•   Dartmouth Home
  • Request a Transcript
  • View Term Calendar
  • Registration Schedule
  • Final Exam Schedule  

Related Sites

  • Change Link
  • Registration
  • ORC/Catalog

Organization, Regulations, and Courses 2023-24 > Departments/Programs and Courses - Undergraduate > English and Creative Writing

Organization, Regulations, and Courses 2023-24

Print this page

  • 2023 New Undergraduate Course Supplement
  • About This Catalog
  • Dartmouth College Mission Statement
  • Organization of Dartmouth College 2023-24
  • Regulations
  • Instruction
  • African and African-American Studies
  • Anthropology
  • Art History
  • Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages
  • Biological Sciences - Undergraduate
  • Chemistry - Undergraduate
  • Classics - Classical Studies; Greek; Latin
  • Cognitive Science
  • College Courses
  • Computer Science - Undergraduate
  • Comparative Literature - Undergraduate
  • The John Sloan Dickey Center For International Understanding
  • Earth Sciences - Undergraduate
  • Minor in Education
  • Engineering Sciences - Undergraduate

Course Groups

ENGL and CRWT - English and Creative Writing Courses

  • Environmental Studies Program
  • Ethics Institute
  • Film and Media Studies
  • French and Italian Languages and Literatures
  • German Studies
  • Jewish Studies
  • Language and Advanced Language Study Abroad Program
  • Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies
  • Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
  • Linguistics
  • Literature in Translation
  • Minor in Materials Science
  • Mathematics - Undergraduate
  • Medieval and Renaissance Studies
  • Middle Eastern Studies
  • Music - Undergraduate
  • Native American and Indigenous Studies
  • Neuroscience
  • Physical Education
  • Physics and Astronomy - Undergraduate
  • Psychological and Brain Sciences - Undergraduate
  • Quantitative Social Science
  • The Nelson A Rockefeller Center for Public Policy
  • Russian Language and Literature
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Social Science
  • Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures
  • Student-Initiated Seminars
  • Tuck - Undergraduate
  • Wellness Education
  • Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program
  • Institute for Writing and Rhetoric
  • Departments/Programs and Courses - Graduate
  • Printable Version
  • Catalog Home
  • Past ORCs/Catalogs

English and Creative Writing

Chair: Peter Orner

Vice Chair: Aden Evens (July - Dec), Patricia Stuelke (Jan - June)

Director of Creative Writing: Thomas O'Malley

Professors C. G. Boggs, M. A. Chaney, A. S. H. Chee, C. M. Dever, J. S. Kim, A. L. McCann, P. M. Orner, D. E. Pease, J. Sharlet, M. B. Taylor, B. E. Will; Associate Professors K. J. Brown, G. Edmondson, A. L. Evens, V. E. Francis, S. A. Moodie, T. O’Malley, M. C. Otter, A. Raza Kolb, P. R. Stuelke, M. F. Zeiger; Assistant Professors J. C. Beckman, J. E. Dobson, A. Garrison, A. A. Khan, M. S. Olzmann, M. P. Ritger, N. Tanoukhi; Senior Lecturers W. H. Craig, K. A. Crouch, C. L. Harner; Lecturers A. Jetter

To view English and Creative Writing courses, click here . 

The English Major

Requirements: The Major in English requires the successful completion of eleven major courses. Major courses, unless otherwise stated, are all courses with the ENGL (English) or the CRWT (Creative Writing) course code. These courses must meet the following distributive requirements:

1. Two courses from Group I ; two courses from Group II ; one course from Group III ; one course from Group IV .

2. Two courses from the Literary History sequence ( ENGL 1 , ENGL 2 , ENGL 3 ) . These courses may also satisfy Course Group requirements.

3. One Junior Colloquium  (ENGL 61 – ENGL 65). This course may also satisfy a Course Group requirement.

4. One Senior Seminar  (ENGL 71 – ENGL 75, CRWT 60 , 61, or 62). This course may also satisfy a Course Group requirement.

5. One course designated as a Culminating Experience. For students seeking a degree with Honors, this will be ENGL 98 or CRWT 98 . All other students will count a Senior Seminar (ENGL 71– ENGL 75, CRWT 60 , 61, or 62) in satisfaction of the Culminating Experience requirement.

Students electing the major in English should also note the following:

1. Transfer credits can be used in the major only with approval from the Department Vice Chair. Transfer credits normally do not satisfy any of the English major distributive requirements.

2. Two substitute courses (relevant courses from other Dartmouth departments) are permitted within the major, replacing two elective English classes. Substitute courses cannot satisfy English major distributive requirements. The Department Vice Chair, in consultation with the Committee on Departmental Curriculum (CDC), decides which courses are appropriate substitutes in the English major.

3. Students are encouraged to seek out a faculty advisor to consult about major planning prior to declaring the major. Any non-visiting English faculty member at the Assistant, Associate, or Professor level may serve as advisor. English majors should meet with a major advisor regularly, especially if they deviate from their original major plan.

4. Students formally elect the major in English by submitting a proposed plan of major courses through DartWorks (on DartHub), filling out a major planning worksheet (available in the English and Creative Writing Department offices as well as on the Department website), and meeting with a faculty advisor to get approval. Once approved by the advisor, the signed worksheet must be submitted in the Department offices. 

Concentration in Creative Writing

The Creative Writing Program’s sequential course of study and small workshops allow students to pursue and develop their craft from the introductory level to the advanced. The creative writing experience at Dartmouth combines intensive writing workshops with the study of literature from a writer’s perspective. The concentration in Creative Writing does not change graduating requirements for students majoring in English, but it is a prerequisite for honors with a focus in Creative Writing.

For students prior to and including the Class of 2022, the Concentration consists of four courses taken as part of an English major plan of study as follows:

1. Students must pass one prerequisite course, CRWT 10 , CRWT 11 , or CRWT 12 .

2. Students then enroll in one intermediate course, CRWT 20 , CRWT 21 , or CRWT 22 .

3. The third course can be chosen from any course with the CRWT course code ; (substitute courses from other departments will be considered).

4. The fourth course can be in any genre of contemporary literature or another course with the CRWT code; (again, substitute courses from other departments will be considered).

For students in the Class of 2023 and beyond, the Concentration consists of four courses taken as part of an English major plan of study as follows:

1. One introductory course, CRWT 10 , CRWT 11 , or CRWT 12 . (Only one introductory creative writing course may count toward the Concentration in Creative Writing.)

2. One intermediate course, CRWT 20 , CRWT 21 , or CRWT 22 .

3. One course from the range of creative writing special topics seminars, CRWT 40 and CRWT 41. (Substitute courses with a focus on creative writing from other departments may be considered. Please consult with the Director of Creative Writing.)

4. One advanced workshop, CRWT 60 , CRWT 61 , or CRWT 62 . (The advanced workshop is a requirement for the completion of the Concentration in Creative Writing.)

All intermediate and senior workshop courses ( CRWT 20 , 21, or 22) and CRWT 60 , 61, or 62) require application and permission of the instructor.

Students who wish to elect the Creative Writing concentration should contact a Creative Writing faculty advisor and request a meeting to plan their course of study. Students are encouraged to select an advisor based on the area of creative interest.

Modified Majors

Students may propose a modified major in English by designing a program of study in consultation with an English and Creative Writing faculty advisor. One may modify the major with a selection of courses from other departments and programs, or one may modify a major in another department or program with a selection of English and Creative Writing courses. In both cases the modifying courses must qualify for major credit in their home department or program. The Culminating Experience requirement should be satisfied according to the primary department’s rules. Proposals for modifying the major in English should explain the rationale for modifying the standard major.

A formal proposal for a modified major must be submitted to the Vice Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing. Proposals to modify another major with English and Creative Writing courses must be approved by the Vice Chair of English and Creative Writing before going to the primary department or program for final approval as a major program. Proposals to modify the major in English with other courses must be submitted, along with an authorizing signature from the secondary department or program, to the Vice Chair of English and Creative Writing and the CDC. The Vice Chair’s signature signifies final approval of a modified major in English.

Modified major in which English is the primary subject:

This major requires the successful completion of eleven major courses, including seven courses in the Department of English and Creative Writing. All of the distributive requirements governing the regular English major, as outlined above, apply to the modified major. Along with the English and Creative Writing courses taken in satisfaction of the major distributive requirements, a modified major includes four courses from the modifying department or program (or from multiple departments and programs), which substitute for four elective English and Creative Writing courses in the eleven-course major. 

Major in another department or program modified with English:

To modify another major with English, a student must take four English and Creative Writing courses that count towards the major in English. These four substitute for four courses from the primary department or program, and cannot include transfer credits.

The Minor in English

The minor in English requires the successful completion of six courses in the Department of English and Creative Writing, selected from all English and Creative Writing courses qualifying for major credit. No substitutions and no more than one transfer credit will be permitted.

The Major in English with Honors

English majors who have completed at least six major courses by the end of their junior year and have a grade point average (GPA) in the major of 3.5 or higher and an overall college GPA of 3.0 or higher may apply for the Honors program. Eligible students apply by submitting their college record to the English Honors Directors along with a formal proposal of an Honors thesis. The thesis is to be completed during two terms of ENGL 98 and ENGL 99 or CRWT 98 and CRWT 99 . Either ENGL 98 or CRWT 98 counts as the Culminating Experience in the major and ENGL 99 or CRWT 99 constitutes a twelfth course in the major program, separate from all other requirements outlined above.  

There are two prerequisites for the Honors Program: 1) Students must complete a Senior Seminar in English (ENGL 70 – ENGL 75, CRWT 60 , CRWT 61 , or CRWT 62 ) prior to enrolling in ENGL 98 or CRWT 98 ; and 2) the Course Group IV requirement should be satisfied before the term in which the candidate completes the Honors thesis and submits it for evaluation. In addition, participation in a bi-weekly Honors seminar, which usually meets at the 3A hour, is required. Students who do not meet these requirements will not be allowed to advance to ENGL 99 or CRWT 99 .

For complete information about the Honors Program, including further regulations, deadlines, and advice, please consult the Directors of Honors.

English Study Abroad

The Department of English and Creative Writing offers one Foreign Study Program (FSP), offered bi-annually at Queen Mary University of London. The English and Creative Writing FSP takes place during the fall academic term. Participation in the FSP is open to all sophomores, juniors, and seniors. To participate in the program, students must have completed all first-year requirements and one English course (other than ENGL 7 ) with a grade of B or better. Students wanting to study creative writing in London must also complete an introductory creative writing course in the relevant genre ( CRWT 10 , CRWT 11 , or CRWT 12 ) with a grade of B or better. In rare circumstances, the director of the FSP can authorize exceptions to these prerequisites.

Students enrolled in the English and Creative Writing FSP register for ENGL 90 , ENGL 91 , and ENGL 92 , and those three courses will appear on the student's transcript when the FSP is completed successfully. ENGL 90 and ENGL 91 carry major and minor credit and may be used to satisfy Course Group requirements in the major; ENGL 92 carries one non-major college credit. A student may petition the Vice Chair to receive three major or minor credits in English for work completed during an English and Creative Writing FSP. The Course Group requirements satisfied by ENGL 90 and ENGL 91 depend on the particular courses taken at the FSP host institution and should be determined in consultation with the Department Vice Chair. For specific information on FSPs and major requirements please consult the FSP directors and the English and Creative Writing Department’s website at  https:// english.dartmouth.edu.

The Department of English and Creative Writing website  and the Registrar’s Timetable of Class Meetings also have up-to-date information on course offerings. 

Top of page | Copyright © 2011 Trustees of Dartmouth College | Powered by SmartCatalog IQ

  • The Student Experience
  • Financial Aid
  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life

English and Creative Writing

Department of english and creative writing.

  • [email protected] Contact & Department Info Mail
  • Undergraduate
  • Modified Major
  • Transfer Credit
  • Creative Writing Concentration
  • Past Honors
  • Course Group I
  • Course Group II
  • Course Group III
  • Course Group IV
  • Courses - No Course Group
  • Creative Writing Courses
  • Courses (No Major Credit)
  • Foreign Study Courses
  • Independent Study and Honors
  • The Historical Philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois
  • Creative Writing Prizes
  • Department Prizes
  • Undergraduate Fellowships
  • Foreign Study
  • London Foreign Study Program
  • News & Events
  • News & Events
  • Illuminations
  • Robert Hayden
  • Black Nature Conference
  • Sanborn Tea

Search form

  • Major, Minor, and Modified Major

english and creative writing dartmouth

Study English Abroad

Major/minor declaration and planner, undergraduate overview.

To major in English, you'll need to satisfy major distribution requirements and choose a concentration area. Learn more about the English major , modified major , and minor.  

students in sanborn

Students study in Sanborn Library

Getting Started

With an emphasis on communication and critical thinking, courses in Dartmouth's English and Creative Writing Department complement a variety of majors. If you are interested in taking English courses, regardless of your major, consult our  Courses or the ORC  for a full listing.

Choose English

Skills developed.

Majoring in English instructs you in critical modes of thinking that are beneficial in almost any future career path.

A corollary set of intellectual skills developed in the Dartmouth English major is a knowing deployment of a sophisticated critical vocabulary. All English majors are required to take a course in literary theory. By focusing on major theoretical schools of the twentieth century--such as structuralism, post-structuralism, feminism, Marxism, deconstruction, queer theory, psychoanalysis, and post-colonialism--an English major learns how to integrate an array of demanding analytic paradigms. These acquired skills enhance your abilities to critique from a variety of perspectives a variety of texts, ranging from Old English elegies and Renaissance plays to Trinidadian memoirs and digital hypertexts.

Writing is of paramount importance to the English major. Typically, you write at least two long papers in every English course, and in your senior seminar, the capstone course to the major, a hefty research paper is required. About 25 percent of majors choose to write an honors thesis. Though lengths may vary, particularly for creative projects, theses are generally between 60 and 90 pages long. And in the creative writing concentration, you take a series of seminars that culminate in a portfolio of poems, short stories, non-fictional prose, or a novel. Since clear, intelligent, and personable writing is a skill highly valued in the world after college, its development under the tutelage of attentive professors is another benefit of majoring in English.

In recent years, approximately 80 members of each Dartmouth senior class have graduated as English majors or minors: Some continue their study of literature in graduate school; others prepare to teach English in secondary schools; others become journalists, writers, and editors; and many go on to law school and medical school. As an English major, you may want to apply for our foreign study program , take creative writing as a concentration within the major, or write an honors thesis under the guidance of a faculty member.

You'll also have many opportunities to participate in programs and discussions, including readings by nationally known poets, novelists, and critics that are scheduled at Sanborn House throughout the year. Stay up to date on these and other Department events by monitoring the Department's events page .

  • The Student Experience
  • Financial Aid
  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

  • [email protected] Contact & Department Info Mail
  • Application Process
  • Essay Guidelines
  • Application Policies
  • Enrollment Options
  • Financial Aid Questions
  • Student Life
  • When You Arrive On Campus
  • Summer Symposium
  • Ethics Requirement
  • Requirements by Concentration

Creative Writing

  • Cultural Studies Program
  • Globalization Studies
  • Course Descriptions
  • Course Schedules by Term
  • How to Enroll in Courses
  • Proposal Guidelines
  • Thesis Proposal
  • Thesis Grants
  • Thesis Research
  • Submitting Your Thesis
  • Sample Thesis Abstracts
  • The Byam Shaw-Brownstone Thesis Excellence Award
  • Student Experience
  • Click here to order your Dartmouth transcript
  • Academic Transcripts
  • Student FORMS
  • News & Events
  • MALS Calendar
  • Clamantis: The MALS Journal
  • Please click here to watch the Clamantis video message
  • Alumni Update
  • Student Profiles

Search form

  • Degree Requirements
  • Course Information
  • Independent Study
  • Oxford Summer Program

Required Components

  • 3 Interdisciplinary Courses, 2 of which must be team-taught
  • Non-Fiction 
  • Screenwriting
  • Playwriting (and related Writers' Room)
  • 1 Elective course from MALS or Dartmouth College*
  • 1 Independent study in Creative Writing (MALS 127)
  • 1 Research Methods module (MALS 130, MALS 131 or MALS 132)
  • 1 Summer Symposium (MALS 120) — no tuition charged
  • 3 MALS Ethics Workshops (Professionalism, Academic Integrity & Mentorship - 1.5 hour workshops) — no tuition charged
  • Creative Thesis — no tuition charged
  • Thesis Presentation (MALS 411) — no tuition charged

*Dartmouth College undergraduate courses may be taken for MALS elective, concentration, or interdisciplinary credit. These courses, no more than two, must be upper division, and will require additional readings and/or written assignments to equal graduate level coursework. The specifics of the requirements are by agreement between the student and instructor (see the Non-MALS Course Contract . Prior approval from the MALS administration is required.

  • The Student Experience
  • Financial Aid
  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life

Background of pines

Kennedy Hamblen

Selfie of Kennedy

I'm Kennedy, a literature nerd and creative writer from the outskirts of Memphis. I'm also a senior here at Dartmouth. When I'm not working in admissions as a senior fellow, I'm a student employee at the library and a research and teaching assistant in the English department. I love music (I collect vinyl!) and analyzing teen drama TV (think Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars). I'm currently applying to law schools. I've had such a great time at Dartmouth and am excited to share that with you!

Academic Program 

Favorite thing right now .

Trailer Park Boys

Hometown 

Pronouns , you are here.

  • People Places Pines

Creative Writing at Dartmouth

Kennedy's d-plan, fall hanover, nh.

Professor McCann is my advisor, but that's not the only reason I took this class. Since it was a senior seminar with only 9 students, we got to dive deep into the fascinating material, including with Victorian-era pulp fiction books, advertisements, and psychological treatises, plus some good old fashioned canonical works like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula. [Fun fact: I've read Dracula three times at Dartmouth... it's an English department favorite!]

Winter Hanover, NH

This was an off term for me, but I love Hanover so much I hung around anyways! I worked for admissions and Baker-Berry Library, read a ton of J.G. Ballard, and stared out the window at the snow for an embarrassingly long amount of time. I also visited my parents in Tennessee during Christmas.

Spring Hanover, NH

Professor Nachlis went out of his way to act as an unofficial pre-law advisor for all of us in this class, not only by introducing us to some of the most pressing issues in American government, but also by dedicating the final two weeks of class to a module called "Should you go to law school?" A question I was asking myself!

Summer Hanover, NH

Another off term again, and this time I'm working full-time for admissions as a senior fellow! I'm also doing a lot of preliminary reading for my honors thesis. Anyone heard of Friedrich Kittler's Discourse Networks? Well, I'll have read it twice by the time this term is over.

The English department's library

Dartmouth does not offer a creative writing major; instead, students majoring in English can add a concentration in creative writing . But you don't need to be an English major to take creative writing classes. In classic Dartmouth fashion, the students in our creative writing classes major in everything from government to economics to biology.  

I'm an English major, and I've also taken two fiction writing classes here—Intermediate Fiction (with Professor Thomas O'Malley) and Writing for TV (with Professor Eugenie Carabatsos). Both were GREAT! I'm also registered for Writing for the Screen I in fall term 2023 with Professor William Phillips. Needless to say, I love fiction writing and think Dartmouth's an excellent place to hone your craft.

Almost all creative writing classes here are workshop-based, meaning we write a lot and give our finished work or excerpts to our classmates. Then our classmates comment on the pieces. In Intermediate Fiction and Writing for TV alike, we did several rounds of workshop for each person. I've found this to be extremely helpful at Dartmouth, because the students are both engaged and intelligent. My classmates have produced some fantastic pieces I've enjoyed reading, and they've also given me invaluable feedback. The same is true of professors—in any class that involves writing of any kind, I've been able to get helpful, detailed feedback on my essays and fiction pieces alike.

Intermediate Fiction was a class of about eight. We were asked to apply to the class; normally, you'd also need to have taken Introductory Fiction prior, but in my year, the professor allowed myself and a few other students with experience and sufficient samples to skip Intro and enroll directly in Intermediate. Once we got into the class, we were immediately writing, writing, writing. Even scarier, our classmates read our work and gave us constructive criticism several times that term. Some students presented new pieces each workshop; others would return with revised versions of pieces; still others, like myself, gave the workshop group excerpts of a larger story.

Writing for Television was nearly as small, with an enrollment of about fourteen. We pitched our TV show ideas, read pilot scripts and show bibles, and wrote our own. Professor Carabatsos has written professionally for TV, so she was able to give us helpful information about the industry and what producers are looking for in a pitch or show, as well as tried and true screenwriting methods. Unlike Intermediate Fiction, we all workshopped the same pieces several times, which meant we got to thoroughly polish our show pilots. I cannot explain to you how fun it was to not only create my own TV show idea, but also to read what my classmates came up with.

I've become a much better writer while at Dartmouth. For me this has mainly been through classes, but we also have several literary magazines and writing clubs—off the top of my head, a friend of mine has just started Spilled Ink, a poetry club; we have a literary magazine called Stonefence; we have several undergraduate-run academic journals like Memento and the undergraduate history journal; we also have a book club! There are far more creative writers of all stripes at Dartmouth than I expected, and we have classes and extracurriculars to accommodate them all.

Sanborn, the English department's building

Click to show post info Post Information

  • creative writing
  • english department
  • screenwriting
  • Copy This Link
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter

Posts You Might Like

Trinity College's campus

Classes I took while Abroad at Trinity College

An overview of classes during my transfer term at Trinity College, Dublin!

Caroline York

Where Neuroscience and Shakespeare's First Folio Meet

Read on to learn about the courses I'm taking this term.

Kalina standing amidst the autumn leaves

Guest Professors at Dartmouth

In this post, I talk about my experiences taking courses with guest professors at Dartmouth!

brandon mioduszewski

Return of Fourth Floor Rauner

My residential floor has continued to be a very active social group as well as academically motivated.

Portrait of Lily sitting in the woods

New Year, New Lab

Let me tell you about my research journey at Dartmouth!

Eda Naz Gokdemir '25

Paris Night Lights!

I spent a beautiful weekend in Paris for my fellow study abroad friend's birthday!

Andrea

Keep reading to find out why I cannot stop writing and talking about Spare Rib, the intersectional feminist zine at Dartmouth.

The Dartmouth Skiway

Dartmouth has a PE requirement?

PE doesn't end in high school!

Liliana standing in front of a vista on Hawai'i

Health Professions Program

Read on to learn about Dartmouth's office for pre-health studies, the Health Professions Program (HPP).

Dartmouth Digital Commons

Home > Academic departments > English

English and Creative Writing

Browse the english and creative writing collections:.

