1

The nature and process of

social research
Chapter outline
Introduction 4

What is meant by ‘social research’? 4

Why do social research? 5

The context of social research methods 5

Elements of the process of social research 8

Literature review 8 Concepts and theories 8 Research questions 9 Sampling cases 11 Data collection 12 Data analysis
13 Writing up 14

The messiness of social research 15

Key points 16 Questions for review 16

4
The nature and process of social research

Chapter guide
This chapter aims to introduce readers to some fundamental considerations in conducting social research. It begins by
outlining what we mean by social research and the reasons why we conduct it. However, the bulk of the chapter then
moves on to consider three areas:

• The context of social research methods. This entails considering issues such as the role of theory in relation to social
research, the role of values and in particular of ethical considerations in the research process, the significance of
assumptions about the nature of the social world and about how knowledge about it should be produced, and the
ways in which political considerations may materialize in social research.
• The elements of the research process. The whole book is dedicated to the elements of social research, but here the
essential stages are given a preliminary treatment. The elements identified are:
a literature review; formulating concepts and theories; devising research questions; sampling; data collection; data
analysis; and writing up findings.

• The messiness of social research. This section acknowledges that social research often does not conform to a neat,
linear process and that researchers may find themselves facing unexpected contingencies and difficulties. At the same
time, it is suggested that a familiarity with the nature of the research process and its principles is crucial to navigating
through the unexpected.

All of the issues presented in these three sections will be treated in much greater detail in later chapters, but they are
introduced at this stage to provide readers with an early encounter with them.

Introduction
This book is concerned with the ways that social re- searchers go about their craft. I take this to mean that
it is concerned with the approaches that are employed by social researchers to go about the research
process in all its phases—formulating research objectives, choosing research methods, securing research
participants, col- lecting, analysing, and interpreting data, and dissemi- nating findings to others. An
understanding of social research methods is important for several reasons, but two stand out. First, it is
hoped that it will help readers to avoid the many pitfalls that are all too common when relatively
inexperienced people try to do social research, such as failing to match research questions to research
methods, asking ambiguous questions in questionnaires,

and engaging in practices that are ethically dubious. If you are expected to conduct a research project, an
education in research methods is important, not just for ensuring that the correct procedures are followed
but also for gaining an appreciation of the choices that are available to you. Second, an understanding of
social research methods is also important from the point of view of being a consumer of published
research. When people take degrees in the social sciences, they will read a lot of published research in the
substantive areas they study. A good grounding in the research process and a knowledge of the potential
pitfalls can provide a critical edge when reading the research of others that can be invaluable.

What is meant by ‘social research’?

The term ‘social research’ as used in this book denotes to the social scientific fields, such as sociology,
human academic research on topics relating to questions relevant geography, social policy, politics, and
criminology. Thus,

social research involves research that draws on the social sciences for conceptual and theoretical
inspiration. Such research may be motivated by developments and changes in society, such as the rise in
worries about security or binge-drinking, but it employs social scien- tific ideas to illuminate those
changes. It draws upon the social sciences for ideas about how to formulate

research topics and issues and how to interpret and draw implications from research findings. In other
words, what distinguishes social research of the kind discussed in this book is that it is deeply rooted in
the ideas and intellectual traditions of the social sciences. This book is about the methods that are used to
create that kind of research.

The nature and process of social research 5

Why do social research?

The rationale for doing social research has been outlined in the previous section to a certain extent.
Academics conduct such research because, in the course of reading the literature on a topic or when
reflecting on what is going on in modern social life, questions occur to them. They may notice a gap in the
literature or an inconsis- tency between a number of studies or an unresolved issue in the literature.
These provide common circumstances that act as springboards for social research in academic circles.
Another is when there is a development in society that provides an interesting point of departure for the
investigation of a research question. For example, noting

the widespread use of text messaging on mobile tele- phones, a researcher might become interested in
study- ing how far it has affected the nature and quality of interaction in social life. In exploring this kind
of issue, the researcher is likely to draw upon the literature on technology and on social interaction to
provide insights into how to approach the issue. As I say in Chapter 2, there is no single reason why people
do social research of the kind emphasized in this book, but, at its core, it is done because there is an aspect
of our understand- ing of what goes on in society that is to some extent unresolved.

