenomena and focus on links among a larger number of attributes across relatively few cases. While very different in many aspects, both qualitative and quantitative approaches involve a systematic interaction between theories and data.

Common tools of quantitative researchers include surveys, questionnaires, and secondary analysis of statistical data that has been gathered for other purposes (for example, censuses or the results of social attitudes surveys). Commonly used qualitative methods include focus groups, participant observation, and other techniques.

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