Work by English and Creative Writing Faculty

  • Collections
  • Disciplines

Advanced Search

  • Notify me via email or RSS
  • Contributor FAQ
  • Department of English and Creative Writing

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement | Terms and Conditions of Use

Privacy Copyright

  • The Student Experience

Financial Aid

  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life
  • Incoming Students
  • Parents & Families

The Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education

  • [email protected] Contact & Department Info Mail
  • Explore Programs
  • How to Apply
  • Preparing to Go
  • Support for Diverse Identities
  • Student Stories
  • Student Handbook
  • Dartmouth Resources

Financing Your Program

  • Health Planning
  • Passports & Visas
  • Dates & Deadlines
  • Withdrawing
  • Emergency Procedures
  • Safety Abroad
  • ACT Reporting Form
  • What's Next
  • Student Alumni Mentors
  • Frank J. Guarini
  • Vision, Mission & Approach
  • Diversity Statement
  • Program Offerings

Search form

London Pixabay

English and Creative Writing FSP London

Program at a glance, terms offered.

Tandem professor and globe icon

THIS PROGRAM IS OFFERED ONCE EVERY TWO YEARS

About this program.

The Department of English and Creative Writing offers a foreign study program at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).  Queen Mary is  a highly prestigious university that boasts one of the world's finest and most innovative English departments. Students will  study with leading scholars and writers on QMUL's vibrant East End campus a short train ride away from the center of London. Students will take three classes in the Department of English and Drama (which also houses the creative writing program), supplemented by a weekly seminar with the Dartmouth faculty director and an independent project. 

Students on the English FSP enroll in English 90, 91, and 92. English 90 and 91 carry major and minor credit; English 92 does not, although it does carry college course credit. No FSP course may be used to satisfy the Culminating Experience requirement in any major.

Enrollment Information

About 18 students are selected for the program. Committed students will also submit an application to the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

For more information about applying for this program, see our webpage on  How to Apply  & our  FAQs under section 2 (How to Apply: Application)

THE STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENCE

Globe theater

Photo by Amina Zoklat '23

buildings

Photo by Lola Ellenberg '23

Door

Photo by Isabelle Strong '19

Feet

ACADEMIC PROGRAM

Faculty director.

english and creative writing dartmouth

ENGL | 90 | 90 : English Study Abroad I ENGL | 91 | 90: English Study Abroad II ENGL | 92 | 90:   English Study Abroad III, supplemented by research seminar run by FSP director

Prerequisites

Students must have completed all first-year requirements and one English course (other than English 7) with a grade of B or better. Students hoping to take a creative writing module at QMUL must have completed one creative writing course in an appropriate genre, also with a grade of B or better, in addition to their one English course. 

3.3 overall GPA

Additional Information: Any of these requirements may, in certain extraordinary circumstances, be waived by the program director. 

Selection Criteria: Strength of application and in-person interview; enthusiasm of faculty recommenders; degree of commitment to the English major and/or creative writing program.

STUDENT LIFE

Students live in shared, self-catered apartments/flats equipped with kitchen facilities for preparing meals. Students should expect to share a bedroom and bathroom with other students. All students committed to this program will complete a housing preference form for shared housing and roommate placements. 

The program will also include a range of excursions and cultural activities designed to enhance their intellectual and creative experience of the city.  

For more information, please see the department website .

Student Voices

"This program offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study in the heart of London, and the combination of engaging coursework and exciting day trips (Stonehenge, Bath, Oxford, and Cambridge) allowed us to make the most of our time in London." - Fall 2021

"It was a wonderful experience, mostly due to the students I was with. It is so valuable to be able to make new friends who are part of a different culture as well as get closer to a smaller group of Dartmouth students that you wouldn't have otherwise met." - Fall 2021

"The group excursions were memorable. They complemented and helped cement course material, and provided background information as well." -Fall 2017

"This course was fantastic. I enjoyed the light readings which the professor required and the time each week to discuss them." - Fall 2018

"My independent project helped me think more intensely about subjects related to my lifelong academic interests, and pick up new storytelling skills. This will complement the work I am doing for my thesis very well. An extracurricular class I took further complemented my independent project and thesis." -Fall 2017

Fall Budget Sheet for English FSP London

Tuition and Fees

The fees charged by the College for a Dartmouth-sponsored off-campus term of study include regular tuition charges for a term at Dartmouth, service fees, as well as the specific costs established for each off-campus study locale. In many programs, the room and board costs tend to be higher than for a term in Hanover. You can view a budget sheet for each program by clicking on the appropriate term under "Financing Your Program". The cost of transportation to and from the site is the responsibility of the student.

In order that all qualified Dartmouth undergraduate students may have the opportunity to take part in off-campus programs, the College endeavors to adjust its normal financial aid awards for students already receiving aid. Tuition and expected family contribution for Dartmouth's off-campus programs are the same as for an on-campus term.

All costs, including airfare and spending money, are considered when determining the cost of an off-campus program. Any costs more than a typical term in Hanover are met with additional Dartmouth Scholarship Funds.  If you have a work expectation for the term, this will be replaced by scholarship funding for programs that span the entire term. 

Students are responsible for purchasing their own plane tickets and, in many cases, meals. Often this means that part of the expected family contribution is used towards these costs rather than for tuition. For help sorting out who pays what and how, contacting the Financial Aid office is often advisable.  

Financing your program | Financial Aid  |  Scholarships  |  Budgeting & Costs

Program Resources

Department contact.

Katherine Gibbel

Alumni Contact

Other resources.

  • Department of English and Creative Writing
  • Office of Financial Aid
  • The Student Experience
  • Financial Aid
  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life

French and Italian

Department of french and italian.

  • [email protected] Contact & Department Info Mail
  • Undergraduate
  • Placement Information & Exams
  • Transfer Credit
  • French Introductory Language Sequence
  • French Intermediate and Upper Level Courses
  • French and Italian in Translation
  • Italian Language Courses
  • Italian Upper Level Courses
  • 2023-2024 French Courses
  • 2024-2025 French Courses
  • 2023-2024 Italian Courses
  • 2024-2025 Italian Courses
  • Romance Languages
  • French Studies
  • Italian Studies
  • French or Italian as a Modifier
  • French Timeline
  • Italian Timeline
  • Endowed Research Grant
  • Study Abroad
  • LSA+ Toulouse
  • Guarini OCP programs
  • Full Immersion Rome Experience (FIRE)
  • Italian LSA+ Rome
  • Careers and Opportunities
  • CAPOFARFA FARM INTERNSHIP - ITALY
  • EATALY BOSTON
  • LIBERA INTERNSHIP - ITALY (VARIOUS LOCATIONS)
  • Apprentice Teacher Info
  • Arianna Pagani ’93 Memorial Prize In French And Italian
  • Bruno Tollon Prize In French Studies
  • Cloise Appleton Crane Prize In French And Italian
  • François Denoeu Memorial Prize
  • French Consulate Prize
  • George E. Diller Memorial Prize
  • Lawrence And Sheila Harvey Prize In French And Italian
  • Paul D. And Marilyn M. Paganucci Prize In Italian
  • Pray Modern Language Prize In French And Italian
  • Ramon Guthrie Achievement Award In French
  • The Colette L. Gaudin Prize in French
  • Thomas J. Gaudet, Jr. Memorial Prize
  • What you can do with a major or minor in French and Italian
  • News & Events

Search form

Professor mcconnell joins house communities.

Professor McConnell

Kelly McConnell '00, Guarini '03, Senior Lecturer of French (pictured bottom row, center) Faculty Fellow, Allen House

I have always believed in the power of integrating academic and residential life. As an undergraduate student at Dartmouth, I was a member of the first "living learning community" in the Wheelock cluster. It was an opportunity to explore beyond my own primary areas of interest and meet truly exceptional authors, scholars, and artists.

I believe that university communities are stronger when students form connections with faculty and staff that extend beyond the classroom. I have loved participating in Allen House programming as a faculty member. The house system at Dartmouth is also uniquely positioned to bring together members of our professional community and their families, allowing students to form even broader connections to the communities that surround them.

Six faculty members have joined Dartmouth's  residential house communities  as inaugural faculty fellows.

The fellows will collaborate with house leadership teams to expand program offerings geared toward intellectual engagement and deepening faculty-student connections.

"One of the distinguishing elements of Dartmouth's house communities, when compared to peer institutions, is the broader and more inclusive involvement of faculty and staff affiliates," says Professor of Anthropology  Sienna Craig , who serves as house professor at South House and as co-director, with Associate Professor of Sociology  Janice McCabe , of house communities development.

"Faculty participation is an element of this system that students appreciate and wish to see expand," Craig says. "This new program bridges the Division of Student Affairs with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and helps us increase student access to members of the faculty in residential spaces."

All undergraduates are assigned to one of six houses when they arrive as first-year students, and they maintain their affiliation to their house throughout their time at Dartmouth. Each house is overseen by a house professor who lives in a single-family home near the student residences.

At this time four of Dartmouth's six house communities have appointed faculty fellows: Professor of Computer Science  Amit Chakrabarti  (East Wheelock House), Professor of Anthropology  Nathaniel Dominy  (North Park House), Professor of English and Creative Writing  Jodi Kim  (North Park House), Senior Lecturer of French  Kelly McConnell  '00, Guarini '03, (Allen House), Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies  Edward Miller  (South House), and Assistant Professor of Art History  Adedoyin Teriba  (South House).

Current house professors developed the Faculty Fellows program with support from the  Division of Student Affairs  and the  Office of the Dean of Faculty . When fully launched, the program will support one or two faculty fellows each year affiliated with each house. Tenure-line professors or lecturers with multi-year contracts are eligible to serve as fellows, who receive a modest research stipend in exchange for dedicated service within each house community.

"We are excited to welcome the inaugural cohort this year, and will be putting out a broad call for new fellows for the 2024-25 academic year at the end of spring term," Craig says.

Here, each new fellow shares a few words about their motivation for joining Dartmouth's house communities. 

  • Share on Facebook
  • Tweet this page
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Print this page
  • Email this page

Creative and Professional Writing

Concentration in creative & professional writing .

The English & Communication department offers a bachelor of arts degree in English with a concentration in creative & professional writing .

Creative & professional writing candidates demonstrate their ability to analyze context and rhetorical problems with awareness of cultural diversity to create and compose effective, well-formulated written communication for specific audiences across multiple modalities.

Areas of study in this concentration include: fiction; non-fiction; poetry; journalism; digital media production; script, drama, and screenwriting; professional writing; and technical writing.

Creative & professional writing learning outcomes:

  • Write and compose original texts
  • Apply key concepts in writing analytically, creatively, and professionally across multiple genres and modes based on audience needs and information design principles
  • Identify and summarize foundational concepts in creative writing, literary studies, and rhetorical studies
  • Understand and apply concepts and ideas related to issues of diversity such as race, class, sexuality, gender, ethnicity and others to texts across multiple genres and modes
  • Analyze the compositional and rhetorical strategies used in texts across multiple genres and modes
  • Synthesize primary and secondary sources using appropriate research and writing methods across genres and modes
  • Evaluate the appropriateness of compositional and rhetorical strategies used in texts

Student Success

Umassd's undergraduate experiences.

Take advanced courses, pursue research, and be part of a community of scholars.

Earn academic credits and gain a global perspective on your field.

Faculty work with students on cutting-edge research projects.

Gain the benefit of a broad university education to enhance your knowledge and skills.

Explore more

  • English & Communication Department
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement
  • UMassD Course Catalog

Course descriptions, schedules and requirements

Related academic programs.

  • Communication
  • Liberal Arts
  • Political Science
  • Women's & Gender Studies

Request info

Learn more about UMassD's academics, admissions, and events. We'll be in touch soon.

Shari Evans , PhD

Associate Professor / Chairperson English & Communication Liberal Arts 340

508-910-6522 ugxcpuBwocuuf0gfw

  • Check My Status
  • The Student Experience
  • Financial Aid
  • Degree Finder
  • Undergraduate Arts & Sciences
  • Departments and Programs
  • Research, Scholarship & Creativity
  • Centers & Institutes
  • Geisel School of Medicine
  • Guarini School of Graduate & Advanced Studies
  • Thayer School of Engineering
  • Tuck School of Business

Campus Life

  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Athletics & Recreation
  • Student Groups & Activities
  • Residential Life

Dean of the Faculty

  • [email protected] Contact & Department Info Mail
  • Welcome from Dean Smith
  • Academic Leadership Team
  • Dean of Faculty Administrative Staff
  • Faculty Directory
  • Organizational Chart
  • Faculty Recruitment
  • Arts and Sciences Staff Recognition Program
  • Departments & Programs
  • Faculty Resources
  • Faculty Handbook
  • Academic Honor Principle
  • Curriculum & Course Development
  • Faculty Evaluation Forms
  • Faculty Leave
  • Organization of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Dartmouth College
  • Recruitment
  • Student Accommodations
  • Charge to departments/programs for external reviews
  • Retirement Handbook
  • Quick Reference List of Faculty Resources
  • Awards and Funding (T/TT)
  • Conferences
  • Dean Of Faculty Computer Upgrade Program
  • Roth Visiting Scholar Award
  • Other Dartmouth Sources
  • External Funding
  • Arts & Sciences Finance Center
  • Finance and Research Administration
  • Mentoring & Professional Development
  • Undergraduate & Staff Research Assistance
  • Faculty Balloting
  • Faculty Development and Diversity
  • Initiatives
  • Faculty Development Resources
  • Community Resources
  • Reports and Plans
  • Suggestions

Search form

Faculty fellows join house communities, posted on february 18, 2024 by arts and sciences.

The inaugural cohort will collaborate with house leadership teams to expand program offerings geared toward intellectual engagement and deepening faculty-student connections.

Faculty fellows

Top row, from left: Professor of English and Creative Writing Jodi Kim (North Park House), Assistant Professor of Art History Adedoyin Teriba (South House), Professor of Anthropology Nathaniel Dominy (North Park House). Second row: Professor of Computer Science Amit Chakrabarti (East Wheelock House), Senior Lecturer of French Kelly McConnell ’00, Guarini ’03 (Allen House), Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Edward Miller (South House)

Six faculty members have joined Dartmouth's residential house communities as inaugural faculty fellows.

The fellows will collaborate with house leadership teams to expand program offerings geared toward intellectual engagement and deepening faculty-student connections.

"One of the distinguishing elements of Dartmouth's house communities, when compared to peer institutions, is the broader and more inclusive involvement of faculty and staff affiliates," says Professor of Anthropology Sienna Craig , who serves as house professor at South House and as co-director, with Associate Professor of Sociology Janice McCabe , of house communities development.

"Faculty participation is an element of this system that students appreciate and wish to see expand," Craig says. "This new program bridges the Division of Student Affairs with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and helps us increase student access to members of the faculty in residential spaces."

All undergraduates are assigned to one of six houses when they arrive as first-year students, and they maintain their affiliation to their house throughout their time at Dartmouth. Each house is overseen by a house professor who lives in a single-family home near the student residences.

At this time four of Dartmouth's six house communities have appointed faculty fellows: Professor of Computer Science Amit Chakrabarti (East Wheelock House), Professor of Anthropology Nathaniel Dominy (North Park House), Professor of English and Creative Writing Jodi Kim (North Park House), Senior Lecturer of French Kelly McConnell '00, Guarini '03, (Allen House), Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Edward Miller (South House), and Assistant Professor of Art History Adedoyin Teriba (South House).

Current house professors developed the Faculty Fellows program with support from the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of the Dean of Faculty . When fully launched, the program will support one or two faculty fellows each year affiliated with each house. Tenure-line professors or lecturers with multi-year contracts are eligible to serve as fellows, who receive a modest research stipend in exchange for dedicated service within each house community.

"We are excited to welcome the inaugural cohort this year, and will be putting out a broad call for new fellows for the 2024-25 academic year at the end of spring term," Craig says.

Here, each new fellow shares a few words about their motivation for joining Dartmouth's house communities. 

Amit Chakrabarti, Professor of Computer Science Faculty Fellow, East Wheelock House

I enjoy interacting with young people—the builders of our future world—in settings besides professor and student. Playing games can bring together people of all ages from diverse backgrounds. I especially love word games and am a competitive Scrabble player, having competed in world championships and U.S. national championships a few times. I hope to create a social space where Dartmouth's word game lovers can socialize over a shared passion while also being competitive and striving to improve their skills. As an immigrant who was once a student in the U.S. with no family in this country, I can relate to the experiences of many of our own immigrant students.

Nathaniel Dominy , Professor of Anthropology Faculty Fellow, North Park House 

I'd like to elevate and enliven North Park's symbolic ties to polar bears and Arctic systems. I can imagine closer connections with the Institute of Arctic Studies and the Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, as well as talks or performances by visiting scholars or artists. A student-curated exhibit at the Hood Museum of Art would be a lot of fun, too.

Jodi Kim , Professor of English and Creative Writing Faculty Fellow, North Park House

My motivation for being a faculty fellow stems from my belief in the significance of being a part of a community. Indeed, for undergraduate students in particular, having a community or set of communities is critical and can have truly transformative and lasting effects long after college. Having served as "Faculty in Residence" at my previous institution, I possess substantive experience in building "living and learning" communities. This allows me to state concretely that I find such work quite rewarding, and it drives my interest in making parallel contributions to Dartmouth's house system.

I am also motivated to be a faculty fellow because I believe my research and teaching interests in Asian American literature and culture, gender and sexuality studies, and critical race and ethnic studies will be of interest to and align well with strengthening the house communities.

Kelly McConnell '00, Guarini '03, Senior Lecturer of French Faculty Fellow, Allen House

I have always believed in the power of integrating academic and residential life. As an undergraduate student at Dartmouth, I was a member of the first "living learning community" in the Wheelock cluster. It was an opportunity to explore beyond my own primary areas of interest and meet truly exceptional authors, scholars, and artists.

I believe that university communities are stronger when students form connections with faculty and staff that extend beyond the classroom. I have loved participating in Allen House programming as a faculty member. The house system at Dartmouth is also uniquely positioned to bring together members of our professional community and their families, allowing students to form even broader connections to the communities that surround them.

Edward Miller, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Faculty Fellow, South House

My reasons for joining South House as a faculty fellow are connected to my interest in study abroad. I believe that study abroad can be a hugely valuable form of learning. I also feel that Dartmouth is unique in its approach and its commitment to study abroad. Yet I think that Dartmouth faculty and students can do more to connect our study abroad experiences to the learning that we do on campus. I am very excited to collaborate with Professor Craig and her team to experiment with new pre- and post-study abroad learning opportunities. I'm so looking forward to being part of the SoHo community!

Adedoyin Teriba , Assistant Professor of Art History Faculty Fellow, South House

Residential education, that is, one where faculty, students, and staff constantly interact with one another, is the epitome of what a university is. My contribution to realizing such a vision is currently serving as the faculty advisor to three student organizations at Dartmouth. When I taught at Vassar College, I was a house fellow of Main House. I hope to bring that experience to bear at South House, creating for instance, a regular meeting between staff, students, and faculty where we explore diverse cultures around the world through food and language. 

a research problem in sociology

  • USC Libraries
  • Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

  • The Research Problem/Question
  • Purpose of Guide
  • Design Flaws to Avoid
  • Independent and Dependent Variables
  • Glossary of Research Terms
  • Reading Research Effectively
  • Narrowing a Topic Idea
  • Broadening a Topic Idea
  • Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
  • Academic Writing Style
  • Choosing a Title
  • Making an Outline
  • Paragraph Development
  • Research Process Video Series
  • Executive Summary
  • The C.A.R.S. Model
  • Background Information
  • Theoretical Framework
  • Citation Tracking
  • Content Alert Services
  • Evaluating Sources
  • Primary Sources
  • Secondary Sources
  • Tiertiary Sources
  • Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
  • Qualitative Methods
  • Quantitative Methods
  • Insiderness
  • Using Non-Textual Elements
  • Limitations of the Study
  • Common Grammar Mistakes
  • Writing Concisely
  • Avoiding Plagiarism
  • Footnotes or Endnotes?
  • Further Readings
  • Generative AI and Writing
  • USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
  • Bibliography

A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation. A research problem does not state how to do something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value question. In the social and behavioral sciences, studies are most often framed around examining a problem that needs to be understood and resolved in order to improve society and the human condition.

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Guba, Egon G., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. “Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research . Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, editors. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 105-117; Pardede, Parlindungan. “Identifying and Formulating the Research Problem." Research in ELT: Module 4 (October 2018): 1-13; Li, Yanmei, and Sumei Zhang. "Identifying the Research Problem." In Applied Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning . (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022), pp. 13-21.

Importance of...

The purpose of a problem statement is to:

  • Introduce the reader to the importance of the topic being studied . The reader is oriented to the significance of the study.
  • Anchors the research questions, hypotheses, or assumptions to follow . It offers a concise statement about the purpose of your paper.
  • Place the topic into a particular context that defines the parameters of what is to be investigated.
  • Provide the framework for reporting the results and indicates what is probably necessary to conduct the study and explain how the findings will present this information.

In the social sciences, the research problem establishes the means by which you must answer the "So What?" question. This declarative question refers to a research problem surviving the relevancy test [the quality of a measurement procedure that provides repeatability and accuracy]. Note that answering the "So What?" question requires a commitment on your part to not only show that you have reviewed the literature, but that you have thoroughly considered the significance of the research problem and its implications applied to creating new knowledge and understanding or informing practice.

To survive the "So What" question, problem statements should possess the following attributes:

  • Clarity and precision [a well-written statement does not make sweeping generalizations and irresponsible pronouncements; it also does include unspecific determinates like "very" or "giant"],
  • Demonstrate a researchable topic or issue [i.e., feasibility of conducting the study is based upon access to information that can be effectively acquired, gathered, interpreted, synthesized, and understood],
  • Identification of what would be studied, while avoiding the use of value-laden words and terms,
  • Identification of an overarching question or small set of questions accompanied by key factors or variables,
  • Identification of key concepts and terms,
  • Articulation of the study's conceptual boundaries or parameters or limitations,
  • Some generalizability in regards to applicability and bringing results into general use,
  • Conveyance of the study's importance, benefits, and justification [i.e., regardless of the type of research, it is important to demonstrate that the research is not trivial],
  • Does not have unnecessary jargon or overly complex sentence constructions; and,
  • Conveyance of more than the mere gathering of descriptive data providing only a snapshot of the issue or phenomenon under investigation.