The context of social research methods

Social research and its associated methods do not take place in a vacuum. In this book, a number of factors
that form the context of social research will be mentioned. The following factors form part of the context
within which social research and its methods operate:

• The theories that social scientists employ to help to understand the social world have an influence on
what is researched and how the findings of research are inter- preted. In other words, the topics that are
investigated are profoundly influenced by the available theoretical positions. Thus, if a researcher was
interested in the impact of mobile phone text messaging on sociability, it is quite likely that he or she
would want to take into account prevailing theories about how technology is used and its impacts. In this
way, social research is informed and influenced by theory. It also contributes to theory because the
findings of a study will feed into the stock of knowledge to which the theory relates.

• As the previous point implies, the existing knowledge about the area in which the researcher is
interested forms an important part of the background within which social research takes place. In
practice, this means that someone planning to conduct research must be familiar with the literature on the
topic or area of interest. You have to be acquainted with what is already known about the research area in
which you are interested so that you can build on it and not risk covering the same ground as others.
Review- ing the literature is the main focus of Chapter 5 and is also an ingredient of other chapters, such
as Chapter 29.

• The researcher’s views about the nature of the rela- tionship between theory and research also have
impli- cations for research. For some practitioners, theory is something that is addressed at the beginning
of a research project. The researcher might be viewed as

6 The nature and process of social research

engaging in some theoretical reflections out of which a hypothesis is formulated and then subsequently
tested. An alternative position is to view theory as an outcome of the research process—that is, as some-
thing that is arrived at after the research has been carried out. This difference has implications for re-
search, because the first approach implies that a set of theoretical ideas drive the collection and analysis of
data whereas the second suggests a more open-ended strategy in which theoretical ideas emerge out of
the data. Of course, as is so often the case in discussions of this kind, the choice is rarely as stark as this
account of the relationship between theory and research implies, but it does imply that there are some
contrasting views about the role of theory in relation to research. This issue will be a major focus of
Chapter 2.

• The assumptions and views about how research should be conducted influence the research process. It
is often assumed that a ‘scientific’ approach will and should be followed, in which a hypothesis is for-
mulated and then tested using precise measurement techniques. Such research definitely exists, but the
view that this is how research should be done is by no means universally shared. Considerations of this
kind are referred to as epistemological ones. They raise questions about, and invite us to reflect upon,
the issue of how the social world should be studied and whether a scientific approach is the right stance to
adopt. Some researchers favour an approach that eschews a scientific model, arguing that people and their
social institutions are very different from the subject matter of the scientist and that an approach is
needed that is more sensitive to the special qualities of people and their social institutions. This issue will
be a major focus in Chapter 2.

• The assumptions about the nature of social phenom- ena influence the research process too. It is
sometimes suggested that the social world should be viewed as something that is external to social actors
and over which they have no control. It is simply there, acting upon and influencing their behaviour,
beliefs, and values. We might view the culture of an organization as a set of values and behavioural
expectations that exert a powerful influence over those who work in the organization and into which new
recruits have to be socialized. But we could also view it as an entity that is in a constant process of
reformulation and reassess- ment, as members of the organization continually modify it through their
practices and through small

innovations in how things are done. Considerations of this kind are referred to as ontological ones. They
invite us to consider the nature of social phenomena— are they relatively inert and beyond our influence
or are they very much a product of social interaction? As for epistemological issues discussed in the
previous point, the stance that the researcher takes on them has implications for the way in which social
research is conducted. This issue will be a major focus of Chapter 2.

