Quantitative research involves the analysis of numerical data, usually derived from surveys and experiments (Schutt, 2019), to better understand important empirical social realities. The mathematical method used to analyze numerical data is statistics. It is a powerful tool, and most sociological researchers learn statistical methods. Statistics can aid researchers in two ways. When researchers want to see trends over time or compare differences between groups, they use descriptive statistics. The purpose of such statistics is to describe some particular body of data that is based on a phenomenon in the real world. To test hypotheses, researchers use inferential statistics. Such statistics allow researchers to use data from a relatively small group to speculate with some level of certainty about a larger group. While such data allow researchers to make broad generalizations, they do not provide insight into people’s lived experiences and interpretation of particular issues and events. Each method has its own set of strengths and limitations in terms of what it can do to help a researcher answer a specific question. Sociologists often debate the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative methods, but they generally recognize that each method has value. There is a broad consensus that quantitative and qualitative research methods can complement one another (Creswell and Creswell 2018). In practice, sociologists (and other social scientists) may conduct mixed-methods research by combining both quantitative and qualitative research methods in a single study (Reich and Bearman 2018).
Observational Research
Observation is a qualitative method consisting of systematically watching, listening to, and recording what takes place in a natural social setting over some, usually extended, period of time. Though the observational techniques of sociologists are similar to those used by investigative journalists, sociological techniques may be much more systematic and in-depth. The two primary observational methods are participant and nonparticipant observation.
Participant and Nonparticipant Observation
In participant observation the researcher actually plays a role, even a minor one, in the group or setting being observed. A participant observer might become a hostess or bartender to study the sex industry in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Hoang 2015), sell books on the sidewalk to watch what happens on a busy city street (Duneier 1999), or live in a trailer park to witness how individuals cope with poverty (Desmond 2016; see the Trending box in Chapter 7, page 192). Aasha Abdill (2018) spent four years studying black fathers in a low-income area of Brooklyn, discovering that they are present in their children’s daily lives despite high rates of unemployment and incarceration. CNN’s Somebody’s Gotta Do It is essentially an informal exercise in the participant observation of work. The host, Mike Rowe, is not a trained sociologist and he is not trying, at least consciously, to uncover the sociological aspects of the jobs he studies, but he is a participant observer. In each episode, he actually does the job being examined—he is a participant—and he observes the workers as well as their dirty jobs. Among the jobs Rowe has performed and observed on the show are “turd burner,” owl vomit collector, baby chicken sexer, sheep castrator, rat exterminator, maggot farmer, diaper cleaner, and high-rise building window washer.
Ask Yourself
Do you think participant observers risk losing their objectivity when they grow too close to the subjects under study? Why or why not? What about nonparticipant observers? How can sociologists conducting observational research avoid becoming too involved with subjects?
In nonparticipant observation the sociologist plays little or no role in what is being observed. Gary Fine has done nonparticipant observation research on Little League baseball (Fine 1987), restaurant kitchens (Fine 2008), meteorologists (Fine 2010), and chess players involved in a chess tournament (Fine 2015).
There are no firm dividing lines between participant and nonparticipant observation, and at times the two blend imperceptibly into one another. The participant often becomes simply an observer. An example is the sociologist who begins with participant observation of a gang, hanging out with members in casual settings, but becomes a nonparticipant when illegal activities such as drug deals take place. And the nonparticipant observer sometimes becomes a participant. An example is the sociologist who is unable to avoid being asked to take sides or share opinions in squabbles among members of a Little League team or, more likely, among their parents.
Ethnography
Ethnography is the creation of a detailed account of what a group of people do and the way they live, usually entailing much more intensive, immersive, and lengthy periods of observation (sometimes participant) than traditional sociological observation requires. Researchers may live for years with the groups, tribes, or subcultures (such as gamblers) being studied. Normally ethnographies are small in scale, micro, and local. Researchers observe people, talk to them, hang out with them, sometimes live with them, and conduct formal and informal interviews with them over an extended period of time.
The ethnographic method has now been extended to the global level. Michael Burawoy (2000; see also Kenway and McCarthy 2016; Tsuda, Tapias, and Escandell 2014) argues that a global ethnography is the best way to understand globalization. This type of ethnography is grounded in various parts of the world and seeks to understand globalization as it exists in people’s social lives.
Interviews and observation are among the tools of ethnographic research. Here an ethnographer visits members of an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea.
Amy Toensing/National Geographic Creative
Digital Living: Netnography
The basic concerns of sociology—communications, relationships, and groups—are key elements of the internet, especially social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Online discussions, digital networking, and posting photos and videos are how many of us connect virtually with each other every day. Not surprisingly, netnography, or an account of what transpires online, has become an important method of sociological research (Kozinets 2015; Quinton 2018). Netnographers are digital ethnographers who are able to observe thousands of phenomena online. For example, they might follow the Twitter account of a celebrity or sports star to learn about their fans or play an online video game such as World of Warcraft to understand how individuals engage in virtual role-playing and collaboration. One recent study used netnography to examine the blogs of female Chinese tourists in Macao, discovering how crossing the border influenced perceptions of their self-identity and enhanced their personal relationships (Zhang and Hitchcock 2014). Outside of academia, netnography is used by web designers, marketers, and advertisers to observe, record, and analyze our digital behaviors. The virtual data we create when shopping on Zappos or streaming music on Spotify offer these professionals valuable information that they can use to entice us to buy more products or visit new websites.
Netnography, like other social research, raises ethical questions. Researchers who join an internet community to observe its ongoing communications might not inform other members that they have joined with the objective of studying the group. The issue of informed consent is especially ambiguous when conducting online research because so much of what transpires in virtual reality is public. While we can take steps to protect our privacy online, many of us do not. For some internet users, the whole point of posting a video on YouTube or writing a blog is to attract as many views and followers as possible. Revealing personal information about ourselves, family, and friends is common on popular social media sites. This makes it easy for anyone, including social researchers, to investigate our relationships and identities.
Interviews
While observers often interview