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Brown, Perry J., Allen Dyer, and Ross S. Whaley. "Recreation Research—So What?" Journal of Leisure Research 5 (1973): 16-24; Castellanos, Susie. Critical Writing and Thinking. The Writing Center. Dean of the College. Brown University; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova. "Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem." Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); Thesis and Purpose Statements. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Selwyn, Neil. "‘So What?’…A Question that Every Journal Article Needs to Answer." Learning, Media, and Technology 39 (2014): 1-5; Shoket, Mohd. "Research Problem: Identification and Formulation." International Journal of Research 1 (May 2014): 512-518.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Types and Content

There are four general conceptualizations of a research problem in the social sciences:

  • Casuist Research Problem -- this type of problem relates to the determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing moral dilemmas through the application of general rules and the careful distinction of special cases.
  • Difference Research Problem -- typically asks the question, “Is there a difference between two or more groups or treatments?” This type of problem statement is used when the researcher compares or contrasts two or more phenomena. This a common approach to defining a problem in the clinical social sciences or behavioral sciences.
  • Descriptive Research Problem -- typically asks the question, "what is...?" with the underlying purpose to describe the significance of a situation, state, or existence of a specific phenomenon. This problem is often associated with revealing hidden or understudied issues.
  • Relational Research Problem -- suggests a relationship of some sort between two or more variables to be investigated. The underlying purpose is to investigate specific qualities or characteristics that may be connected in some way.

A problem statement in the social sciences should contain :

  • A lead-in that helps ensure the reader will maintain interest over the study,
  • A declaration of originality [e.g., mentioning a knowledge void or a lack of clarity about a topic that will be revealed in the literature review of prior research],
  • An indication of the central focus of the study [establishing the boundaries of analysis], and
  • An explanation of the study's significance or the benefits to be derived from investigating the research problem.

NOTE :   A statement describing the research problem of your paper should not be viewed as a thesis statement that you may be familiar with from high school. Given the content listed above, a description of the research problem is usually a short paragraph in length.

II.  Sources of Problems for Investigation

The identification of a problem to study can be challenging, not because there's a lack of issues that could be investigated, but due to the challenge of formulating an academically relevant and researchable problem which is unique and does not simply duplicate the work of others. To facilitate how you might select a problem from which to build a research study, consider these sources of inspiration:

Deductions from Theory This relates to deductions made from social philosophy or generalizations embodied in life and in society that the researcher is familiar with. These deductions from human behavior are then placed within an empirical frame of reference through research. From a theory, the researcher can formulate a research problem or hypothesis stating the expected findings in certain empirical situations. The research asks the question: “What relationship between variables will be observed if theory aptly summarizes the state of affairs?” One can then design and carry out a systematic investigation to assess whether empirical data confirm or reject the hypothesis, and hence, the theory.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives Identifying a problem that forms the basis for a research study can come from academic movements and scholarship originating in disciplines outside of your primary area of study. This can be an intellectually stimulating exercise. A review of pertinent literature should include examining research from related disciplines that can reveal new avenues of exploration and analysis. An interdisciplinary approach to selecting a research problem offers an opportunity to construct a more comprehensive understanding of a very complex issue that any single discipline may be able to provide.

Interviewing Practitioners The identification of research problems about particular topics can arise from formal interviews or informal discussions with practitioners who provide insight into new directions for future research and how to make research findings more relevant to practice. Discussions with experts in the field, such as, teachers, social workers, health care providers, lawyers, business leaders, etc., offers the chance to identify practical, “real world” problems that may be understudied or ignored within academic circles. This approach also provides some practical knowledge which may help in the process of designing and conducting your study.

Personal Experience Don't undervalue your everyday experiences or encounters as worthwhile problems for investigation. Think critically about your own experiences and/or frustrations with an issue facing society or related to your community, your neighborhood, your family, or your personal life. This can be derived, for example, from deliberate observations of certain relationships for which there is no clear explanation or witnessing an event that appears harmful to a person or group or that is out of the ordinary.

Relevant Literature The selection of a research problem can be derived from a thorough review of pertinent research associated with your overall area of interest. This may reveal where gaps exist in understanding a topic or where an issue has been understudied. Research may be conducted to: 1) fill such gaps in knowledge; 2) evaluate if the methodologies employed in prior studies can be adapted to solve other problems; or, 3) determine if a similar study could be conducted in a different subject area or applied in a different context or to different study sample [i.e., different setting or different group of people]. Also, authors frequently conclude their studies by noting implications for further research; read the conclusion of pertinent studies because statements about further research can be a valuable source for identifying new problems to investigate. The fact that a researcher has identified a topic worthy of further exploration validates the fact it is worth pursuing.

III.  What Makes a Good Research Statement?

A good problem statement begins by introducing the broad area in which your research is centered, gradually leading the reader to the more specific issues you are investigating. The statement need not be lengthy, but a good research problem should incorporate the following features:

1.  Compelling Topic The problem chosen should be one that motivates you to address it but simple curiosity is not a good enough reason to pursue a research study because this does not indicate significance. The problem that you choose to explore must be important to you, but it must also be viewed as important by your readers and to a the larger academic and/or social community that could be impacted by the results of your study. 2.  Supports Multiple Perspectives The problem must be phrased in a way that avoids dichotomies and instead supports the generation and exploration of multiple perspectives. A general rule of thumb in the social sciences is that a good research problem is one that would generate a variety of viewpoints from a composite audience made up of reasonable people. 3.  Researchability This isn't a real word but it represents an important aspect of creating a good research statement. It seems a bit obvious, but you don't want to find yourself in the midst of investigating a complex research project and realize that you don't have enough prior research to draw from for your analysis. There's nothing inherently wrong with original research, but you must choose research problems that can be supported, in some way, by the resources available to you. If you are not sure if something is researchable, don't assume that it isn't if you don't find information right away--seek help from a librarian !

NOTE:   Do not confuse a research problem with a research topic. A topic is something to read and obtain information about, whereas a problem is something to be solved or framed as a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution, or explained as a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation. In short, a research topic is something to be understood; a research problem is something that needs to be investigated.

IV.  Asking Analytical Questions about the Research Problem

Research problems in the social and behavioral sciences are often analyzed around critical questions that must be investigated. These questions can be explicitly listed in the introduction [i.e., "This study addresses three research questions about women's psychological recovery from domestic abuse in multi-generational home settings..."], or, the questions are implied in the text as specific areas of study related to the research problem. Explicitly listing your research questions at the end of your introduction can help in designing a clear roadmap of what you plan to address in your study, whereas, implicitly integrating them into the text of the introduction allows you to create a more compelling narrative around the key issues under investigation. Either approach is appropriate.

The number of questions you attempt to address should be based on the complexity of the problem you are investigating and what areas of inquiry you find most critical to study. Practical considerations, such as, the length of the paper you are writing or the availability of resources to analyze the issue can also factor in how many questions to ask. In general, however, there should be no more than four research questions underpinning a single research problem.

Given this, well-developed analytical questions can focus on any of the following:

  • Highlights a genuine dilemma, area of ambiguity, or point of confusion about a topic open to interpretation by your readers;
  • Yields an answer that is unexpected and not obvious rather than inevitable and self-evident;
  • Provokes meaningful thought or discussion;
  • Raises the visibility of the key ideas or concepts that may be understudied or hidden;
  • Suggests the need for complex analysis or argument rather than a basic description or summary; and,
  • Offers a specific path of inquiry that avoids eliciting generalizations about the problem.

NOTE:   Questions of how and why concerning a research problem often require more analysis than questions about who, what, where, and when. You should still ask yourself these latter questions, however. Thinking introspectively about the who, what, where, and when of a research problem can help ensure that you have thoroughly considered all aspects of the problem under investigation and helps define the scope of the study in relation to the problem.

V.  Mistakes to Avoid

Beware of circular reasoning! Do not state the research problem as simply the absence of the thing you are suggesting. For example, if you propose the following, "The problem in this community is that there is no hospital," this only leads to a research problem where:

  • The need is for a hospital
  • The objective is to create a hospital
  • The method is to plan for building a hospital, and
  • The evaluation is to measure if there is a hospital or not.

This is an example of a research problem that fails the "So What?" test . In this example, the problem does not reveal the relevance of why you are investigating the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., perhaps there's a hospital in the community ten miles away]; it does not elucidate the significance of why one should study the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., that hospital in the community ten miles away has no emergency room]; the research problem does not offer an intellectual pathway towards adding new knowledge or clarifying prior knowledge [e.g., the county in which there is no hospital already conducted a study about the need for a hospital, but it was conducted ten years ago]; and, the problem does not offer meaningful outcomes that lead to recommendations that can be generalized for other situations or that could suggest areas for further research [e.g., the challenges of building a new hospital serves as a case study for other communities].

Alvesson, Mats and Jörgen Sandberg. “Generating Research Questions Through Problematization.” Academy of Management Review 36 (April 2011): 247-271 ; Choosing and Refining Topics. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; D'Souza, Victor S. "Use of Induction and Deduction in Research in Social Sciences: An Illustration." Journal of the Indian Law Institute 24 (1982): 655-661; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova. "Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem." Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); How to Write a Research Question. The Writing Center. George Mason University; Invention: Developing a Thesis Statement. The Reading/Writing Center. Hunter College; Problem Statements PowerPoint Presentation. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Procter, Margaret. Using Thesis Statements. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Shoket, Mohd. "Research Problem: Identification and Formulation." International Journal of Research 1 (May 2014): 512-518; Trochim, William M.K. Problem Formulation. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Thesis and Purpose Statements. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Pardede, Parlindungan. “Identifying and Formulating the Research Problem." Research in ELT: Module 4 (October 2018): 1-13; Walk, Kerry. Asking an Analytical Question. [Class handout or worksheet]. Princeton University; White, Patrick. Developing Research Questions: A Guide for Social Scientists . New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009; Li, Yanmei, and Sumei Zhang. "Identifying the Research Problem." In Applied Research Methods in Urban and Regional Planning . (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2022), pp. 13-21.

  • << Previous: Background Information
  • Next: Theoretical Framework >>
  • Last Updated: Oct 10, 2023 1:30 PM
  • URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide
  • 2.1 Approaches to Sociological Research
  • Introduction
  • 1.1 What Is Sociology?
  • 1.2 The History of Sociology
  • 1.3 Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology
  • 1.4 Why Study Sociology?

Section Summary

Section quiz, short answer, further research.

  • 2.2 Research Methods
  • 2.3 Ethical Concerns
  • 3.1 What Is Culture?
  • 3.2 Elements of Culture
  • 3.3 High, Low, Pop, Sub, Counter-culture and Cultural Change
  • 3.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Culture
  • 4.1 Types of Societies
  • 4.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Society
  • 4.3 Social Constructions of Reality
  • 5.1 Theories of Self-Development
  • 5.2 Why Socialization Matters
  • 5.3 Agents of Socialization
  • 5.4 Socialization Across the Life Course
  • 6.1 Types of Groups
  • 6.2 Group Size and Structure
  • 6.3 Formal Organizations
  • 7.1 Deviance and Control
  • 7.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Deviance and Crime
  • 7.3 Crime and the Law
  • 8.1 Technology Today
  • 8.2 Media and Technology in Society
  • 8.3 Global Implications of Media and Technology
  • 8.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Media and Technology
  • 9.1 What Is Social Stratification?
  • 9.2 Social Stratification and Mobility in the United States
  • 9.3 Global Stratification and Inequality
  • 9.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Social Stratification
  • 10.1 Global Stratification and Classification
  • 10.2 Global Wealth and Poverty
  • 10.3 Theoretical Perspectives on Global Stratification
  • 11.1 Racial, Ethnic, and Minority Groups
  • 11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
  • 11.3 Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism
  • 11.4 Intergroup Relationships
  • 11.5 Race and Ethnicity in the United States
  • 12.1 Sex, Gender, Identity, and Expression
  • 12.2 Gender and Gender Inequality
  • 12.3 Sexuality
  • 13.1 Who Are the Elderly? Aging in Society
  • 13.2 The Process of Aging
  • 13.3 Challenges Facing the Elderly
  • 13.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Aging
  • 14.1 What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?
  • 14.2 Variations in Family Life
  • 14.3 Challenges Families Face
  • 15.1 The Sociological Approach to Religion
  • 15.2 World Religions
  • 15.3 Religion in the United States
  • 16.1 Education around the World
  • 16.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Education
  • 16.3 Issues in Education
  • 17.1 Power and Authority
  • 17.2 Forms of Government
  • 17.3 Politics in the United States
  • 17.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Government and Power
  • Introduction to Work and the Economy
  • 18.1 Economic Systems
  • 18.2 Globalization and the Economy
  • 18.3 Work in the United States
  • 19.1 The Social Construction of Health
  • 19.2 Global Health
  • 19.3 Health in the United States
  • 19.4 Comparative Health and Medicine
  • 19.5 Theoretical Perspectives on Health and Medicine
  • 20.1 Demography and Population
  • 20.2 Urbanization
  • 20.3 The Environment and Society
  • Introduction to Social Movements and Social Change
  • 21.1 Collective Behavior
  • 21.2 Social Movements
  • 21.3 Social Change

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

  • Define and describe the scientific method.
  • Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research.
  • Describe the function and importance of an interpretive framework.
  • Describe the differences in accuracy, reliability and validity in a research study.

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered social patterns in the workplace that have transformed industries, in families that have enlightened family members, and in education that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the question is formed, the sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.

However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.

The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the social world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of six prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scientific scholarship.

Sociological research does not reduce knowledge to right or wrong facts. Results of studies tend to provide people with insights they did not have before—explanations of human behaviors and social practices and access to knowledge of other cultures, rituals and beliefs, or trends and attitudes.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes or results. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists often look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might also study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, social researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This does not mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in collecting and analyzing data in research studies.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963). Typically, the scientific method has 6 steps which are described below.

Step 1: Ask a Question or Find a Research Topic

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, select a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geographic location and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. Sociologists strive to frame questions that examine well-defined patterns and relationships.

In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?”

Step 2: Review the Literature/Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library, a thorough online search, and a survey of academic journals will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted, identify gaps in understanding of the topic, and position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study crime, a researcher might also sort through existing data from the court system, police database, prison information, interviews with criminals, guards, wardens, etc. It’s important to examine this information in addition to existing research to determine how these resources might be used to fill holes in existing knowledge. Reviewing existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve a research study design.

Step 3: Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an explanation for a phenomenon based on a conjecture about the relationship between the phenomenon and one or more causal factors. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. For example, a hypothesis might be in the form of an “if, then statement.” Let’s relate this to our topic of crime: If unemployment increases, then the crime rate will increase.

In scientific research, we formulate hypotheses to include an independent variables (IV) , which are the cause of the change, and a dependent variable (DV) , which is the effect , or thing that is changed. In the example above, unemployment is the independent variable and the crime rate is the dependent variable.

In a sociological study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

Taking an example from Table 12.1, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Note, however, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. A sociologist might predict that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying related two topics or variables is not enough. Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

Step 4: Design and Conduct a Study

Researchers design studies to maximize reliability , which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group or what will happen in one situation will happen in another. Cooking is a science. When you follow a recipe and measure ingredients with a cooking tool, such as a measuring cup, the same results is obtained as long as the cook follows the same recipe and uses the same type of tool. The measuring cup introduces accuracy into the process. If a person uses a less accurate tool, such as their hand, to measure ingredients rather than a cup, the same result may not be replicated. Accurate tools and methods increase reliability.

Researchers also strive for validity , which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. To produce reliable and valid results, sociologists develop an operational definition , that is, they define each concept, or variable, in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. Moreover, researchers can determine whether the experiment or method validly represent the phenomenon they intended to study.

A study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, might define “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” However, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” For the results to be replicated and gain acceptance within the broader scientific community, researchers would have to use a standard operational definition. These definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.

We will explore research methods in greater detail in the next section of this chapter.

Step 5: Draw Conclusions

After constructing the research design, sociologists collect, tabulate or categorize, and analyze data to formulate conclusions. If the analysis supports the hypothesis, researchers can discuss the implications of the results for the theory or policy solution that they were addressing. If the analysis does not support the hypothesis, researchers may consider repeating the experiment or think of ways to improve their procedure.

However, even when results contradict a sociologist’s prediction of a study’s outcome, these results still contribute to sociological understanding. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While many assume that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results may substantiate or contradict it.

Sociologists carefully keep in mind how operational definitions and research designs impact the results as they draw conclusions. Consider the concept of “increase of crime,” which might be defined as the percent increase in crime from last week to this week, as in the study of Swedish crime discussed above. Yet the data used to evaluate “increase of crime” might be limited by many factors: who commits the crime, where the crimes are committed, or what type of crime is committed. If the data is gathered for “crimes committed in Houston, Texas in zip code 77021,” then it may not be generalizable to crimes committed in rural areas outside of major cities like Houston. If data is collected about vandalism, it may not be generalizable to assault.

Step 6: Report Results

Researchers report their results at conferences and in academic journals. These results are then subjected to the scrutiny of other sociologists in the field. Before the conclusions of a study become widely accepted, the studies are often repeated in the same or different environments. In this way, sociological theories and knowledge develops as the relationships between social phenomenon are established in broader contexts and different circumstances.

Interpretive Framework

While many sociologists rely on empirical data and the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework . While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework, sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective , seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge or understanding about the human experience.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects including storytelling. This type of researcher learns through the process and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociology focuses on deconstruction of existing sociological research and theory. Informed by the work of Karl Marx, scholars known collectively as the Frankfurt School proposed that social science, as much as any academic pursuit, is embedded in the system of power constituted by the set of class, caste, race, gender, and other relationships that exist in the society. Consequently, it cannot be treated as purely objective. Critical sociologists view theories, methods, and the conclusions as serving one of two purposes: they can either legitimate and rationalize systems of social power and oppression or liberate humans from inequality and restriction on human freedom. Deconstruction can involve data collection, but the analysis of this data is not empirical or positivist.

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Want to cite, share, or modify this book? This book uses the Creative Commons Attribution License and you must attribute OpenStax.

Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction
  • Authors: Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang
  • Publisher/website: OpenStax
  • Book title: Introduction to Sociology 3e
  • Publication date: Jun 3, 2021
  • Location: Houston, Texas
  • Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction
  • Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/2-1-approaches-to-sociological-research

© Jun 27, 2023 OpenStax. Textbook content produced by OpenStax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License . The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the Creative Commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University.

Logo for BCcampus Open Publishing

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 2. Sociological Research

Learning objectives.

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research

  • Define and describe the scientific method
  • Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research
  • Understand the difference between positivist and interpretive approaches to the scientific method in sociology
  • Define what reliability and validity mean in a research study

2.2. Research Methods

  • Differentiate between four kinds of research methods: surveys, experiments, field research, and secondary data and textual analysis
  • Understand why different topics are better suited to different research approaches

2.3. Ethical Concerns

  • Understand why ethical standards exist
  • Demonstrate awareness of the Canadian Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics
  • Define value neutrality
  • Outline some of the issues of value neutrality in sociology

Introduction to Sociological Research

In the university cafeteria, you set your lunch tray down at a table, grab a chair, join a group of your classmates, and hear the start of two discussions. One person says, “It’s weird how Justin Bieber has 48 million followers on Twitter.” Another says, “Disney World is packed year round.” Those two seemingly benign statements are claims, or opinions, based on everyday observation of human behaviour. Perhaps the speakers had firsthand experience, talked to experts, conducted online research, or saw news segments on TV. In response, two conversations erupt. “I don’t see why anyone would want to go to Disney World and stand in those long lines.” “Are you kidding?! Going to Disney World is one of my favourite childhood memories.” “It’s the opposite for me with Justin Bieber. Seeing people camp out outside his hotel just to get a glimpse of him; it doesn’t make sense.” “Well, you’re not a teenage girl.” “Going to a theme park is way different than trying to see a teenage heart throb.” “But both are things people do for the same reason: they’re looking for a good time.” “If you call getting crushed by a crowd of strangers fun.”

As your classmates at the lunch table discuss what they know or believe, the two topics converge. The conversation becomes a debate. Someone compares Beliebers to Beatles fans. Someone else compares Disney World to a cruise. Students take sides, agreeing or disagreeing, as the conversation veers to topics such as crowd control, mob mentality, political protests, and group dynamics. If you contributed your expanding knowledge of sociological research to this conversation, you might make statements like these: “Justin Bieber’s fans long for an escape from the boredom of real teenage life. Beliebers join together claiming they want romance, except what they really want is a safe place to explore the confusion of teenage sexual feelings.” And this: “Mickey Mouse is a larger-than-life cartoon celebrity. Disney World is a place where families go to see what it would be like to live inside a cartoon.” You finish lunch, clear away your tray, and hurry to your next class. But you are thinking of Justin Bieber and Disney World. You have a new perspective on human behaviour and a list of questions that you want answered. That is the purpose of sociological research—to investigate and provide insights into how human societies function.

Although claims and opinions are part of sociology, sociologists use empirical evidence (that is, evidence corroborated by direct experience and/or observation) combined with the scientific method or an interpretive framework to deliver sound sociological research. They also rely on a theoretical foundation that provides an interpretive perspective through which they can make sense of scientific results. A truly scientific sociological study of the social situations up for discussion in the cafeteria would involve these prescribed steps: defining a specific question, gathering information and resources through observation, forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis in a reproducible manner, analyzing and drawing conclusions from the data, publishing the results, and anticipating further development when future researchers respond to and retest findings.

An appropriate starting point in this case might be the question “What do fans of Justin Bieber seek that drives them to follow his Twitter comments so faithfully?” As you begin to think like a sociologist, you may notice that you have tapped into your observation skills. You might assume that your observations and insights are valuable and accurate. But the results of casual observation are limited by the fact that there is no standardization—who is to say one person’s observation of an event is any more accurate than another’s? To mediate these concerns, sociologists rely on systematic research processes.

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behaviour is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behaviour as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened parents, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms. The students at that university cafeteria discussion put forth a few loosely stated opinions.

If the human behaviours around those claims were tested systematically, a student could write a report and offer the findings to fellow sociologists and the world in general. The new perspective could help people understand themselves and their neighbours and help people make better decisions about their lives. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social trends, but, as we shall see, it’s extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide. Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once a question is formed, a sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a positivist approach or an interpretive approach. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

Sociologists make use of tried-and-true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, field research, and textual analysis. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that they can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behaviour. However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behaviour. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results. This is the case for both positivist or quantitative methodologies and interpretive or qualitative methodologies. The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scholarship.

But just because sociological studies use scientific methods does not make the results less human. Sociological topics are not reduced to right or wrong facts. In this field, results of studies tend to provide people with access to knowledge they did not have before—knowledge of other cultures, knowledge of rituals and beliefs, knowledge of trends and attitudes. No matter what research approach is used, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability (how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced). Reliability increases the likelihood that what is true of one person will be true of all people in a group. Researchers also strive for validity (how well the study measures what it was designed to measure).

Returning to the Disney World topic, reliability of a study would reflect how well the resulting experience represents the average experience of theme park-goers. Validity would ensure that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study, so an exploration of adults’ interactions with costumed mascots should address that issue and not veer into other age groups’ interactions with them or into adult interactions with staff or other guests.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might study environmental influences and patterns of behaviour that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on problematic behaviours or challenging situations, researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighbourhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but to interpret and analyze the data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in but not attached to the results. Their research work is independent of their own political or social beliefs. This does not mean researchers are not critical. Nor does it mean they do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in a particular study. With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963). Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps—1) ask a question, 2) research existing sources, 3) formulate a hypothesis—described below.

Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geography and timeframe. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study.

Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms. That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition ; that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The concept is translated into an observable variable , a measure that has different values. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept.

By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. The operational definition must be valid in the sense that it is an appropriate and meaningful measure of the concept being studied. It must also be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good drivers” might be defined in many ways: those who use their turn signals, those who don’t speed, or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviours could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.

Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. It allows them to sharpen the focus of their research question and avoid duplicating previous research. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to build on previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized. To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about childrearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviours, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates a researcher and helps refine and improve a study’s design.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. It is an “educated guess” because it is not random but based on theory, observations, patterns of experience, or the existing literature. The hypothesis formulates this guess in the form of a testable proposition. However, how the hypothesis is handled differs between the positivist and interpretive approaches. Positivist methodologies are often referred to as hypothetico-deductive methodologies . A hypothesis is derived from a theoretical proposition. On the basis of the hypothesis a prediction or generalization is logically deduced. In positivist sociology, the hypothesis predicts how one form of human behaviour influences another.

Successful prediction will determine the adequacy of the hypothesis and thereby test the theoretical proposition. Typically positivist approaches operationalize variables as quantitative data ; that is, by translating a social phenomenon like “health” into a quantifiable or numerically measurable variable like “number of visits to the hospital.” This permits sociologists to formulate their predictions using mathematical language like regression formulas, to present research findings in graphs and tables, and to perform mathematical or statistical techniques to demonstrate the validity of relationships.

Variables are examined to see if there is a correlation between them. When a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable there is a correlation. This does not necessarily indicate that changes in one variable causes a change in another variable, however, just that they are associated. A key distinction here is between independent and dependent variables. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect , or thing that is changed. For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behaviour as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)? For it to become possible to speak about causation, three criteria must be satisfied:

  • There must be a relationship or correlation between the independent and dependent variables.
  • The independent variable must be prior to the dependent variable.
  • There must be no other intervening variable responsible for the causal relationship.

 Table 2.1. Examples of Dependent and Independent Variables Typically, the independent variable causes the dependent variable to change in some way.

At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define “good” grades as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points, ensuring consistency and replicability in a study. As the chart shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.

Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough: Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis. Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis are not welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns.

In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding a rewarding career. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

While many sociologists rely on the positivist hypothetico-deductive method in their research, others operate from an interpretive approach . While systematic, this approach does not follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to make generalizable predictions from quantitative variables. Instead, an interpretive framework seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, leading to in-depth knowledge. It focuses on qualitative data, or the meanings that guide people’s behaviour. Rather than relying on quantitative instruments like questionnaires or experiments, which can be artificial, the interpretive approach attempts to find ways to get closer to the informants’ lived experience and perceptions. Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. It can begin from a deductive approach, by deriving a hypothesis from theory and then seeking to confirm it through methodologies like in-depth interviews.

However, it is ideally suited to an inductive approach in which the hypothesis emerges only after a substantial period of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of approach is exploratory in that the researcher also learns as he or she proceeds, sometimes adjusting the research methods or processes midway to respond to new insights and findings as they evolve. Once the preliminary work is done, it’s time for the next research steps: designing and conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. These research methods are discussed below.

Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study—perhaps a positivist, quantitative method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher would not stroll into a crime-ridden neighbourhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally.

In the 1920s, leaders of a Chicago factory called Hawthorne Works commissioned a study to determine whether or not changing certain aspects of working conditions could increase or decrease worker productivity. Sociologists were surprised when the productivity of a test group increased when the lighting of their workspace was improved. They were even more surprised when productivity improved when the lighting of the workspace was dimmed. In fact almost every change of independent variable—lighting, breaks, work hours—resulted in an improvement of productivity. But when the study was over, productivity dropped again.

Why did this happen? In 1953, Henry A. Landsberger analyzed the study results to answer this question. He realized that employees’ productivity increased because sociologists were paying attention to them. The sociologists’ presence influenced the study results. Worker behaviours were altered not by the lighting but by the study itself. From this, sociologists learned the importance of carefully planning their roles as part of their research design (Franke and Kaul 1978). Landsberger called the workers’ response the Hawthorne effect —people changing their behaviour because they know they are being watched as part of a study.

The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known for ethical reasons. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld 1985). Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviours, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers cannot just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Ku Klux Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviours. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the study. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topic and that fit with their overall goal for the research.

In planning a study’s design, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, experiment, field research, and textual or secondary data analysis (or use of existing sources). Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used positivist research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point or another, everyone responds to some type of survey. The Statistics Canada census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Customers also fill out questionnaires at stores or promotional events, responding to questions such as “How did you hear about the event?” and “Were the staff helpful?” You’ve probably picked up the phone and heard a caller ask you to participate in a political poll or similar type of survey: “Do you eat hot dogs? If yes, how many per month?” Not all surveys would be considered sociological research. Marketing polls help companies refine marketing goals and strategies; they are generally not conducted as part of a scientific study, meaning they are not designed to test a hypothesis or to contribute knowledge to the field of sociology. The results are not published in a refereed scholarly journal, where design, methodology, results, and analyses are vetted.

Often, polls on TV do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or Canadian Idol represent the opinions of fans but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the BBM Ratings, which determine the popularity of radio and television programming in Canada through scientific market research. Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think—or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track attitudes and opinions, political preferences, reported individual behaviours (such as sleeping, driving, or texting habits), or factual information such as employment status, income, and education levels. A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as university athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes.

Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample : that is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples represent the population as a whole. For instance, an Ipsos Reid poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 2,000 or 10,000 people. However the validity of surveys can be threatened when part of the population is inadvertently excluded from the sample (e.g., telephone surveys that rely on land lines exclude people that use only cell phones) or when there is a low response rate. After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask questions and record responses.

It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study upfront. If they agree to participate, researchers thank subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researcher presents the subjects with an instrument (a means of gathering the information). A common instrument is a structured questionnaire, in which subjects answer a series of set questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question.

This kind of quantitative data —research collected in numerical form that can be counted—is easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” answers or tabulate the scales of “strongly agree,” “agree,” disagree,” etc. responses and chart them into percentages. This is also their chief drawback however: their artificiality. In real life, there are rarely any unambiguously yes-or-no answers. Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers—beyond “yes,” “no,” “agree,” “strongly agree,” or an option next to a checkbox. In those cases, the answers are subjective, varying from person to person. How do you plan to use your university education? Why do you follow Justin Bieber around the country and attend every concert? Those types of questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to write those answers will convey personal information about religious beliefs, political views, and morals.

Some topics that reflect internal thought are impossible to observe directly and are difficult to discuss honestly in a public forum. People are more likely to share honest answers if they can respond to questions anonymously. This type of information is qualitative data —results that are subjective and often based on what is seen in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising. The benefit of written opinions, though, is the wealth of material that they provide.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and is a way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. However, participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly. Questions such as “How did society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. And, obviously, a sociological interview is not an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust, from empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and from listening without judgment.

Experiments

You’ve probably tested personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When you test the theory, your results either prove or disprove your hypothesis. One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they investigate relationships to test a hypothesis—a scientific approach. There are two main types of experiments: lab-based experiments and natural or field experiments.

In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that perhaps more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher. As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result.

To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables. Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group . The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. This is similar to pharmaceutical drug trials in which the experimental group is given the test drug and the control group is given a placebo or sugar pill. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring while the control group does not receive tutoring. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for example.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps one of the most famous sociological experiments ever conducted. In 1971, 24 healthy, middle-class male university students were selected to take part in a simulated jail environment to examine the effects of social setting and social roles on individual psychology and behaviour. They were randomly divided into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. The prisoner subjects were arrested at home and transported blindfolded to the simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building on the campus of Stanford University. Within a day of arriving the prisoners and the guards began to display signs of trauma and sadism respectively. After some prisoners revolted by blockading themselves in their cells, the guards resorted to using increasingly humiliating and degrading tactics to control the prisoners through psychological manipulation. The experiment had to be abandoned after only six days because the abuse had grown out of hand (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973). While the insights into the social dynamics of authoritarianism it generated were fascinating, the Stanford Prison Experiment also serves as an example of the ethical issues that emerge when experimenting on human subjects.

Making Connections: Sociological Research

An experiment in action: mincome.

A real-life example will help illustrate the experimental process in sociology. Between 1974 and 1979 an experiment was conducted in the small town of Dauphin, Manitoba (the “garden capital of Manitoba”). Each family received a modest monthly guaranteed income—a “mincome”—equivalent to a maximum of 60 percent of the “low-income cut-off figure” (a Statistics Canada measure of poverty, which varies with family size). The income was 50 cents per dollar less for families who had incomes from other sources. Families earning over a certain income level did not receive mincome. Families that were already collecting welfare or unemployment insurance were also excluded. The test families in Dauphin were compared with control groups in other rural Manitoba communities on a range of indicators such as number of hours worked per week, school performance, high school dropout rates, and hospital visits (Forget 2011). A guaranteed annual income was seen at the time as a less costly, less bureaucratic public alternative for addressing poverty than the existing employment insurance and welfare programs. Today it is an active proposal being considered in Switzerland (Lowrey 2013).

Intuitively, it seems logical that lack of income is the cause of poverty and poverty-related issues. One of the main concerns, however, was whether a guaranteed income would create a disincentive to work. The concept appears to challenge the principles of the Protestant work ethic (see the discussion of Max Weber in Chapter 1). The study did find very small decreases in hours worked per week: about 1 percent for men, 3 percent for wives, and 5 percent for unmarried women. Forget (2011) argues this was because the income provided an opportunity for people to spend more time with family and school, especially for young mothers and teenage girls. There were also significant social benefits from the experiment, including better test scores in school, lower high school dropout rates, fewer visits to hospital, fewer accidents and injuries, and fewer mental health issues.

Ironically, due to lack of guaranteed funding (and lack of political interest by the late 1970s), the data and results of the study were not analyzed or published until 2011. The data were archived and sat gathering dust in boxes. The mincome experiment demonstrated the benefits that even a modest guaranteed annual income supplement could have on health and social outcomes in communities. People seem to live healthier lives and get a better education when they do not need to worry about poverty. In her summary of the research, Forget notes that the impact of the income supplement was surprisingly large given that at any one time only about a third of the families were receiving the income and, for some families, the income amount would have been very small. The income benefit was largest for low-income working families but the research showed that the entire community profited. The improvement in overall health outcomes for the community suggest that a guaranteed income would also result in savings for the public health system.

Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive approach rather than to positivist approaches. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In fieldwork, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element. The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people, gathering data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it’s a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or a care home, a hospital, airport, mall, or beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting , the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviours in that setting. Fieldwork is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for developing causal explanations of why they behave that way. From the small size of the groups studied in fieldwork, it is difficult to make predictions or generalizations to a larger population. Similarly, there are difficulties in gaining an objective distance from research subjects. It is difficult to know whether another researcher would see the same things or record the same data. We will look at three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

When is sharing not such a good idea.

Choosing a research methodology depends on a number of factors, including the purpose of the research and the audience for whom the research is intended. If we consider the type of research that might go into producing a government policy document on the effectiveness of safe injection sites for reducing the public health risks of intravenous drug use, we would expect public administrators to want “hard” (i.e., quantitative) evidence of high reliability to help them make a policy decision. The most reliable data would come from an experimental or quasi-experimental research model in which a control group can be compared with an experimental group using quantitative measures.

This approach has been used by researchers studying InSite in Vancouver (Marshall et al. 2011; Wood et al. 2006). InSite is a supervised safe-injection site where heroin addicts and other intravenous drug users can go to inject drugs in a safe, clean environment. Clean needles are provided and health care professionals are on hand to intervene in the case of overdose or other medical emergency. It is a controversial program both because heroin use is against the law (the facility operates through a federal ministerial exemption) and because the heroin users are not obliged to quit using or seek therapy. To assess the effectiveness of the program, researchers compared the risky usage of drugs in populations before and after the opening of the facility and geographically near and distant to the facility. The results from the studies have shown that InSite has reduced both deaths from overdose and risky behaviours, such as the sharing of needles, without increasing the levels of crime associated with drug use and addiction.

On the other hand, if the research question is more exploratory (for example, trying to discern the reasons why individuals in the crack smoking subculture engage in the risky activity of sharing pipes), the more nuanced approach of fieldwork is more appropriate. The research would need to focus on the subcultural context, rituals, and meaning of sharing pipes, and why these phenomena override known health concerns. Graduate student Andrew Ivsins at the University of Victoria studied the practice of sharing pipes among 13 habitual users of crack cocaine in Victoria, B.C. (Ivsins 2010). He met crack smokers in their typical setting downtown and used an unstructured interview method to try to draw out the informal norms that lead to sharing pipes. One factor he discovered was the bond that formed between friends or intimate partners when they shared a pipe. He also discovered that there was an elaborate subcultural etiquette of pipe use that revolved around the benefit of getting the crack resin smokers left behind. Both of these motives tended to outweigh the recognized health risks of sharing pipes (such as hepatitis) in the decision making of the users. This type of research was valuable in illuminating the unknown subcultural norms of crack use that could still come into play in a harm reduction strategy such as distributing safe crack kits to addicts.

Participant Observation

In 2000, a comic writer named Rodney Rothman wanted an insider’s view of white-collar work. He slipped into the sterile, high-rise offices of a New York “dot com” agency. Every day for two weeks, he pretended to work there. His main purpose was simply to see if anyone would notice him or challenge his presence. No one did. The receptionist greeted him. The employees smiled and said good morning. Rothman was accepted as part of the team. He even went so far as to claim a desk, inform the receptionist of his whereabouts, and attend a meeting. He published an article about his experience in The New Yorker called “My Fake Job” (2000). Later, he was discredited for allegedly fabricating some details of the story and The New Yorker issued an apology. However, Rothman’s entertaining article still offered fascinating descriptions of the inside workings of a “dot com” company and exemplified the lengths to which a sociologist will go to uncover material.

Rothman had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers study a naturally occurring social activity without imposing artificial or intrusive research devices, like fixed questionnaire questions, onto the situation. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behaviour. Researchers temporarily put themselves into “native” roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, or live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers might have a question: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” or “What is it like to be homeless?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside. Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results. In a study of small-town America conducted by sociological researchers John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, the team altered their purpose as they gathered data. They initially planned to focus their study on the role of religion in American towns. As they gathered observations, they realized that the effect of industrialization and urbanization was the more relevant topic of this social group. The Lynds did not change their methods, but they revised their purpose. This shaped the structure of Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture , their published results (Lynd and Lynd 1959).

The Lynds were upfront about their mission. The townspeople of Muncie, Indiana, knew why the researchers were in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviours of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behaviour. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job. Once inside a group, some researchers spend months or even years pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book, describing what he or she witnessed and experienced.

This type of research is what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted for her book Nickel and Dimed . One day over lunch with her editor, as the story goes, Ehrenreich mentioned an idea. How can people exist on minimum-wage work? How do low-income workers get by? she wondered. Someone should do a study. To her surprise, her editor responded, Why don’t you do it? That is how Ehrenreich found herself joining the ranks of the low-wage service sector. For several months, she left her comfortable home and lived and worked among people who lacked, for the most part, higher education and marketable job skills. Undercover, she applied for and worked minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a retail chain employee. During her participant observation, she used only her income from those jobs to pay for food, clothing, transportation, and shelter. She discovered the obvious: that it’s almost impossible to get by on minimum wage work. She also experienced and observed attitudes many middle- and upper-class people never think about. She witnessed firsthand the treatment of service work employees. She saw the extreme measures people take to make ends meet and to survive. She described fellow employees who held two or three jobs, worked seven days a week, lived in cars, could not pay to treat chronic health conditions, got randomly fired, submitted to drug tests, and moved in and out of homeless shelters. She brought aspects of that life to light, describing difficult working conditions and the poor treatment that low-wage workers suffer.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Researchers seek to immerse themselves in the life of a bounded group, by living and working among them. Often ethnography involves participant observation, but the focus is the systematic observation of an entire community.

The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small Newfoundland fishing town, an Inuit community, a village in Thailand, a Buddhist monastery, a private boarding school, or Disney World. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain ways and respect certain cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible, and keeping careful notes on his or her observations.

A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might learn the language, watch the way villagers go about their daily lives, ask individuals about the meaning of different aspects of activity, study the group’s cosmology and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat centre, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record how people experience spirituality in this setting, and collate the material into results.

The Feminist Perspective: Institutional Ethnography

Dorothy Smith elaborated on traditional ethnography to develop what she calls institutional ethnography (2005). In modern society the practices of everyday life in any particular local setting are often organized at a level that goes beyond what an ethnographer might observe directly. Everyday life is structured by “extralocal,” institutional forms; that is, by the practices of institutions that act upon people from a distance. It might be possible to conduct ethnographic research on the experience of domestic abuse by living in a women’s shelter and directly observing and interviewing victims to see how they form an understanding of their situation. However, to the degree that the women are seeking redress through the criminal justice system a crucial element of the situation would be missing. In order to activate a response from the police or the courts, a set of standard legal procedures must be followed, a “case file” must be opened, legally actionable evidence must be established, forms filled out, etc. All of this allows criminal justice agencies to organize and coordinate the response.

The urgent and immediate experience of the domestic abuse victims needs to be translated into a format that enables distant authorities to take action. Often this is a frustrating and mysterious process in which the immediate needs of individuals are neglected so that needs of institutional processes are met. Therefore to research the situation of domestic abuse victims, an ethnography needs to somehow operate at two levels: the close examination of the local experience of particular women and the simultaneous examination of the extralocal, institutional world through which their world is organized. In order to accomplish this, institutional ethnography focuses on the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through “textually mediated” practices: the use of written documents, standardized bureaucratic categories, and formalized relationships (Smith 1990).

Institutional paperwork translates the specific details of locally lived experience into a standardized format that enables institutions to apply the institution’s understandings, regulations, and operations in different local contexts. The study of these textual practices reveal otherwise inaccessible processes that formal organizations depend on: their formality, their organized character, and their ongoing methods of coordination, etc. An institutional ethnography often begins by following the paper trail that emerges when people interact with institutions: how does a person formulate a narrative about what has happened to him or her in a way that the institution will recognize? How is it translated into the abstract categories on a form or screen that enable an institutional response to be initiated? What is preserved in the translation to paperwork and what is lost? Where do the forms go next? What series of “processing interchanges” take place between different departments or agencies through the circulation of paperwork? How is the paperwork modified and made actionable through this process (e.g., an incident report, warrant request, motion for continuance)?

Smith’s insight is that the shift from the locally lived experience of individuals to the extralocal world of institutions is nothing short of a radical metaphysical shift in worldview. In institutional worlds, meanings are detached from directly lived processes and reconstituted in an organizational time, space, and consciousness that is fundamentally different from their original reference point. For example, the crisis that has led to a loss of employment becomes a set of anonymous criteria that determines one’s eligibility for Employment Insurance.

The unique life of a disabled child becomes a checklist that determines the content of an “individual education program” in the school system, which in turn determines whether funding will be provided for special aid assistants or therapeutic programs. Institutions put together a picture of what has occurred that is not at all the same as what was lived. The ubiquitous but obscure mechanism by which this is accomplished is textually mediated communication . The goal of institutional ethnography therefore is to making “documents or texts visible as constituents of social relations” (Smith 1990). Institutional ethnography is very useful as a critical research strategy. It is an analysis that gives grassroots organizations, or those excluded from the circles of institutional power, a detailed knowledge of how the administrative apparatuses actually work. This type of research enables more effective actions and strategies for change to be pursued.

The Case Study

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records, conducts interviews, engages in direct observation, and even participant observation, if possible. Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim. However, a major criticism of the case study as a method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person, since one person does not verify a pattern. This is why most sociologists do not use case studies as a primary research method.

However, case studies are useful when the single case is unique. In these instances, a single case study can add tremendous knowledge to a certain discipline. For example, a feral child, also called “wild child,” is one who grows up isolated from human beings. Feral children grow up without social contact and language, elements crucial to a “civilized” child’s development. These children mimic the behaviours and movements of animals, and often invent their own language. There are only about 100 cases of “feral children” in the world. As you may imagine, a feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers. Feral children provide unique information about child development because they have grown up outside of the parameters of “normal” child development. And since there are very few feral children, the case study is the most appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the subject. At age three, a Ukrainian girl named Oxana Malaya suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with dogs, eating raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a neighbour called authorities and reported seeing a girl who ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into society, where she was cared for and taught some human behaviours, but she never became fully socialized. She has been designated as unable to support herself and now lives in a mental institution (Grice 2006). Case studies like this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not be collectable by any other method.

Secondary Data or Textual Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data or textual analysis . Secondary data do not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are drawn from the already-completed work of other researchers. Sociologists might study texts written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, or magazines from any period in history. Using available information not only saves time and money, but it can add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behaviour and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the Internet, or Facebook.

One methodology that sociologists employ with secondary data is content analysis. Content analysis is a quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content (i.e., a variable) that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. For example, Gilens (1996) wanted to find out why survey research shows that the American public substantially exaggerates the percentage of African Americans among the poor. He examined whether media representations influence public perceptions and did a content analysis of photographs of poor people in American news magazines. He coded and then systematically recorded incidences of three variables: (1) Race: white, black, indeterminate; (2) Employed: working, not working; and (3) Age. Gilens discovered that not only were African Americans markedly overrepresented in news magazine photographs of poverty, but that the photos also tended to underrepresent “sympathetic” subgroups of the poor—the elderly and working poor—while overrepresenting less sympathetic groups—unemployed, working age adults. Gilens concluded that by providing a distorted representation of poverty, U.S. news magazines “reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks as mired in poverty and contribute to the belief that poverty is primarily a ‘black problem’” (1996).

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like Statistics Canada or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic that measures inequality of incomes might be useful for studying who benefited and who lost as a result of the 2008 recession; a demographic profile of different immigrant groups might be compared with data on unemployment to examine the reasons why immigration settlement programs are more effective for some communities than for others. One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is nonreactive (or unobtrusive) research, meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process. Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher needs to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. In some cases there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy, for example, to count how many drunk drivers are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it’s possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their GED later.

Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not include the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the salaries paid to professors at universities is often published. But the separate figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they have been teaching. In his research, sociologist Richard Sennett uses secondary data to shed light on current trends. In The Craftsman (2008), he studied the human desire to perform quality work, from carpentry to computer programming. He studied the line between craftsmanship and skilled manual labour. He also studied changes in attitudes toward craftsmanship that occurred not only during and after the Industrial Revolution, but also in ancient times. Obviously, he could not have firsthand knowledge of periods of ancient history; he had to rely on secondary data for part of his study. When conducting secondary data or textual analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research for their book Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture in the 1920s. Attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal the truth about small American communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s attitudes and values.

Sociologists conduct studies to shed light on human behaviours. Knowledge is a powerful tool that can be used toward positive change. And while a sociologist’s goal is often simply to uncover knowledge rather than to spur action, many people use sociological studies to help improve people’s lives. In that sense, conducting a sociological study comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Like any researchers, sociologists must consider their ethical obligation to avoid harming subjects or groups while conducting their research. The Canadian Sociological Association, or CSA, is the major professional organization of sociologists in Canada. The CSA is a great resource for students of sociology as well.

The CSA maintains a code of ethics —formal guidelines for conducting sociological research—consisting of principles and ethical standards to be used in the discipline. It also describes procedures for filing, investigating, and resolving complaints of unethical conduct. These are in line with the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (2010) , which applies to any research with human subjects funded by one of the three federal research agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Practising sociologists and sociology students have a lot to consider. Some of the guidelines state that researchers must try to be skillful and fair-minded in their work, especially as it relates to their human subjects. Researchers must obtain participants’ informed consent, and inform subjects of the responsibilities and risks of research before they agree to participate. During a study, sociologists must ensure the safety of participants and immediately stop work if a subject becomes potentially endangered on any level. Researchers are required to protect the privacy of research participants whenever possible. Even if pressured by authorities, such as police or courts, researchers are not ethically allowed to release confidential information. Researchers must make results available to other sociologists, must make public all sources of financial support, and must not accept funding from any organization that might cause a conflict of interest or seek to influence the research results for its own purposes. The CSA’s ethical considerations shape not only the study but also the publication of results.

Pioneer German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) identified another crucial ethical concern. Weber understood that personal values could distort the framework for disclosing study results. While he accepted that some aspects of research design might be influenced by personal values, he declared it was entirely inappropriate to allow personal values to shape the interpretation of the responses. Sociologists, he stated, must establish value neutrality , a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment, during the course of a study and in publishing results (1949). Sociologists are obligated to disclose research findings without omitting or distorting significant data. Value neutrality does not mean having no opinions. It means striving to overcome personal biases, particularly subconscious biases, when analyzing data. It means avoiding skewing data in order to match a predetermined outcome that aligns with a particular agenda, such as a political or moral point of view. Investigators are ethically obligated to report results, even when they contradict personal views, predicted outcomes, or widely accepted beliefs. Is value neutrality possible?

Many sociologists believe it is impossible to set aside personal values and retain complete objectivity. Individuals inevitably see the world from a partial perspective. Their interests are central to the types of topics they choose, the types of questions they ask, the way they frame their research and the research methodologies they select to pursue it. Moreover, facts, however objective, do not exist in a void. As we noted in Chapter 1, Jürgen Habermas (1972) argues that sociological research has built-in interests quite apart from the personal biases of individual researchers. Positivist sociology has an interest in pursuing types of knowledge that are useful for controlling and administering social life. Interpretive sociology has an interest in pursuing types of knowledge that promote greater mutual understanding and the possibility of consensus among members of society. Critical sociology has an interest in types of knowledge that enable emancipation from power relations and forms of domination in society. In Habermas’ view, sociological knowledge is not disinterested knowledge. This does not discredit the results of sociological research but allows readers to take into account the perspective of the research when judging the validity and applicability of its outcomes.

case study in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual

code of ethics a set of guidelines that the Canadian Sociological Association has established to foster ethical research and professionally responsible scholarship in sociology

content analysis a quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output

control group an experimental group that is not exposed to the independent variable

correlation when a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable, but does not necessarily indicate causation

d ependent variable variable changed by another variable

empirical evidence evidence corroborated by direct experience and/or observation

ethnography observing a complete social setting and all that it entails

experiment the testing of a hypothesis under controlled conditions

field research gathering data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey

Hawthorne effect when study subjects behave in a certain manner due to their awareness of being observed by a researcher

hypothesis an educated guess with predicted outcomes about the relationship between two or more variables hypothetico-deductive methodologies methodologies based on deducing a prediction from a hypothesis and testing the  validity of the hypothesis by whether it correctly predicts observations

independent variable  variable that causes change in a dependent variable

inductive approach methodologies that derive a general statement from a series of empirical observations

institutional ethnography the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through institutional, textually mediated practices

interpretive approach a sociological research approach that seeks in-depth understanding of a topic or subject through observation or interaction

interview  a one-on-one conversation between a researcher and a subject

literature review a scholarly research step that entails identifying and studying all existing studies on a topic to create a basis for new research

nonreactive  unobtrusive research that does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours

operational definitions specific explanations of abstract concepts that a researcher plans to study

participant observation immersion by a researcher in a group or social setting in order to make observations from an “insider” perspective

population a defined group serving as the subject of a study

positivist approach a research approach based on the natural science model of knowledge utilizing a hypothetico-deductive formulation of the research question and quantitative data

primary data data collected directly from firsthand experience

qualitative data  information based on interpretations of meaning

quantitative data information from research collected in numerical form that can be counted

random sample a study’s participants being randomly selected to serve as a representation of a larger population reliability a measure of a study’s consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced research design a detailed, systematic method for conducting research and obtaining data

sample small, manageable number of subjects that represent the population

scientific method a systematic research method that involves asking a question, researching existing sources, forming a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, and drawing conclusions

secondary data analysis using data collected by others but applying new interpretations

surveys data collections from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire

textually mediated communication institutional forms of communication that rely on written documents, texts, and paperwork

validity the degree to which a sociological measure accurately reflects the topic of study

value neutrality a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment during the course of a study and in publishing results

variable a characteristic or measure of a social phenomenon that can take different values

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research Using the scientific method, a researcher conducts a study in five phases: asking a question, researching existing sources, formulating a hypothesis, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. The scientific method is useful in that it provides a clear method of organizing a study. Some sociologists conduct scientific research through a positivist framework utilizing a hypothetico-deductive formulation of the research question. Other sociologists conduct scientific research by employing an interpretive framework that is often inductive in nature. Scientific sociological studies often observe relationships between variables. Researchers study how one variable changes another. Prior to conducting a study, researchers are careful to apply operational definitions to their terms and to establish dependent and independent variables.

2.2. Research Methods Sociological research is a fairly complex process. As you can see, a lot goes into even a simple research design. There are many steps and much to consider when collecting data on human behaviour, as well as in interpreting and analyzing data in order to form conclusive results. Sociologists use scientific methods for good reason. The scientific method provides a system of organization that helps researchers plan and conduct the study while ensuring that data and results are reliable, valid, and objective. The many methods available to researchers—including experiments, surveys, field studies, and secondary data analysis—all come with advantages and disadvantages. The strength of a study can depend on the choice and implementation of the appropriate method of gathering research. Depending on the topic, a study might use a single method or a combination of methods. It is important to plan a research design before undertaking a study. The information gathered may in itself be surprising, and the study design should provide a solid framework in which to analyze predicted and unpredicted data.

Table 2.2. Main Sociological Research Methods. Sociological research methods have advantages and disadvantages.

2.3. Ethical Concerns Sociologists and sociology students must take ethical responsibility for any study they conduct. They must first and foremost guarantee the safety of their participants. Whenever possible, they must ensure that participants have been fully informed before consenting to be part of a study. The CSA (Canadian Sociological Association) maintains ethical guidelines that sociologists must take into account as they conduct research. The guidelines address conducting studies, properly using existing sources, accepting funding, and publishing results. Sociologists must try to maintain value neutrality. They must gather and analyze data objectively, setting aside their personal preferences, beliefs, and opinions. They must report findings accurately, even if they contradict personal convictions.

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research 1. A measurement is considered ______­ if it actually measures what it is intended to measure, according to the topic of the study.

  • sociological
  • quantitative

2. Sociological studies test relationships in which change in one ______ causes change in another.

  • test subject
  • operational definition

3. In a study, a group of 10-year-old boys are fed doughnuts every morning for a week and then weighed to see how much weight they gained. Which factor is the dependent variable?

  • the doughnuts
  • the duration of a week
  • the weight gained

4. Which statement provides the best operational definition of “childhood obesity”?

  • children who eat unhealthy foods and spend too much time watching television and playing video games
  • a distressing trend that can lead to health issues including type 2 diabetes and heart disease
  • body weight at least 20 percent higher than a healthy weight for a child of that height
  • the tendency of children today to weigh more than children of earlier generations

2.2. Research Methods 5. Which materials are considered secondary data?

  • photos and letters given to you by another person
  • books and articles written by other authors about their studies
  • information that you have gathered and now have included in your results
  • responses from participants whom you both surveyed and interviewed

6. What method did Andrew Ivsins use to study crack users in Victoria?

  • field research
  • content analysis

7. Why is choosing a random sample an effective way to select participants?

  • Participants do not know they are part of a study
  • The researcher has no control over who is in the study
  • It is larger than an ordinary sample
  • Everyone has the same chance of being part of the study

8. What research method did John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd mainly use in their Middletown study?

  • secondary data
  • participant observation

9. Which research approach is best suited to the positivist approach?

  • questionnaire
  • ethnography
  • secondary data analysis

10. The main difference between ethnography and other types of participant observation is:

  • ethnography isn’t based on hypothesis testing
  • ethnography subjects are unaware they’re being studied
  • ethnographic studies always involve minority ethnic groups
  • there is no difference

11. Which best describes the results of a case study?

  • it produces more reliable results than other methods because of its depth
  • its results are not generally applicable
  • it relies solely on secondary data analysis
  • all of the above

12. Using secondary data is considered an unobtrusive or ________ research method.

  • nonreactive
  • nonparticipatory
  • nonrestrictive
  • nonconfrontive

2.3. Ethical Concerns 13. Which statement illustrates value neutrality?

  • Obesity in children is obviously a result of parental neglect and, therefore, schools should take a greater role to prevent it.
  • In 2003, states like Arkansas adopted laws requiring elementary schools to remove soft drink vending machines from schools.
  • Merely restricting children’s access to junk food at school is not enough to prevent obesity.
  • Physical activity and healthy eating are a fundamental part of a child’s education.

14. Which person or organization defined the concept of value neutrality?

  • Institutional Review Board (IRB)
  • Peter Rossi
  • Canadian Sociological Association (CSA)

15. To study the effects of fast food on lifestyle, health, and culture, from which group would a researcher ethically be unable to accept funding?

  • a fast-food restaurant
  • a nonprofit health organization
  • a private hospital
  • a governmental agency like Health and Social Services
  • Write down the first three steps of the scientific method. Think of a broad topic that you are interested in and which would make a good sociological study—for example, ethnic diversity in a college, homecoming rituals, athletic scholarships, or teen driving. Now, take that topic through the first steps of the process. For each step, write a few sentences or a paragraph: 1) Ask a question about the topic. 2) Do some research and write down the titles of some articles or books you’d want to read about the topic. 3) Formulate a hypothesis.

2.2.Research Methods

  • What type of data do surveys gather? For what topics would surveys be the best research method? What drawbacks might you expect to encounter when using a survey? To explore further, ask a research question and write a hypothesis. Then create a survey of about six questions relevant to the topic. Provide a rationale for each question. Now define your population and create a plan for recruiting a random sample and administering the survey.
  • Imagine you are about to do field research in a specific place for a set time. Instead of thinking about the topic of study itself, consider how you, as the researcher, will have to prepare for the study. What personal, social, and physical sacrifices will you have to make? How will you manage your personal effects? What organizational equipment and systems will you need to collect the data?
  • Create a brief research design about a topic in which you are passionately interested. Now write a letter to a philanthropic or grant organization requesting funding for your study. How can you describe the project in a convincing yet realistic and objective way? Explain how the results of your study will be a relevant contribution to the body of sociological work already in existence.
  • Why do you think the CSA crafted such a detailed set of ethical principles? What type of study could put human participants at risk? Think of some examples of studies that might be harmful. Do you think that, in the name of sociology, some researchers might be tempted to cross boundaries that threaten human rights? Why?
  • Would you willingly participate in a sociological study that could potentially put your health and safety at risk, but had the potential to help thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people? For example, would you participate in a study of a new drug that could cure diabetes or cancer, even if it meant great inconvenience and physical discomfort for you or possible permanent damage?

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research For a historical perspective on the scientific method in sociology, read “The Elements of Scientific Method in Sociology” by F. Stuart Chapin (1914) in the American Journal of Sociology : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Method-in-Sociology

2.2. Research Methods For information on current real-world sociology experiments, visit: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Sociology-Experiments

2.3. Ethical Concerns Founded in 1966, the CSA is a nonprofit organization located in Montreal, Quebec, with a membership of 900 researchers, faculty members, students, and practitioners of sociology. Its mission is to promote “research, publication and teaching in Sociology in Canada.” Learn more about this organization at http://www.csa-scs.ca/ .

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research Merton, Robert. 1968 [1949]. Social Theory and Social Structure . New York: Free Press.

2.2. Research Methods Forget, Evelyn. 2011. “The Town with no Poverty: Using Health Administration Data to Revisit Outcomes of a Canadian Guaranteed Annual Income Field Experiement.” Canadian Public Policy . 37(3): 282-305.

Franke, Richard and James Kaul. 1978. “The Hawthorne Experiments: First Statistical Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 43(5):632–643.

Gilens, Martin. 1996. “Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American News Media.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 60(4):515–541. Grice, Elizabeth. 2006. “Cry of an Enfant Sauvage.” The Telegraph . Retrieved July 20, 2011 ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3653890/Cry-of-an-enfant-sauvage.html ).

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., and Zimbardo, P. G. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology  1:69–97.

Ivsins, A.K. 2010. “’Got a pipe?’ The social dimensions and functions of crack pipe sharing among crack users in Victoria, BC.” MA thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria. Retrieved February 14, 2014 ( http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/bitstream/handle/1828/3044/Full%20thesis%20Ivsins_CPS.2010_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1 )

Lowrey, Annie. 2013. “Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive.” The  New York Times Magazine. Retrieved February 17, 2014 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 ).

Lynd, Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1959. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture . San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.

Lynd, Staughton. 2005. “Making Middleton.” Indiana Magazine of History 101(3):226–238.

Marshall, B.D.L., M.J. Milloy,  E. Wood, J.S.G.  Montaner,  and T. Kerr. 2011. “Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America’s first medically supervised safer injecting facility: A retrospective population-based study.” Lancet  377(9775):1429–1437.

Rothman, Rodney. 2000. “My Fake Job.” The New Yorker , November 27, 120.

Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Retrieved July 18, 2011 ( http://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/General.aspx?pageid=40 ).

Smith, Dorothy. 1990. “Textually Mediated Social Organization” Pp. 209–234 in Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. London: Routledge.

Smith, Dorothy. 2005. Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. Toronto: Altamira Press.

Sonnenfeld, Jeffery A. 1985. “Shedding Light on the Hawthorne Studies.” Journal of Occupational Behavior 6:125.

Wood, E., M.W. Tyndall, J.S. Montaner, and T. Kerr. 2006. “Summary of findings from the evaluation of a pilot medically supervised safer injecting facility.” Canadian Medical Association Journal  175(11):1399–1404.

2.3. Ethical Concerns Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2010.  Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans . Retrieved February 15, 2014 ( http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/pdf/eng/tcps2/TCPS_2_FINAL_Web.pdf ).

Canadian Sociological Association. 2012. Statement of Professional Ethics . Retrieved February 15, 2014 ( http://www.csa-scs.ca/files/www/csa/documents/codeofethics/2012Ethics.pdf ).

Habermas, Jürgen. 1972. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press

Weber, Max. 1949. Methodology of the Social Sciences . Translated by H. Shils and E. Finch. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Solutions to Section Quiz

1. C | 2. C | 3. D | 4. C | 5. B | 6. C | 7. D | 8. C | 9. A | 10. A | 11. B | 12. A | 13. B | 14. D | 15. A

Image Attributions

Figure 2.3.  Didn’t they abolish the mandatory census? Then what’s this? by  Khosrow Ebrahimpour ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/xosrow/5685345306/in/photolist-9EoT5W-ow4tdu-oeGG4m-oeMEcK-oy2jM2-ovJC8w-oePSRQ-9J2V24-of1Hnu-of243u-of2K2B-of2FHn-owiBSA-owtQN3-of1Ktd-oitLSC-oeVJte-oep8KX-ovEz8w-oeohhF-oew5Xb-oewdWN-owavju-oeMEnV-oweLcN-ovEPGG-ovAQUX-oeo2eL-oeo3Fd-oeoqxh-oxCKnv-ovEzA5-oewFHa-ovHRSz-ow8QtY-oeQY6Y-oeZReR-oeQmHw-oeKXid-oeQLKa-oy6fNT-ow4sVT-oeQMQq-oeQPPr-oeQYbL-ow8hS1-ow4n8v-owiPKS-oeQF41-oeiH5z ) used under CC BY 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Figure 2.4. Dauphin Canadian Northern Railway Station by Bobak Ha’Eri ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2009-0520-TrainStation-Dauphin.jpg ) used under CC BY 3.0 license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en )

Figure 2.5.  Punk Band by Patrick ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/lordkhan/181561343/in/photostream/ ) used under CC BY 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Figure 2.6.  Crack Cocaine Smokers in Vancouver Alleyway ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crack_Cocaine_Smokers_in_Vancouver_Alleyway.jpg ) is in the public domain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain )

Figure 2.8.  Muncie, Indiana High School: 1917 by Don O’Brien ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/dok1/3694125269/ ) used under CC BY 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Introduction to Sociology - 1st Canadian Edition by William Little and Ron McGivern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

a research problem in sociology

1.2 Sociological Perspectives on Social Problems

  • Define the sociological imagination.
  • Explain what is meant by the blaming-the-victim belief.
  • Summarize the most important beliefs and assumptions of functionalism and conflict theory.
  • Summarize the most important beliefs and assumptions of symbolic interactionism and exchange theory.

The sociological understanding of social problems rests heavily on the concept of the sociological imagination . We discuss this concept in some detail before turning to various theoretical perspectives that provide a further context for understanding social problems.

The Sociological Imagination

Many individuals experience one or more social problems personally. For example, many people are poor and unemployed, many are in poor health, and many have family problems, drink too much alcohol, or commit crime. When we hear about these individuals, it is easy to think that their problems are theirs alone, and that they and other individuals with the same problems are entirely to blame for their difficulties.

Sociology takes a different approach, as it stresses that individual problems are often rooted in problems stemming from aspects of society itself. This key insight informed C. Wright Mills’s (1959) (Mills, 1959) classic distinction between personal troubles and public issues . Personal troubles refer to a problem affecting individuals that the affected individual, as well as other members of society, typically blame on the individual’s own personal and moral failings. Examples include such different problems as eating disorders, divorce, and unemployment. Public issues , whose source lies in the social structure and culture of a society, refer to social problems affecting many individuals. Problems in society thus help account for problems that individuals experience. Mills felt that many problems ordinarily considered private troubles are best understood as public issues, and he coined the term sociological imagination to refer to the ability to appreciate the structural basis for individual problems.

To illustrate Mills’s viewpoint, let’s use our sociological imaginations to understand some contemporary social problems. We will start with unemployment, which Mills himself discussed. If only a few people were unemployed, Mills wrote, we could reasonably explain their unemployment by saying they were lazy, lacked good work habits, and so forth. If so, their unemployment would be their own personal trouble. But when millions of people are out of work, unemployment is best understood as a public issue because, as Mills (Mills, 1959) put it, “the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.”

a research problem in sociology

When only a few people are out of work, it is fair to say that their unemployment is their personal trouble. However, when millions of people are out of work, as has been true since the economic downturn began in 2008, this massive unemployment is more accurately viewed as a public issue. As such, its causes lie not in the unemployed individuals but rather in our society’s economic and social systems.

Rawle C. Jackman – The line of hope… – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The high US unemployment rate stemming from the severe economic downturn that began in 2008 provides a telling example of the point Mills was making. Millions of people lost their jobs through no fault of their own. While some individuals are undoubtedly unemployed because they are lazy or lack good work habits, a more structural explanation focusing on lack of opportunity is needed to explain why so many people were out of work. If so, unemployment is best understood as a public issue rather than a personal trouble.

Another social problem is eating disorders. We usually consider a person’s eating disorder to be a personal trouble that stems from a lack of control, low self-esteem, or another personal problem. This explanation may be OK as far as it goes, but it does not help us understand why so many people have the personal problems that lead to eating disorders. Perhaps more important, this belief also neglects the larger social and cultural forces that help explain such disorders. For example, most Americans with eating disorders are women, not men. This gender difference forces us to ask what it is about being a woman in American society that makes eating disorders so much more common. To begin to answer this question, we need to look to the standard of beauty for women that emphasizes a slender body (Boyd, et. al., 2011). If this cultural standard did not exist, far fewer American women would suffer from eating disorders than do now. Because it does exist, even if every girl and woman with an eating disorder were cured, others would take their places unless we could somehow change this standard. Viewed in this way, eating disorders are best understood as a public issue, not just as a personal trouble.

Picking up on Mills’s insights, William Ryan (1976) (Ryan, 1976) pointed out that Americans typically think that social problems such as poverty and unemployment stem from personal failings of the people experiencing these problems, not from structural problems in the larger society. Using Mills’s terms, Americans tend to think of social problems as personal troubles rather than public issues. As Ryan put it, they tend to believe in blaming the victim rather than blaming the system .

To help us understand a blaming-the-victim ideology, let’s consider why poor children in urban areas often learn very little in their schools. According to Ryan, a blaming-the-victim approach would say the children’s parents do not care about their learning, fail to teach them good study habits, and do not encourage them to take school seriously. This type of explanation, he wrote, may apply to some parents, but it ignores a much more important reason: the sad shape of America’s urban schools, which, he said, are overcrowded, decrepit structures housing old textbooks and out-of-date equipment. To improve the schooling of children in urban areas, he wrote, we must improve the schools themselves and not just try to “improve” the parents.

As this example suggests, a blaming-the-victim approach points to solutions to social problems such as poverty and illiteracy that are very different from those suggested by a more structural approach that blames the system. If we blame the victim, we would spend our limited dollars to address the personal failings of individuals who suffer from poverty, illiteracy, poor health, eating disorders, and other difficulties. If instead we blame the system, we would focus our attention on the various social conditions (decrepit schools, cultural standards of female beauty, and the like) that account for these difficulties. A sociological understanding suggests that the latter approach is ultimately needed to help us deal successfully with the social problems facing us today.

Theoretical Perspectives

Three theoretical perspectives guide sociological thinking on social problems: functionalist theory, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionist theory. These perspectives look at the same social problems, but they do so in different ways. Their views taken together offer a fuller understanding of social problems than any of the views can offer alone. Table 1.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes the three perspectives.

Table 1.1 Theory Snapshot

Functionalism

Functionalism , also known as the functionalist theory or perspective, arose out of two great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first was the French Revolution of 1789, whose intense violence and bloody terror shook Europe to its core. The aristocracy throughout Europe feared that revolution would spread to their own lands, and intellectuals feared that social order was crumbling.

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century reinforced these concerns. Starting first in Europe and then in the United States, the Industrial Revolution led to many changes, including the rise and growth of cities as people left their farms to live near factories. As the cities grew, people lived in increasingly poor, crowded, and decrepit conditions, and crime was rampant. Here was additional evidence, if European intellectuals needed it, of the breakdown of social order.

In response, the intellectuals began to write that a strong society, as exemplified by strong social bonds and rules and effective socialization, was needed to prevent social order from disintegrating. Without a strong society and effective socialization, they warned, social order breaks down, and violence and other signs of social disorder result.

This general framework reached fruition in the writings of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), a French scholar largely responsible for the sociological perspective, as we now know it. Adopting the conservative intellectuals’ view of the need for a strong society, Durkheim felt that human beings have desires that result in chaos unless society limits them (Durkheim, 1952). It does so, he wrote, through two related social mechanisms: socialization and social integration. Socialization helps us learn society’s rules and the need to cooperate, as people end up generally agreeing on important norms and values, while social integration, or our ties to other people and to social institutions such as religion and the family, helps socialize us and integrate us into society and reinforce our respect for its rules.

Today’s functionalist perspective arises out of Durkheim’s work and that of other conservative intellectuals of the nineteenth century. It uses the human body as a model for understanding society. In the human body, our various organs and other body parts serve important functions for the ongoing health and stability of our body. Our eyes help us see, our ears help us hear, our heart circulates our blood, and so forth. Just as we can understand the body by describing and understanding the functions that its parts serve for its health and stability, so can we understand society by describing and understanding the functions that its parts—or, more accurately, its social institutions—serve for the ongoing health and stability of society. Thus functionalism emphasizes the importance of social institutions such as the family, religion, and education for producing a stable society.

Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology and is largely credited with developing the functionalist perspective.

Marxists.org – public domain.

Similar to the view of the conservative intellectuals from which it grew, functionalism is skeptical of rapid social change and other major social upheaval. The analogy to the human body helps us understand this skepticism. In our bodies, any sudden, rapid change is a sign of danger to our health. If we break a bone in one of our legs, we have trouble walking; if we lose sight in both our eyes, we can no longer see. Slow changes, such as the growth of our hair and our nails, are fine and even normal, but sudden changes like those just described are obviously troublesome. By analogy, sudden and rapid changes in society and its social institutions are troublesome according to the functionalist perspective. If the human body evolved to its present form and functions because these made sense from an evolutionary perspective, so did society evolve to its present form and functions because these made sense. Any sudden change in society thus threatens its stability and future.

As these comments might suggest, functionalism views social problems as arising from society’s natural evolution. When a social problem does occur, it might threaten a society’s stability, but it does not mean that fundamental flaws in the society exist. Accordingly, gradual social reform should be all that is needed to address the social problem.

Functionalism even suggests that social problems must be functional in some ways for society, because otherwise these problems would not continue. This is certainly a controversial suggestion, but it is true that many social problems do serve important functions for our society. For example, crime is a major social problem, but it is also good for the economy because it creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in law enforcement, courts and corrections, home security, and other sectors of the economy whose major role is to deal with crime. If crime disappeared, many people would be out of work! Similarly, poverty is also a major social problem, but one function that poverty serves is that poor people do jobs that otherwise might not get done because other people would not want to do them (Gans, 1972). Like crime, poverty also provides employment for people across the nation, such as those who work in social service agencies that help poor people.

Conflict Theory

In many ways, conflict theory is the opposite of functionalism but ironically also grew out of the Industrial Revolution, thanks largely to Karl Marx (1818–1883) and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895). Whereas conservative intellectuals feared the mass violence resulting from industrialization, Marx and Engels deplored the conditions they felt were responsible for the mass violence and the capitalist society they felt was responsible for these conditions. Instead of fearing the breakdown of social order that mass violence represented, they felt that revolutionary violence was needed to eliminate capitalism and the poverty and misery they saw as its inevitable results (Marx, 1906; Marx & Engels, 1962).

According to Marx and Engels, every society is divided into two classes based on the ownership of the means of production (tools, factories, and the like). In a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie , or ruling class, owns the means of production, while the proletariat , or working class, does not own the means of production and instead is oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie. This difference creates an automatic conflict of interests between the two groups. Simply put, the bourgeoisie is interested in maintaining its position at the top of society, while the proletariat’s interest lies in rising up from the bottom and overthrowing the bourgeoisie to create an egalitarian society.

In a capitalist society, Marx and Engels wrote, revolution is inevitable because of structural contradictions arising from the very nature of capitalism. Because profit is the main goal of capitalism, the bourgeoisie’s interest lies in maximizing profit. To do so, capitalists try to keep wages as low as possible and to spend as little money as possible on working conditions. This central fact of capitalism, said Marx and Engels, eventually prompts the rise of class consciousness , or an awareness of the reasons for their oppression, among workers. Their class consciousness in turn leads them to revolt against the bourgeoisie to eliminate the oppression and exploitation they suffer.

Marx and Engels’ view of conflict arising from unequal positions held by members of society lies at the heart of today’s conflict theory. This theory emphasizes that different groups in society have different interests stemming from their different social positions. These different interests in turn lead to different views on important social issues. Some versions of the theory root conflict in divisions based on race and ethnicity, gender, and other such differences, while other versions follow Marx and Engels in seeing conflict arising out of different positions in the economic structure. In general, however, conflict theory emphasizes that the various parts of society contribute to ongoing inequality, whereas functionalist theory, as we have seen, stresses that they contribute to the ongoing stability of society. Thus while functionalist theory emphasizes the benefits of the various parts of society for ongoing social stability, conflict theory favors social change to reduce inequality.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels were intense critics of capitalism. Their work inspired the later development of conflict theory in sociology.

Wikimedia Commons – public domain.

Feminist theory has developed in sociology and other disciplines since the 1970s and for our purposes will be considered a specific application of conflict theory. In this case, the conflict concerns gender inequality rather than the class inequality emphasized by Marx and Engels. Although many variations of feminist theory exist, they all emphasize that society is filled with gender inequality such that women are the subordinate sex in many dimensions of social, political, and economic life (Lorber, 2010). Liberal feminists view gender inequality as arising out of gender differences in socialization, while Marxist feminists say that this inequality is a result of the rise of capitalism, which made women dependent on men for economic support. On the other hand, radical feminists view gender inequality as present in all societies, not just capitalist ones. Several chapters in this book emphasize the perspectives of feminist sociologists and other social scientists.

Conflict theory in its various forms views social problems as arising from society’s inherent inequality. Depending on which version of conflict theory is being considered, the inequality contributing to social problems is based on social class, race and ethnicity, gender, or some other dimension of society’s hierarchy. Because any of these inequalities represents a fundamental flaw in society, conflict theory assumes that fundamental social change is needed to address society’s many social problems.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism focuses on the interaction of individuals and on how they interpret their interaction. Its roots lie in the work of early 1900s American sociologists, social psychologists, and philosophers who were interested in human consciousness and action. Herbert Blumer (1969) (Blumer, 1969), a sociologist at the University of Chicago, built on their writings to develop symbolic interactionism, a term he coined. Drawing on Blumer’s work, symbolic interactionists feel that people do not merely learn the roles that society has set out for them; instead they construct these roles as they interact. As they interact, they negotiate their definitions of the situations in which they find themselves and socially construct the reality of these situations. In doing so, they rely heavily on symbols such as words and gestures to reach a shared understanding of their interaction.

Four men conversing on the streets

Symbolic interactionism focuses on individuals, such as the people conversing here. Sociologists favoring this approach examine how and why individuals interact and interpret the meanings of their interaction.

An example is the familiar symbol of shaking hands. In the United States and many other societies, shaking hands is a symbol of greeting and friendship. This simple act indicates that you are a nice, polite person with whom someone should feel comfortable. To reinforce this symbol’s importance for understanding a bit of interaction, consider a situation where someone refuses to shake hands. This action is usually intended as a sign of dislike or as an insult, and the other person interprets it as such. Their understanding of the situation and subsequent interaction will be very different from those arising from the more typical shaking of hands. As the term symbolic interactionism implies, their understanding of this encounter arises from what they do when they interact and from their use and interpretation of the various symbols included in their interaction. According to symbolic interactionists, social order is possible because people learn what various symbols (such as shaking hands) mean and apply these meanings to different kinds of situations. If you visited a society where sticking your right hand out to greet someone was interpreted as a threatening gesture, you would quickly learn the value of common understandings of symbols.

Symbolic interactionism views social problems as arising from the interaction of individuals. This interaction matters in two important respects. First, socially problematic behaviors such as crime and drug use are often learned from our interaction with people who engage in these behaviors; we adopt their attitudes that justify committing these behaviors, and we learn any special techniques that might be needed to commit these behaviors. Second, we also learn our perceptions of a social problem from our interaction with other people, whose perceptions and beliefs influence our own perceptions and beliefs.

Because symbolic interactionism emphasizes the perception of social problems, it is closely aligned with the social constructionist view discussed earlier. Both perspectives emphasize the subjective nature of social problems. By doing so, they remind us that perceptions often matter at least as much as objective reality in determining whether a given condition or behavior rises to the level of a social problem and in the types of possible solutions that various parties might favor for a particular social problem.

Applying the Three Perspectives

A robber holding a glock right up to the camera

To explain armed robbery, symbolic interactionists focus on how armed robbers decide when and where to rob a victim and on how their interactions with other criminals reinforce their own criminal tendencies.

Geoffrey Fairchild – The Robbery – CC BY 2.0.

To help you further understand the different views of these three theoretical perspectives, let’s see what they would probably say about armed robbery , a very serious form of crime, while recognizing that the three perspectives together provide a more comprehensive understanding of armed robbery than any one perspective provides by itself.

A functionalist approach might suggest that armed robbery actually serves positive functions for society, such as the job-creating function mentioned earlier for crime in general. It would still think that efforts should be made to reduce armed robbery, but it would also assume that far-reaching changes in our society would be neither wise nor necessary as part of the effort to reduce crime.

Conflict theory would take a very different approach to understanding armed robbery. It might note that most street criminals are poor and thus emphasize that armed robbery is the result of the despair and frustration of living in poverty and facing a lack of jobs and other opportunities for economic and social success. The roots of street crime, from the perspective of conflict theory, thus lie in society at least as much as they lie in the individuals committing such crime. To reduce armed robbery and other street crime, conflict theory would advocate far-reaching changes in the economic structure of society.

For its part, symbolic interactionism would focus on how armed robbers make such decisions as when and where to rob someone and on how their interactions with other criminals reinforce their own criminal tendencies. It would also investigate how victims of armed robbery behave when confronted by a robber. To reduce armed robbery, it would advocate programs that reduce the opportunities for interaction among potential criminal offenders, for example, after-school programs that keep at-risk youths busy in “conventional” activities so that they have less time to spend with youths who might help them get into trouble.

Key Takeaways

  • According to C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination involves the ability to recognize that private troubles are rooted in public issues and structural problems.
  • Functionalism emphasizes the importance of social institutions for social stability and implies that far-reaching social change will be socially harmful.
  • Conflict theory emphasizes social inequality and suggests that far-reaching social change is needed to achieve a just society.
  • Symbolic interactionism emphasizes the social meanings and understandings that individuals derive from their social interaction.

For Your Review

  • Select an example of a “private trouble” and explain how and why it may reflect a structural problem in society.
  • At this point in your study of social problems, which one of the three sociological theoretical perspectives sounds most appealing to you? Why?

Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and Method . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Boyd, E. M., Reynolds, J. R., Tillman, K. H., & Martin, P. Y. (2011). Adolescent girls’ race/ethnic status, identities, and drive for thinness. Social Science Research, 40 (2), 667–684.

Durkheim, É. (1952). Suicide (J. Spaulding & G. Simpson, Trans.). New York, NY: Free Press. (Original work published 1897).

Gans, H. J. (1972). The positive functions of poverty. American Journal of Sociology, 78 , 275–289.

Lorber, J. (2010). Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Marx, K. (1906). Capital . New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published 1867).

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1962). The communist manifesto. In Marx and Engels: Selected works (Vol. 2, pp. 21–65). Moscow, Russia: Foreign Language Publishing House. (Original work published 1848).

Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination . London, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

  • Privacy Policy
  • SignUp/Login

Research Method

Home » Research Problem – Examples, Types and Guide

Research Problem – Examples, Types and Guide

Table of Contents

Research Problem

Research Problem

Definition:

Research problem is a specific and well-defined issue or question that a researcher seeks to investigate through research. It is the starting point of any research project, as it sets the direction, scope, and purpose of the study.

Types of Research Problems

Types of Research Problems are as follows:

Descriptive problems

These problems involve describing or documenting a particular phenomenon, event, or situation. For example, a researcher might investigate the demographics of a particular population, such as their age, gender, income, and education.

Exploratory problems

These problems are designed to explore a particular topic or issue in depth, often with the goal of generating new ideas or hypotheses. For example, a researcher might explore the factors that contribute to job satisfaction among employees in a particular industry.

Explanatory Problems

These problems seek to explain why a particular phenomenon or event occurs, and they typically involve testing hypotheses or theories. For example, a researcher might investigate the relationship between exercise and mental health, with the goal of determining whether exercise has a causal effect on mental health.

Predictive Problems

These problems involve making predictions or forecasts about future events or trends. For example, a researcher might investigate the factors that predict future success in a particular field or industry.

Evaluative Problems

These problems involve assessing the effectiveness of a particular intervention, program, or policy. For example, a researcher might evaluate the impact of a new teaching method on student learning outcomes.

How to Define a Research Problem

Defining a research problem involves identifying a specific question or issue that a researcher seeks to address through a research study. Here are the steps to follow when defining a research problem:

  • Identify a broad research topic : Start by identifying a broad topic that you are interested in researching. This could be based on your personal interests, observations, or gaps in the existing literature.
  • Conduct a literature review : Once you have identified a broad topic, conduct a thorough literature review to identify the current state of knowledge in the field. This will help you identify gaps or inconsistencies in the existing research that can be addressed through your study.
  • Refine the research question: Based on the gaps or inconsistencies identified in the literature review, refine your research question to a specific, clear, and well-defined problem statement. Your research question should be feasible, relevant, and important to the field of study.
  • Develop a hypothesis: Based on the research question, develop a hypothesis that states the expected relationship between variables.
  • Define the scope and limitations: Clearly define the scope and limitations of your research problem. This will help you focus your study and ensure that your research objectives are achievable.
  • Get feedback: Get feedback from your advisor or colleagues to ensure that your research problem is clear, feasible, and relevant to the field of study.

Components of a Research Problem

The components of a research problem typically include the following:

  • Topic : The general subject or area of interest that the research will explore.
  • Research Question : A clear and specific question that the research seeks to answer or investigate.
  • Objective : A statement that describes the purpose of the research, what it aims to achieve, and the expected outcomes.
  • Hypothesis : An educated guess or prediction about the relationship between variables, which is tested during the research.
  • Variables : The factors or elements that are being studied, measured, or manipulated in the research.
  • Methodology : The overall approach and methods that will be used to conduct the research.
  • Scope and Limitations : A description of the boundaries and parameters of the research, including what will be included and excluded, and any potential constraints or limitations.
  • Significance: A statement that explains the potential value or impact of the research, its contribution to the field of study, and how it will add to the existing knowledge.

Research Problem Examples

Following are some Research Problem Examples:

Research Problem Examples in Psychology are as follows:

  • Exploring the impact of social media on adolescent mental health.
  • Investigating the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy for treating anxiety disorders.
  • Studying the impact of prenatal stress on child development outcomes.
  • Analyzing the factors that contribute to addiction and relapse in substance abuse treatment.
  • Examining the impact of personality traits on romantic relationships.

Research Problem Examples in Sociology are as follows:

  • Investigating the relationship between social support and mental health outcomes in marginalized communities.
  • Studying the impact of globalization on labor markets and employment opportunities.
  • Analyzing the causes and consequences of gentrification in urban neighborhoods.
  • Investigating the impact of family structure on social mobility and economic outcomes.
  • Examining the effects of social capital on community development and resilience.

Research Problem Examples in Economics are as follows:

  • Studying the effects of trade policies on economic growth and development.
  • Analyzing the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on labor markets and employment opportunities.
  • Investigating the factors that contribute to economic inequality and poverty.
  • Examining the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on inflation and economic stability.
  • Studying the relationship between education and economic outcomes, such as income and employment.

Political Science

Research Problem Examples in Political Science are as follows:

  • Analyzing the causes and consequences of political polarization and partisan behavior.
  • Investigating the impact of social movements on political change and policymaking.
  • Studying the role of media and communication in shaping public opinion and political discourse.
  • Examining the effectiveness of electoral systems in promoting democratic governance and representation.
  • Investigating the impact of international organizations and agreements on global governance and security.

Environmental Science

Research Problem Examples in Environmental Science are as follows:

  • Studying the impact of air pollution on human health and well-being.
  • Investigating the effects of deforestation on climate change and biodiversity loss.
  • Analyzing the impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and food webs.
  • Studying the relationship between urban development and ecological resilience.
  • Examining the effectiveness of environmental policies and regulations in promoting sustainability and conservation.

Research Problem Examples in Education are as follows:

  • Investigating the impact of teacher training and professional development on student learning outcomes.
  • Studying the effectiveness of technology-enhanced learning in promoting student engagement and achievement.
  • Analyzing the factors that contribute to achievement gaps and educational inequality.
  • Examining the impact of parental involvement on student motivation and achievement.
  • Studying the effectiveness of alternative educational models, such as homeschooling and online learning.

Research Problem Examples in History are as follows:

  • Analyzing the social and economic factors that contributed to the rise and fall of ancient civilizations.
  • Investigating the impact of colonialism on indigenous societies and cultures.
  • Studying the role of religion in shaping political and social movements throughout history.
  • Analyzing the impact of the Industrial Revolution on economic and social structures.
  • Examining the causes and consequences of global conflicts, such as World War I and II.

Research Problem Examples in Business are as follows:

  • Studying the impact of corporate social responsibility on brand reputation and consumer behavior.
  • Investigating the effectiveness of leadership development programs in improving organizational performance and employee satisfaction.
  • Analyzing the factors that contribute to successful entrepreneurship and small business development.
  • Examining the impact of mergers and acquisitions on market competition and consumer welfare.
  • Studying the effectiveness of marketing strategies and advertising campaigns in promoting brand awareness and sales.

Research Problem Example for Students

An Example of a Research Problem for Students could be:

“How does social media usage affect the academic performance of high school students?”

This research problem is specific, measurable, and relevant. It is specific because it focuses on a particular area of interest, which is the impact of social media on academic performance. It is measurable because the researcher can collect data on social media usage and academic performance to evaluate the relationship between the two variables. It is relevant because it addresses a current and important issue that affects high school students.

To conduct research on this problem, the researcher could use various methods, such as surveys, interviews, and statistical analysis of academic records. The results of the study could provide insights into the relationship between social media usage and academic performance, which could help educators and parents develop effective strategies for managing social media use among students.

Another example of a research problem for students:

“Does participation in extracurricular activities impact the academic performance of middle school students?”

This research problem is also specific, measurable, and relevant. It is specific because it focuses on a particular type of activity, extracurricular activities, and its impact on academic performance. It is measurable because the researcher can collect data on students’ participation in extracurricular activities and their academic performance to evaluate the relationship between the two variables. It is relevant because extracurricular activities are an essential part of the middle school experience, and their impact on academic performance is a topic of interest to educators and parents.

To conduct research on this problem, the researcher could use surveys, interviews, and academic records analysis. The results of the study could provide insights into the relationship between extracurricular activities and academic performance, which could help educators and parents make informed decisions about the types of activities that are most beneficial for middle school students.

Applications of Research Problem

Applications of Research Problem are as follows:

  • Academic research: Research problems are used to guide academic research in various fields, including social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and engineering. Researchers use research problems to identify gaps in knowledge, address theoretical or practical problems, and explore new areas of study.
  • Business research : Research problems are used to guide business research, including market research, consumer behavior research, and organizational research. Researchers use research problems to identify business challenges, explore opportunities, and develop strategies for business growth and success.
  • Healthcare research : Research problems are used to guide healthcare research, including medical research, clinical research, and health services research. Researchers use research problems to identify healthcare challenges, develop new treatments and interventions, and improve healthcare delivery and outcomes.
  • Public policy research : Research problems are used to guide public policy research, including policy analysis, program evaluation, and policy development. Researchers use research problems to identify social issues, assess the effectiveness of existing policies and programs, and develop new policies and programs to address societal challenges.
  • Environmental research : Research problems are used to guide environmental research, including environmental science, ecology, and environmental management. Researchers use research problems to identify environmental challenges, assess the impact of human activities on the environment, and develop sustainable solutions to protect the environment.

Purpose of Research Problems

The purpose of research problems is to identify an area of study that requires further investigation and to formulate a clear, concise and specific research question. A research problem defines the specific issue or problem that needs to be addressed and serves as the foundation for the research project.

Identifying a research problem is important because it helps to establish the direction of the research and sets the stage for the research design, methods, and analysis. It also ensures that the research is relevant and contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the field.

A well-formulated research problem should:

  • Clearly define the specific issue or problem that needs to be investigated
  • Be specific and narrow enough to be manageable in terms of time, resources, and scope
  • Be relevant to the field of study and contribute to the existing body of knowledge
  • Be feasible and realistic in terms of available data, resources, and research methods
  • Be interesting and intellectually stimulating for the researcher and potential readers or audiences.

Characteristics of Research Problem

The characteristics of a research problem refer to the specific features that a problem must possess to qualify as a suitable research topic. Some of the key characteristics of a research problem are:

  • Clarity : A research problem should be clearly defined and stated in a way that it is easily understood by the researcher and other readers. The problem should be specific, unambiguous, and easy to comprehend.
  • Relevance : A research problem should be relevant to the field of study, and it should contribute to the existing body of knowledge. The problem should address a gap in knowledge, a theoretical or practical problem, or a real-world issue that requires further investigation.
  • Feasibility : A research problem should be feasible in terms of the availability of data, resources, and research methods. It should be realistic and practical to conduct the study within the available time, budget, and resources.
  • Novelty : A research problem should be novel or original in some way. It should represent a new or innovative perspective on an existing problem, or it should explore a new area of study or apply an existing theory to a new context.
  • Importance : A research problem should be important or significant in terms of its potential impact on the field or society. It should have the potential to produce new knowledge, advance existing theories, or address a pressing societal issue.
  • Manageability : A research problem should be manageable in terms of its scope and complexity. It should be specific enough to be investigated within the available time and resources, and it should be broad enough to provide meaningful results.

Advantages of Research Problem

The advantages of a well-defined research problem are as follows:

  • Focus : A research problem provides a clear and focused direction for the research study. It ensures that the study stays on track and does not deviate from the research question.
  • Clarity : A research problem provides clarity and specificity to the research question. It ensures that the research is not too broad or too narrow and that the research objectives are clearly defined.
  • Relevance : A research problem ensures that the research study is relevant to the field of study and contributes to the existing body of knowledge. It addresses gaps in knowledge, theoretical or practical problems, or real-world issues that require further investigation.
  • Feasibility : A research problem ensures that the research study is feasible in terms of the availability of data, resources, and research methods. It ensures that the research is realistic and practical to conduct within the available time, budget, and resources.
  • Novelty : A research problem ensures that the research study is original and innovative. It represents a new or unique perspective on an existing problem, explores a new area of study, or applies an existing theory to a new context.
  • Importance : A research problem ensures that the research study is important and significant in terms of its potential impact on the field or society. It has the potential to produce new knowledge, advance existing theories, or address a pressing societal issue.
  • Rigor : A research problem ensures that the research study is rigorous and follows established research methods and practices. It ensures that the research is conducted in a systematic, objective, and unbiased manner.

About the author

' src=

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

You may also like

Assignment

Assignment – Types, Examples and Writing Guide

References in Research

References in Research – Types, Examples and...

Figures in Research Paper

Figures in Research Paper – Examples and Guide

Delimitations

Delimitations in Research – Types, Examples and...

Research Findings

Research Findings – Types Examples and Writing...

Research Paper

Research Paper – Structure, Examples and Writing...

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

  • We're Hiring!
  • Help Center

paper cover thumbnail

Problems & Challenges of Research in Sociology

Profile image of International Research Journal Commerce arts science

Thecoming crisis of empirical sociology’ by Savage and Burrows (2007). This article challengedsociologists with a variety of questions about the role, relevance and methodological opportunitiesfor sociological research in the 21st century. On publication it stoked the already charged debateson a public sociology (Burawoy, 2004), the role of publicly funded research (ESRC, 2009) andrelevance of sociological research in an age of burgeoning social media (Brewer and Hunter,2006). This e-special provides a reprise of these debates and explores relevant papers in Sociology,as well as alerting readers to recurring themes and new directions on the topic of methods andsocial research.

Related Papers

Bhartiya Shodh

Sociological and anthropological studies in India reveal that caste, class and gender in everyday life are both rigid and dynamic, butlittle is known about how they influence the survival mechanisms of women during ‘multiple disasters’, nor about how women negotiate with these structural mores to meet their cultural and biological needs. This is explored through the experiences of 12 women-headed households from different social castes in Orissa, India. Multiple disasters or disasters that occur in ‘one specific place’ (such as floods, cyclone and drought) are regular events in coastal parts of the state of Orissa. The super-cyclone of 1999, Two floods of 2001 and 2003 and drought of 2000 and 2002 form the case study. Participant observation, in-depth interviews and documentary evidence complement the fieldwork. The findings suggest a complex interplay of caste, class and gender in surviving the multiple disasters including structural mutability under the purview of social organization. In doing so, women demonstrated their individual and collective agencies in order to meet their cultural and biological needs under severe crisis. This researchstresses that gender and disaster studies must include a consideration of caste and class for effective disaster management and social vulnerability reduction.

a research problem in sociology

The varied connotations and interpretations of by whom, to whom and how reservation be granted landed the drafting committee into a paradoxical situation over definition of “backwardness”. At the time of the drafting Article 16(4) (Article 10(3) of the Draft Constitution) there occurred a considerable discussion as to who were the „backward classes‟ for whom a special provision for reservation in jobs was made in the constitution. Some members believed that this term meant only the „ex-untouchables‟, some thought that it covered a broader group of people who were educationally, economically and socially backward regardless of their religion, race or caste and some believed that it included only the members of historically disadvantaged groups.

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: Aurobindo Ghose expressed his educational ideas in the weekly "K , Karmayogin" published from February 12 to April 2, 1910. It is true that Aurobindo is one of the greatest educationist of humanity of all times, in the sense that he dedicated his life for showing man the path to the supreme spiritual advancement which is the real giver of solace to the mankind. But here it is proposed only to understand what Aurobindo has to say about the training of young children as expressed in his articles published in the weekly "Karmayogin".1

Recently , a number of researchers in the hotel industry have identified and emphasised the importance of service quality from a variety of aspects . Although the importance of hotel service quality has been recognised (Min, Min, & Chung, 2002; Callan & Kyndt , 2001; Callan & Bowman, 2000; Danaher & Mattsson, 1994; Saleh & Ryan, 1991), limited research has addressed the structure and antecedents of the concept of service quality (Wilkins et al., 2006a). In addition, there is considerable debate in the literature on how best to conceptualise service

With changing roles of women in our society, changing career interests are certainly becoming more common in young females. Though women are still expected to marry and have a family and this goal is regarded as their primary goal. Indian educated women in India generally want to retain certain of the traditional values of Indian family life and women’s roles. Doing so often entails major personal conflict in reconciling the ideas gained through education and the traditional precepts about women’s conduct. Although, men and women seem to be working out a new balance in the provider role, either through necessity or conviction, change on home front seems to be less definitive. Women continue to have primary or complete responsibility for management

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) is aimed at expanding and improving the standards of secondary education-classes IX and X. The RMSA would also take secondary education to every very corner of the country by ensuring a secondary school (up to class X) within a radius of 5k.m. for every neighborhood. Rashtriya Madyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) which is the most recent initiative of government of India to achieve the goal of universalisation of secondary education (USE). The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan program set up by the government to bring elementary education to millions of children has been successful to a large extent, and has thus created

EVALUATION OF WOMEN EMPOWERMENT IN INDIA: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

This paper traces the roots of Brahmin dominance that took place in Indian society. It basically focuses on the interpretation ofhistorians, philosophers and great social reformers regarding the origin of the Shudras and Aryans. It is not an attempt to write the history of the varna system or caste system in India, but rather related to the contradictions on the issues of origin of the Shudras and Aryans.

The analysis also results in the FTIR spectral study on normal men and women and the changes in salivary pattern of both men and women have been analysed. In order to find the efficacy, the absorption values of the specific bands of the spectra of normal healthy men and women were noted and it is compared and the internal ratio parameters were calculated. The vibrational analysis showed that the spectra of normal healthy men and women were not similar. The vibrational peaks of Cortisol, DHEA, Progesterone, Testesterone, Oestradiol were found and the changes in the salivary hormones of both men and women were identified and discussed and internal ratio parameter were calculated

A library is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, a corporation, or a private individual. Public and institutional collections and services may be intended for use by people who choose not to—or cannot afford to—purchase an extensive collection themselves, who need material no individual can reasonably be expected to have, or who require professional assistance with their research. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are experts at finding

RELATED PAPERS

International Research Journal Commerce arts science

RELATED TOPICS

  •   We're Hiring!
  •   Help Center
  • Find new research papers in:
  • Health Sciences
  • Earth Sciences
  • Cognitive Science
  • Mathematics
  • Computer Science
  • Academia ©2023

HVCC logo and library name

Sociology: Researching Social Problems

  • Articles/Journals
  • Statistics Sources
  • Researching Social Problems
  • SOCL 100 - Sociology - Who Am I? Assignment
  • SOCL 100 - Sociology - Finding Specific Journals
  • SOCL 120 - Cultural Diversity in American Society
  • SOCL 110 Willis
  • Racism and Structural Inequities

Examples of Social Issues

Broad categories of issues that have impact on families and society:

  • Illness and the Health care Crisis.
  • Alcohol and other Drugs.
  • Crime and Violence.
  • Family Problems.
  • Problems of Youth and Aging.
  • Race and Ethnic Relations.
  • Gender Inequality.
  • Issues in Sexual Orientation.
  • Work and Unemployment.
  • Problems in Education.
  • Population and Urbanization.
  • Science and Technology.
  • Environmental Problems.
  • Conflict, War, and Terrorism.

Finding books by subject

Books on sociological topics are found in several call number ranges because sociological topics are often interdisciplinary. 

Many books are located in the range:    HM 1- HT 1600

There are hundreds of Subject Headings useful for sociological topics. 

Social justice

Social problems

Social theory

Socialization

Developing a Research Question

Once you have chosen a topic to research, you will need to develop a research question you are wanting to answer.

Examples of research questions:

Does viewing violent television and/or movies have a measurable affect on children's aggressive behavior?

Do children who regularly share mealtimes with the family do better academically?

Are fathers discriminated against in custody cases?

Is racial profiling an effective terror prevention strategy?

Databases for this subject

  • Social Sciences Full Text This link opens in a new window Covers the latest concepts, theories and methods from both applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences, full-text resource provides access to the most important English-language social science journals.
  • Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection This link opens in a new window Comprehensive, full-text database covering psychology and psychiatry topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, mental processes, observational and experimental methods.
  • JSTOR This link opens in a new window Full-text, scholarly resources in the arts and sciences include Archival and Current Journals, Books, and Primary Sources.
  • Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window Leading resource for scholarly research with peer-reviewed, full-text journals. Supports high-level research in many disciplines by providing journals, periodicals, reports, books, and more.
  • Opposing Viewpoints In Context This link opens in a new window Information and opinions and on hundreds of today's hottest social issues; provides sources such as viewpoints, topic overviews, full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, statistics, images, videos, audio files and links to reviewed websites.
  • Points of View Reference Center This link opens in a new window Containing resources that present multiple sides of an issue; provides content that can help students assess and develop persuasive arguments and essays, better understand controversial issues and develop analytical thinking skills.
  • Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window A premier source of peer-reviewed, full-text, scholarly content across many academic areas. Millions of articles available in both PDF and HTML full-text; authoritative and comprehensive.
  • << Previous: Statistics Sources
  • Next: SOCL 100 - Sociology - Who Am I? Assignment >>
  • Last Updated: Dec 14, 2023 10:03 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.hvcc.edu/sociology
  • Guides by Expert Librarians
  • Database Finder
  • HVCC OneSearch
  • Library Catalog
  • How to Cite Sources
  • DOI | PMID Lookup

Library Services

  • Ask a Librarian
  • Reserve a Study Room
  • Media Services
  • Resource Sharing
  • Writing & Research Help

Quick Links

  • Textbooks on Reserve
  • Open Educational Resources
  • HVCC Digital Collections
  • Library Account Sign in
  • Library Faculty & Staff
  • Liaison Program
  • Connect on Social Media

© 2020 Hudson Valley Community College . All Rights Reserved.

A State University of New York College

Sponsored by Rensselaer County

Woostify logo

99 Good Sociology Research Questions Examples

What is a good research question for sociology? Oftentimes, lecturers give their students the freedom to pick their own research questions. While this can be a good thing on its own, at other times, it can drain the brain. Having relevant sociology research question ideas and sociology research questions examples is the right way to start. In this article, you will be receiving 99 sociology research questions examples to help you avoid a brain drain.

Sociology Research Question Topics

  • What are the Environmental Hazards in Your Society?
  • What is the Government’s Control of Society?
  • What are the Impacts of Cancel Culture in Today’s Society?
  • How Early Should Children be Taught Sex Education?
  • What Prevention Methods are Effective Against Teenagers Pregnancy?
  • Should Parents Encourage Their Teenagers to Get an Abortion?
  • Is Gender Equality Possible?
  • Why Is Polygamy Ideal For 21st Century Relationships?
  • What Role Can Parents Play To Help Prevent Sexually Transmitted Infections In Their Teens?
  • Is Marriage Relevant in the 21st-century?
  • What Are Transactional Relationships?
  • What are the Effects of Having Two Mothers?
  • How Can Schools Help Students Overcome Addiction?
  • What Can Schools do About Deviant Behaviour in Their Children?
  • What are the Steps to Overcoming Abuse?
  • What are the Impacts of Having Two Fathers?
  • How Does Family Law Help the Family?
  • Why Should Children Take Over Family Businesses?
  • Why Should The Use of Marijuana Be Legalized?
  • What are the Roles of Grandparents in a Family?
  • What are the Impacts of Endogamy?
  • What is the Permanent Solution to Bullying?
  • Body Confidence Or Moral Decadence?
  • How Can Interpersonal Conflicts be Resolved?
  • What is Family Inheritance?
  • Do Vacations Truly Help Couples Bond?
  • What are the Impacts of House-husband?
  • What are the Impacts of Being A Housewife?
  • Should Polygamy be Encouraged in Today’s Society?
  • What are the Dangers of Helicopter Parenting?
  • When Should a Couple Consider Divorce?
  • What are the Underlying Reasons for Suicide in Young People?
  • What are the Societal Implications of Cohabitation?
  • What Causes Rebellion in Young People?
  • What Ways Can Depression be Managed?
  • Should Free Speech Have Limits?
  • What is Societal Pressure?
  • What is the Relevance of Religion in Today’s Society?
  • Why is Medical Negligence on the Rise?
  • What is the Relevance of School Uniforms For Students?
  • What are the Conflicts of Personal Identity?
  • Should Prisoners be Allowed to Vote?
  • Do School Uniforms Encourage Bullying?
  • Should Children Have Parents of the Same-Sex?
  • What is Social Disorder?
  • What is Social Anxiety?
  • What are the Dangers of Home Schooling?
  • What are the Dangers of Infidelity to the Society at Large?
  • What are the Dangers of Political Correctness?
  • Should Traditional Gender Roles Still Exist in Today’s Society?
  • Do Adults Engage in Bullying More Than Children?
  • What are the Different Places Bullying Occurs in Today’s Society?
  • Should Virtual Learning Become the Standard Form of Learning?
  • Should Religious Activities be Allowed in Schools?
  • How Can a Family Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle?
  • How Does the Media Portray Your Society?
  • Why do Students Dress the Way do?
  • Whose Responsibility is it to Train the Child: Parents or Society?
  • Should Children be Allowed to Believe in Magic?
  • What Causes Social Isolation?
  • Should Teens Be Allowed to Take Alcohol?
  • What are the Impacts of Single Parenting?
  • What is the Attitude Of Students Towards School Work in Your Society?
  • What Bad Actions Contribute to Pollution in Your Environment?
  • What Societal Values are Dying?
  • Should Teachers Have Other Sources Of Income?
  • What is Care-work in a Family?
  • Does a Person’s Society Determine How They See Life?
  • What is the “Standard Family”?
  • How do Songs Contribute to a Person’s Identity?
  • What Are The Underlying Causes Of Unemployment in Your Society?
  • Should Parents Take Parenting Classes?
  • What Are Societal Values and Norms?
  • What are the Impacts Of Divorce on the Children?
  • What are the Impacts of Long-distance Marriage?
  • Should Personal Ownership of Guns be Revoked in the United States?
  • What are the Impacts of Moving Places?
  • What is the Difference Between Equality and Equity?
  • Is Reincarnation After Death A Possibility?
  • How Should Errant Behaviour be Punish?
  • What Are The Distinctions And Similarities Between Millenials And Generation Z?
  • How Influential is Pop Culture in Colleges?
  • Why Is There Disparity in Society?
  • How Should Child Misbehaviour be Punished?
  • How do TV Shows Influence Our Culture?
  • What are the Impacts of Having A Multi-Ethnic Family?
  • What are the Impacts of Diverse Cultures in a Society?
  • What are Your Society’s Most-Pressing Needs?
  • What are the Worst Books of all Time in Society?
  • What is Gender Discrimination in Society?
  • What is Gender Disparity in the Workplace?
  • What are the Implications of Peer Pressure?
  • How Much Influence do Celebrities Have Over a Society?
  • How does the Media Misrepresent the Youth?
  • How does the Media Help in Government Propaganda?
  • How Can Violence in Society be Solved?
  • What are the Contributors to a Person’s Identity?
  • Is Monogamy Ideal For 21st Century Relationships?
  • Is Overpopulation a Bad Thing?

These research questions are more than enough to select from. Simply choose one and write.

a research problem in sociology

Related Posts

  • 55 Sociology Research Topics for High School Students
  • 85 Environmental Sociology Research Topics
  • 90 Interesting Sociology Research Topics for College Students

Recent Posts

  • Top 91 Medical Sociology Research Topics
  • 90 Fresh Sociology Research Topics on Family

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

  • Knowledge Base
  • Starting the research process
  • Writing Strong Research Questions | Criteria & Examples

Writing Strong Research Questions | Criteria & Examples

Published on October 26, 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research question pinpoints exactly what you want to find out in your work. A good research question is essential to guide your research paper , dissertation , or thesis .

All research questions should be:

  • Focused on a single problem or issue
  • Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
  • Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
  • Specific enough to answer thoroughly
  • Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
  • Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly

Writing Strong Research Questions

Table of contents

How to write a research question, what makes a strong research question, using sub-questions to strengthen your main research question, research questions quiz, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research questions.

You can follow these steps to develop a strong research question:

  • Choose your topic
  • Do some preliminary reading about the current state of the field
  • Narrow your focus to a specific niche
  • Identify the research problem that you will address

The way you frame your question depends on what your research aims to achieve. The table below shows some examples of how you might formulate questions for different purposes.

Using your research problem to develop your research question

Note that while most research questions can be answered with various types of research , the way you frame your question should help determine your choices.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Research questions anchor your whole project, so it’s important to spend some time refining them. The criteria below can help you evaluate the strength of your research question.

Focused and researchable

Feasible and specific, complex and arguable, relevant and original.

Chances are that your main research question likely can’t be answered all at once. That’s why sub-questions are important: they allow you to answer your main question in a step-by-step manner.

Good sub-questions should be:

  • Less complex than the main question
  • Focused only on 1 type of research
  • Presented in a logical order

Here are a few examples of descriptive and framing questions:

  • Descriptive: According to current government arguments, how should a European bank tax be implemented?
  • Descriptive: Which countries have a bank tax/levy on financial transactions?
  • Framing: How should a bank tax/levy on financial transactions look at a European level?

Keep in mind that sub-questions are by no means mandatory. They should only be asked if you need the findings to answer your main question. If your main question is simple enough to stand on its own, it’s okay to skip the sub-question part. As a rule of thumb, the more complex your subject, the more sub-questions you’ll need.

Try to limit yourself to 4 or 5 sub-questions, maximum. If you feel you need more than this, it may be indication that your main research question is not sufficiently specific. In this case, it’s is better to revisit your problem statement and try to tighten your main question up.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

  • Academic style
  • Vague sentences
  • Style consistency

See an example

a research problem in sociology

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

  • Sampling methods
  • Simple random sampling
  • Stratified sampling
  • Cluster sampling
  • Likert scales
  • Reproducibility

 Statistics

  • Null hypothesis
  • Statistical power
  • Probability distribution
  • Effect size
  • Poisson distribution

Research bias

  • Optimism bias
  • Cognitive bias
  • Implicit bias
  • Hawthorne effect
  • Anchoring bias
  • Explicit bias

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

As you cannot possibly read every source related to your topic, it’s important to evaluate sources to assess their relevance. Use preliminary evaluation to determine whether a source is worth examining in more depth.

This involves:

  • Reading abstracts , prefaces, introductions , and conclusions
  • Looking at the table of contents to determine the scope of the work
  • Consulting the index for key terms or the names of important scholars

A research hypothesis is your proposed answer to your research question. The research hypothesis usually includes an explanation (“ x affects y because …”).

A statistical hypothesis, on the other hand, is a mathematical statement about a population parameter. Statistical hypotheses always come in pairs: the null and alternative hypotheses . In a well-designed study , the statistical hypotheses correspond logically to the research hypothesis.

Writing Strong Research Questions

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

  • Researchability
  • Feasibility and specificity
  • Relevance and originality

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, November 21). Writing Strong Research Questions | Criteria & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved December 18, 2023, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-questions/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to define a research problem | ideas & examples, how to write a problem statement | guide & examples, 10 research question examples to guide your research project, what is your plagiarism score.

Point Loma logo

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: The Research Problem/Question

  • What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Dealing with Nervousness
  • Using Visual Aids
  • Grading Someone Else's Paper
  • Types of Structured Group Activities
  • Group Project Survival Skills
  • Multiple Book Review Essay
  • Reviewing Collected Essays
  • Writing a Case Study
  • About Informed Consent
  • Writing Field Notes
  • Writing a Policy Memo
  • Writing a Research Proposal

A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation. A research problem does not state how to do something, offer a vague or broad proposition, or present a value question.

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Guba, Egon G., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. “Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research . Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, editors. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), pp. 105-117.

In the social sciences, the research problem establishes the means by which you must answer the "So What?" question. This question refers to a research problem surviving the relevancy test [the quality of a measurement procedure that provides repeatability and accuracy]. Note that answering the "So What?" question requires a commitment on your part to not only show that you have reviewed the literature, but that you have thoroughly considered its significance and its implications applied to obtaining new knowledge or understanding.

  • Articulation of the study's boundaries or parameters or limitations,

Bryman, Alan. “The Research Question in Social Research: What is its Role?” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (2007): 5-20; Castellanos, Susie. Critical Writing and Thinking . The Writing Center. Dean of the College. Brown University; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem. Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); Thesis and Purpose Statements . The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University.  

  • A declaration of originality [e.g., mentioning a knowledge void or a lack of clarity about a topic that will be revealed in the literature review],

Personal Experience Don't undervalue your everyday experiences or encounters as worthwhile problems for investigation. Think critically about your own experiences and/or frustrations with an issue facing society, your community, your neighborhood, your family, or your personal life. This can be derived, for example, from deliberate observations of certain relationships for which there is no clear explanation or witnessing an event that appears harmful to a person or group or that is out of the ordinary.

Relevant Literature The selection of a research problem can be derived from a thorough review of pertinent research associated with your overall area of interest. This may reveal where gaps exist in understanding a topic or where an issue has been understudied. Research may be conducted to: 1) fill such gaps in knowledge; 2) evaluate if the methodologies employed in prior studies can be adapted to solve other problems; or, 3) determine if a similar study could be conducted in a different subject area or applied in a different context or to different study sample [i.e., different setting or different group of people].Also, authors frequently conclude their studies by noting implications for further research; read the conclusion of pertinent studies because statements about further research can be a valuable source for identifying new problems to investigate. The fact that a researcher has identified a topic worthy of further exploration validates the fact it is worth pursuing.

NOTE:   Do not confuse a research problem with a research topic. A topic is something to read and obtain information about, whereas a problem is something to be solved or framed as a question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution , or explained as a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation . In short, a research topic is something to be understood; a research problem is something that needs to be investigated.

NOTE:   Questions of how and why concerning a research problem often require more analysis than questions about who, what, where, and when. You should still ask yourself these latter questions, however. Thinking introspectively about the who, what, where, and when of a research problem can help ensure that you have thoroughly considered all aspects of the problem under investigation.

Beware of circular reasoning! Do not state that the research problem as simply the absence of the thing you are suggesting. For example, if you propose the following, "The problem in this community is that there is no hospital," this only leads to a research problem where:

This is an example of a research problem that fails the "So What?" test . In this example, the problem does not reveal the relevance of why you are investigating the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., there's a hospital in the community ten miles away]; it does not elucidate the significance of why one should study the fact there is no hospital in the community [e.g., that hospital in the community ten miles away has no emergency room]; the research problem does not offer an intellectual pathway towards adding new knowledge or clarifying prior knowledge [e.g., the county in which there is no hospital already conducted a study about the need for a hospital]; and, the problem does not offer meaningful outcomes that lead to recommendations that can be generalized for other situations or that could suggest areas for further research [e.g., the challenges of building a new hospital serves as a case study for other communities].

Alvesson, Mats and Jörgen Sandberg. “Generating Research Questions Through Problematization.” Academy of Management Review 36 (April 2011): 247-271 ; Choosing and Refining Topics . Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Ellis, Timothy J. and Yair Levy Nova. "Framework of Problem-Based Research: A Guide for Novice Researchers on the Development of a Research-Worthy Problem." Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline 11 (2008); How to Write a Research Question . The Writing Center. George Mason University; Invention: Developing a Thesis Statement . The Reading/Writing Center. Hunter College; Problem Statements PowerPoint Presentation . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Procter, Margaret. Using Thesis Statements . University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Trochim, William M.K. Problem Formulation . Research Methods Knowledge Base. 2006; Thesis and Purpose Statements . The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin, Madison; Thesis Statements . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements . The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Walk, Kerry. Asking an Analytical Question . [Class handout or worksheet]. Princeton University; White, Patrick. Developing Research Questions: A Guide for Social Scientists . New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009.

  • Last Updated: Jan 17, 2023 10:50 AM
  • URL: https://libguides.pointloma.edu/ResearchPaper

a research problem in sociology

Definition A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation.

Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study.

Defining a sociological problem helps frame a question to be addressed in the research process. Learning Objectives. ... After the problem and research question is defined, scientists generally gather information and other observations, form hypotheses, test hypotheses by collecting data in a reproducible manner, analyze and interpret that data ...

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain.

Sociologists often do their own surveys, as does the government and many organizations in addition to Gallup. The survey is the most common research design in sociological research. Respondents either fill out questionnaires themselves or provide verbal answers to interviewers asking them the questions.

After the problem and research question is defined, scientists generally gather information and other observations, form hypotheses, test hypotheses by collecting data in a reproducible manner, analyze and interpret that data, and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypotheses. ... Sociological research can be conducted via ...

There are several steps to this process. Brainstorming. Start a list of topics that interest you and are within the guidelines of the assignment. They could be personal, professional, or academic interests. Researching something that interests you is much more enjoyable and will keep you interested in the research process.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity.

Explain why scholars who study social problems often rely on existing data. Sound research is an essential tool for understanding the sources, dynamics, and consequences of social problems and possible solutions to them. This section briefly describes the major ways in which sociologists gather information about social problems.

These are questions that sociological research can aim to answer. (Photo courtesy of Benjamin Cook/flickr) Learning Objectives 2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research Define and describe the scientific method Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research

Step 1: Identify a broad problem area As you read about your topic, look for under-explored aspects or areas of concern, conflict, or controversy. Your goal is to find a gap that your research project can fill. Practical research problems

The question of how sociological research—and, more generally, how social science research—is relevant to the question of reducing inequality is a complicated one. This question obviously relates to the broader question about the extent of influence (or lack of influence) that social science research has on social policy and on society at ...

1.1.4: Doing Research on Social Problems. List the major advantages and disadvantages of surveys, observational studies, and experiments. Explain why scholars who study social problems often rely on existing data. Sound research is an essential tool for understanding the sources, dynamics, and consequences of social problems and possible ...

One of the biggest challenges new sociology students face is creating research questions that are sociological. What makes a research question sociological? Sociologists are often interested in social problems and issues related to aspects of inequality.

Sociology takes a different approach, as it stresses that individual problems are often rooted in problems stemming from aspects of society itself. This key insight informed C. Wright Mills's (1959) (Mills, 1959) classic distinction between personal troubles and public issues.

Definition: Research problem is a specific and well-defined issue or question that a researcher seeks to investigate through research. It is the starting point of any research project, as it sets the direction, scope, and purpose of the study. Types of Research Problems Types of Research Problems are as follows: Descriptive problems

Sociological Research Online was launched as the first online-only peer-reviewed Sociology journal in 1996. This enables faster publication times and a range of formats, including giving readers direct access to audio, visual and video data, and thematic special sections and rapid response calls. We publish theoretically engaged and empirically ...

The question of how quantitative methods can be used by sociology begs the deeper question of whether or not sociologists have the necessary skills to develop and apply such techniques. After all, as Byrne (2012: 14) argues, 'many UK sociologists are to all intents and purposes essentially innumerate'.

Examples of Social Issues. Broad categories of issues that have impact on families and society: Illness and the Health care Crisis. Alcohol and other Drugs. Crime and Violence. Family Problems. Problems of Youth and Aging. Race and Ethnic Relations. Gender Inequality.

In this article, you will be receiving 99 sociology research questions examples to help you avoid a brain drain. Sociology Research Question Topics What are the Environmental Hazards in Your Society? What is the Government's Control of Society? What are the Impacts of Cancel Culture in Today's Society?

Consider these seven sociology research methods: Implementation of Social Surveys. By turning to this method, you add data from the large social groups.

A research question pinpoints exactly what you want to find out in your work. A good research question is essential to guide your research paper, dissertation, or thesis. All research questions should be: Focused on a single problem or issue; Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources; Feasible to answer within the timeframe and ...

A research problem is a definite or clear expression [statement] about an area of concern, a condition to be improved upon, a difficulty to be eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or within existing practice that points to a need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation.

English & Creative Writing

  • Scholarship
  • Digital Primary Sources
  • Archives & Special Collections
  • Guides, Companions, and Encyclopedias
  • Topical Guides
  • Course Guides

Recommended Resources

  • Early English Books Online (EEBO) EEBO contains searchable text of almost every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere between 1473 and 1700.
  • Literature Online (LION) Texts and criticism across vast spans of time and place.
  • Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) "[A] vast eighteenth-century library at your desktop—a fully text-searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. It currently contains over 180,000 titles amounting to over 32 million fully-searchable pages."

Digital Primary Sources: Library & Archival Collections

  • HathiTrust Digital Library Millions of searchable texts from a partnership of research libraries. The material out of copyright is available to read; material in copyright is searchable.
  • Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas at Austin)

Digital Primary Sources: Next Steps

  • Nineteenth Century Online A global collection of documents for what historians have termed "the long nineteenth century."
  • Early European Books Online (EEB) A large but incomplete selection of titles from the ongoing digitization of every extant non-English-language western European book published before 1700.
  • Gallica Almost seven million digitized objects of French, European, and global history. Website accessible in English, French, and Italian.

Digital Primary Sources: The Rabbit Hole

  • Last Updated: Oct 12, 2023 1:51 PM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/english

Jagran Josh

CBSE Class 12 English Important Questions and Chapters for Board Exam 2024: Download PDF

img src="https://img.jagranjosh.com/images/2024/February/2022024/feature-image.jpg" width="1200" height="675" />

CBSE 12th English Important Questions 2024: CBSE will be soon conducting its Class 12 English board exam 2024 on February 22 from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM. Since we are just two days away from the exam, it becomes immensely important to focus on chapters and questions that have a high tendency to be asked in the question paper. So, here we have brought to you exactly the same requirements. Find CBSE Class 12 English Important Questions and topics for board exams 2024. These questions have been picked by observing the previous trends, previous year's question papers, and the current syllabus and sample paper. Similarly, the list of important chapters and topics has been presented to you in reference to the updated marking scheme and question paper pattern laid out by the board. 

CBSE Class 12 English Important Topics and Chapters for Board Exam 2024

Here, are the areas that students should focus on before the examination. Since these topics and chapters have a high chance of appearing in the question paper and since they have a high marks weightage in the paper, they should not be missed by students at any cost. These are the high scoring topics for CBSE Class 12 English Board Exam 2024. 

Though we have provided you with the list of topics and chapters that should be studied for the exam, it is important to keep in mind that questions from any chapter can be asked in internal choices. Hence, it is better to be prepared for the exam with the complete coverage of the syllabus. So, do not rely on the above-mentioned chapters alone, instead try to read every chapter thoroughly for a high score on the exam. 

CBSE Class 12 English Important Questions for Board Exams 2024

Here, a few important questions from all the chapters of CBSE Class 12 English textbooks (Flamingo and Vistas) have been provided to you for reference. These are a few practice questions to get you started with the final mode of preparation and impart what kinds of questions are to be expected in the exam. 

  • Unseen Passage Questions - Here, students will have to read the comprehension passage provided to them and solve the MCQ-type questions that follow. This entire segment is of 22 marks and focuses on checking your reading and understanding abilities. 
  • Creative Writing Questions - Under this segment of 18 marks, students will have to showcase their writing skills and language proficiency at the same time. Notice writing, application writing, letter writing, article writing, etc are often and frequently asked in the exam. Hence, students should check the updated format and practise a few related questions. A PDF has been provided below which consists of a few creative writing practise questions. 
  • Literature Questions - Questions from all the chapters of Flamingo and Vistas have been provided to you. NCERT exercises are quite important for this segment of the question paper. Students can check the PDF download link attached below for the important questions. Also, check the Revision Notes articles for understanding the meaning of important texts from the chapter. 

Important Links for Class 12 English Board Exam 2024

  • CBSE Class 12 English Practice Paper
  • Last Minute Preparation Tips for CBSE Class 12 English
  • CBSE Class 12 English Syllabus
  • CBSE Class 12 English Sample Papers
  • CBSE Class 12 English Toppers Answer Sheet 
  • CBSE Class 12 English Previous Year Papers

File : Flag of Elektrostal (Moscow oblast).svg

File history, file usage on commons, file usage on other wikis.

Original file ‎ (SVG file, nominally 603 × 393 pixels, file size: 39 KB)

Structured data

Items portrayed in this file, copyright status, copyrighted, copyright license, creative commons attribution-sharealike 2.0 generic, creative commons attribution-sharealike 1.0 generic, gnu free documentation license, version 1.2 or later, creative commons attribution-sharealike 2.5 generic, creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0 unported, source of file, original creation by uploader, 31 august 2007.

  • SVG flags of cities and villages of Moscow Oblast
  • Culture of Elektrostal
  • License migration redundant
  • CC-BY-SA-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0
  • Self-published work

Navigation menu

  • All Stories
  • Accolades Magazine
  • Current Issue
  • College Home Page

Digitizing Dickens’s Working Notes 

Examining the 19th-century author’s novels through a modern lens.

english and creative writing dartmouth

It’s a pioneering initiative: Take the working notes Charles Dickens penned when writing his  novels, digitize them, pair them with introductions and editorial comments, and in a first, make them interactive and available online. 

In doing so, the Digital Dickens Notes Project (DDNP) offers readers insight into the 19th century author’s creative mind and writing practices and new ways of interpreting texts written in a series. It also provides a fresh perspective on Dickens and makes his novels accessible to a  broader audience – from scholars and students to teachers and the general public. 

“Rather than reading the notes primarily as planning documents as they have frequently been understood, this project emphasizes their role as dynamic records of the serial process, and creates a way for students and scholars to interact with them,” said Anna Gibson, assistant teaching professor of English at NC State and co-director of the project. “The interpretative annotations explain the significance of each part and help the readers understand the entire novel.” 

Joining her as co-director is Adam Grener, senior lecturer in the English Literatures and  Creative Communication Programme at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington,  New Zealand. An inter-university team of researchers, editors and technical consultants also worked on the project, which took eight years to complete. Last year, Gibson and her team posted online the working notes of four of Dickens’s novels and plan to add those of three more. 

To understand the value of the project, it’s important to remember that Dickens’s novels were  written, published and read in installments. Until the final installment his texts essentially were novels in progress .  

With that in mind, the DDNP offers today’s readers a Victorian-era view of what it was like for  Dickens to compose his novels over as many as 19 months and in installments, said Gibson.To  manage the writing process, he penned notes for each weekly or monthly installment as he  wrote it. 

The author used the notes to plan future storylines, experiment with character names, establish images and motifs, and track plot developments. He even used them to record personal reminders and to ask himself questions that he would answer at a later time. 

“The notes help us understand how each installment functions as a single entity and as part of a whole, offering us insights into how Dickens managed these complex storylines over time,” noted  Gibson. 

Additionally, when readers click on the interactive online notes they navigate to the specific  annotation explaining the meaning behind the note, further enriching their understanding of the novel. 

The DDNP also helps illuminate how people in that period read and thought about Dickens’s  texts, Gibson said, adding that they also offer a concise way to engage students in a long and complex novel. 

”It is easier for students to understand a 900-page novel if you ask them to think about it in  parts, which is similar to their watching a TV series,” she added. “Dickens helped make the serial form popular. That’s where we get the modern-day concept of episodes,” she  explained. 

english and creative writing dartmouth

Like a TV episode, each of Dickens’s installments builds on the previous one and readers anxiously await the new episode to uncover details about the central story. 

“One way to help students understand the relevance of Dickens’s novels today is to link his  works to TV shows — to this major way students are consuming serial narrative in their own  lives,“  Gibson said. 

The DDNP also makes the author’s working notes more accessible. Typically, the notes are typed up at the back of the novels, making it difficult for readers to see just how Dickens made use of each page. The size of  words and the spacing between them, the choice and number of ink colors, and the use of  markings are not easily defined. 

The DDNP both simplifies and enriches the  novels for students and scholars.” 

Page by page the DDNP, however, offers a tapestry of different color inks, crossed-out words, underlined phrases, check marks and erasures. The only other way to view Dickens’s notes in this manner is in an archival setting, Gibson noted. The author’s working notes are bound with his manuscripts, most of which are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s National Art Library in London. 

“Our images are not photographs; instead, they provide legible and easy and open access to  the transcriptions of Dickens’s notes, facilitating renewed scholarly engagement with these vital records of serial composition,” she explained. ”The DDNP both simplifies and enriches the  novels for students and scholars.” 

Gibson said she and her team are applying for grants to complete the project, and add new  content and technical features. Among them are including images of the manuscript’s pages — and enabling users to toggle between the working notes and those images, and to create their own annotations. 

Key takeaways? “I would like to think that a project like the DDNP challenges our assumptions  of what scholarship looks like in the humanities and allows for a form of interaction with it that is exciting and accessible,” she said. 

  • Home Page News
  • News Update

english and creative writing dartmouth

The Day King Addressed Campus — and the Klan Marched on Raleigh 

english and creative writing dartmouth

“Volya” 

english and creative writing dartmouth

Three CHASS Students Earn Boren Awards to Study Languages Abroad 

IMAGES

  1. Still North Books & Bar offers course books for English and creative

    english and creative writing dartmouth

  2. Q&A with English and creative writing professor Alexander Chee, guest

    english and creative writing dartmouth

  3. Q&A: English and creative writing professor Joshua Bennett on winning

    english and creative writing dartmouth

  4. Modernisms: A Conference

    english and creative writing dartmouth

  5. Learning to Write With Jane Austen

    english and creative writing dartmouth

  6. Melanie B. Taylor

    english and creative writing dartmouth

VIDEO

  1. Interjections

  2. English Creative Writing Phrases to Use #study #student #revishaan #english #shorts #gcse #alevel

  3. Essay Writing Tips #english

  4. NCERT CLASS 12 ENGLISH NOTICE WRITING CREATIVE WRITING

  5. Academic reading and writing in English Part 3: The role of sources

  6. upcoming workshop

COMMENTS

  1. Home

    The department of English and Creative Writing is hosting two events on Tuesday, January 23 in Dartmouth 105 celebrating the work of the great stor Exhibit Celebrates 400th Anniversary of the First Folio The student-curated show explores Dartmouth's Shakespeare-related archives. Dartmouth Medieval Colloquium to Honor Scholar Monika Otter

  2. Department of English and Creative Writing

    Department of English and Creative Writing Sanborn House 19 N. Main Street Hanover, NH 03755-1808. Location 201 Sanborn House 19 N. Main Street Hanover, NH 03755-1808. Sanborn Library Hours 8:00am - midnight. HB: HB 6032. Phone: 603-646-2316. Fax: 603-646-2159. [email protected]. Map Find Us. Share. Related Department Classics ...

  3. Course Schedule

    2023-24 Courses Courses are subject to change; please check back for more information. **Please see the Class Schedule for class time references** Summer 2023 Creative Writing Courses CRWT 10 (2A) Introduction to Fiction, Professor Craig - CRWT 10 application CRWT 11 (6B) Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, Professor Craig English Courses

  4. English and Creative Writing

    The Creative Writing Program's sequential course of study and small workshops allow students to pursue and develop their craft from the introductory level to the advanced. The creative writing experience at Dartmouth combines intensive writing workshops with the study of literature from a writer's perspective.

  5. The English Major

    The Concentration in Creative Writing does not change graduating requirements for students majoring in English, but is a prerequisite for honors with a focus in creative writing. View the Creative Writing Concentration requirements and courses. Worksheets Worksheet for the Major in English for Classes 2017 and Beyond

  6. Undergraduate Overview

    With an emphasis on communication and critical thinking, courses in Dartmouth's English and Creative Writing Department complement a variety of majors. If you are interested in taking English courses, regardless of your major, consult our Courses or the ORC for a full listing. Choose English Skills Developed

  7. Creative Writing

    3 Creative Writing courses: Non-Fiction Fiction Screenwriting Playwriting (and related Writers' Room) Poetry Journalism 1 Elective course from MALS or Dartmouth College* 1 Independent study in Creative Writing (MALS 127) 1 Research Methods module (MALS 130, MALS 131 or MALS 132) 1 Summer Symposium (MALS 120) — no tuition charged

  8. Home

    English & Creative Writing Librarian Wendel Cox He/Him/His Schedule Appointment Contact: 231 Baker HB 6025 Baker-Berry Library Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 03755 Subjects: English and Creative Writing, Government, , Law, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Newspapers and News Recommended Resources MLA International Bibliography

  9. Creative Writing at Dartmouth

    Dartmouth does not offer a creative writing major; instead, students majoring in English can add a concentration in creative writing. But you don't need to be an English major to take creative writing classes. In classic Dartmouth fashion, the students in our creative writing classes major in everything from government to economics to biology.

  10. Course Guides

    English & Creative Writing Start your English literature and creative writing research. Home Scholarship Digital Primary Sources Archives & Special Collections Guides, Companions, and Encyclopedias Topical Guides Course Guides Course Guides Last Updated: Oct 12, 2023 1:51 PM URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/english Print Page

  11. English & Creative Writing

    Dartmouth Libraries Guides; English & Creative Writing; Guides, Companions, and Encyclopedias; Search this Guide Search. ... While civil rights scholarship has typically focused on documentary rather than creative writing, and political rather than cultural history, this Companion addresses the gap and provides university students with a vast ...

  12. Work by English and Creative Writing Faculty

    This collection contains works by faculty from the Dartmouth Department of English and Creative Writing. Jump to: Events from 2019 Link Panel 2: The Early Years of Coeducation, Nancy Frankenberry, Brenda Silver, Lynn Higgins, Mary Hudson, and Deborah King Link Keynotes, Ivy Schweitzer, Judith Byfield, and Mary Kelley PDF

  13. Scholarship

    Provides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, biology, ecology, and other fields of the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Project Muse: premium collection

  14. English and Creative Writing

    Follow. Browse the English and Creative Writing Collections: . Work by English and Creative Writing Faculty

  15. English and Creative Writing FSP London

    The Department of English and Creative Writing offers a foreign study program at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). Queen Mary is a highly prestigious university that boasts one of the world's finest and most innovative English departments.

  16. Professor McConnell Joins House Communities

    At this time four of Dartmouth's six house communities have appointed faculty fellows: Professor of Computer Science Amit Chakrabarti (East Wheelock House), Professor of Anthropology Nathaniel Dominy (North Park House), Professor of English and Creative Writing Jodi Kim (North Park House), Senior Lecturer of French Kelly McConnell '00, Guarini ...

  17. Creative and Professional Writing Program

    Concentration in creative & professional writing . The English & Communication department offers a bachelor of arts degree in English with a concentration in creative & professional writing.. Creative & professional writing candidates demonstrate their ability to analyze context and rhetorical problems with awareness of cultural diversity to create and compose effective, well-formulated ...

  18. Faculty Fellows Join House Communities

    At this time four of Dartmouth's six house communities have appointed faculty fellows: Professor of Computer Science Amit Chakrabarti (East Wheelock House), Professor of Anthropology Nathaniel Dominy (North Park House), Professor of English and Creative Writing Jodi Kim (North Park House), Senior Lecturer of French Kelly McConnell '00, Guarini ...

  19. Creative Writing Workshop to Spotlight Local History

    The Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County will host a creative writing workshop led by Hopkinsville Community College English professor Elizabeth Burton on Tuesday, February 27. Burton will guide participants in using historical objects from the museum's collection as a catalyst for creativity.

  20. writing center yeshiva university

    First visit? Register for an account . Returning? Log in below. SELECT A SCHEDULE. F23 WRITTEN FEEDBACK. F23 IN-PERSON Appointments. F23 ONLINE Appointments. Having trouble loggin

  21. Digital Primary Sources

    A large but incomplete selection of titles from the ongoing digitization of every extant non-English-language western European book published before 1700. Gallica Almost seven million digitized objects of French, European, and global history.

  22. CBSE Class 12 English Important Questions and Chapters for Board ...

    Creative Writing Questions - Under this segment of 18 marks, students will have to showcase their writing skills and language proficiency at the same time. Notice writing, application writing ...

  23. INTERTEKH, OOO Company Profile

    Find company research, competitor information, contact details & financial data for INTERTEKH, OOO of Elektrostal, Moscow region. Get the latest business insights from Dun & Bradstreet.

  24. File : Flag of Elektrostal (Moscow oblast).svg

    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

  25. Digitizing Dickens's Working Notes

    In doing so, the Digital Dickens Notes Project (DDNP) offers readers insight into the 19th century author's creative mind and writing practices and new ways of interpreting texts written in a series. It also provides a fresh perspective on Dickens and makes his novels accessible to a broader audience - from scholars and students to teachers ...

  26. Elektrostal

    Tiếng Việt. Winaray. 中文. ) is a city in Moscow Oblast. It is 58 kilometers (36 mi) east of . As of 2010, 155,196 people lived there. Krasnogorsky. Lotoshinsky. Lukhovitsky.