• The values of the research community have significant implications for researchers. This can take a
number of forms. Ethical issues have been a point of discussion, and indeed often of considerable
dissension, over the years, but in recent times they have soared in promin- ence. It is now almost
impossible to do certain kinds of research without risking the opprobrium of the research community and
possible censure from the organizations in which researchers are employed. Nowadays, there is an
elaborate framework of bodies that scrutinize research proposals for their ethical integrity, so that
transgression of ethical principles becomes ever less likely. Certain kinds of research require special
provision with regard to ethics, such as research involving children or vulnerable adults. Thus, ethical
values and the institutional arrange- ments that have arisen in response to the clamour for ethical caution
have implications for what and who can be researched and for how research can be con- ducted to the
point where certain research methods and practices are no longer employed. Another way in which the
values of the research community can impinge on the researcher is that in certain fields, such as in social
policy, there is a strong view that those being researched should be involved in the re- search process. For
example, when social researchers conduct research on service users, it is often suggested that the users of
those services should be involved in the formulation of research questions and instruments, such as
questionnaires. While such views are not uni- versally held (Becker et al. 2010), they form a con-
sideration that researchers in certain fields may feel compelled to reflect upon when contemplating
certain kinds of investigation. Ethical issues are addressed further in Chapter 6 and touched on in several
other chapters.

• Related to the previous issue is the question of what research is for. Thus far, I have tended to stress the
academic nature and role of social research—namely,

that it is to add to the stock of knowledge about the social world. However, many social scientists feel that
research should have a practical purpose and that it should make a difference to the world around us.
Such an emphasis means that, for some practitioners, the social sciences should focus on topics and issues
that will have implications for practice. For researchers in social science disciplines like social policy, an
em- phasis on investigations having demonstrable implica- tions for practice is more widely held than in it
might be in other disciplines. Also, there are research ap- proaches that are more or less exclusively
designed to explore issues that will have implications for people’s everyday lives, such as evaluation
research and action research, which will be touched upon in Chapters 3 and 17 respectively. However,
even in fields like social policy, a commitment to an emphasis on practice is not universally held. In a
survey of UK social policy researchers in 2005, Becker, Bryman, and Sempik (2006) found that 53 per cent
of all those questioned felt that it was equally important for research to have potential value for policy and
practice and to lead to the accumulation of knowledge, a further 34 per cent felt it was more important for
research to have potential value for policy and practice, and 13 per cent felt it was more important for
social policy research to lead to the accumulation of knowledge.

• Social research operates within a wider political con- text. This feature has many aspects and some of
these are mentioned in Chapter 6. For example, much social research is funded by government bodies, and
these tend to reflect the orientation of the government of the day. This will mean that certain research
issues are somewhat more likely to receive financial support than others. Further, for research supported
by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the major funding body for UK social science
research, prospective applicants are supposed to demonstrate how potential users of the research will be
involved or engaged if the research receives financial support. The notion of a ‘user’ is capable of being
interpreted in a number of different ways, but it is likely to be more straightforward for an applicant to
demonstrate the involvement of users when research has a more applied focus. In other words, the
stipulation that users must be involved could be taken to give a slight advantage to research with a focus
on practice.

• The training and personal values of the researcher cannot be ignored. They form a component of the
context of social research methods in that they may influence the research area, the research questions,
and the methods employed to investigate these. Our experiences and our interests frequently have some
influence on the issues we research. As academic social researchers, the issues that interest us have to
connect to the wider disciplines of the social sciences. An example referred to in Chapter 2 is O’Reilly’s
(2000) study of British expatriates living on Spain’s Costa Del Sol. The issue was of interest to her because
she and her partner were planning to live there them- selves. This clearly constitutes a personal interest,
but it is not exclusively so, because she used the topic as a lens for raising issues about transnational
migra- tion, an issue that has been of great interest to social scientists in recent years. I also mention in
Chapter 2 my own interest in the ways in which social science research is reported in the mass media.
This grew out of a wounding experience reported in Haslam and Bryman (1994), which led me to develop
an interest in the issue more generally, to read a great deal of the literature on the reporting of both
science and social science in the media, and to develop it into a research project. Also, social researchers,
as a result of their training and sometimes from personal prefer- ences that build up, frequently develop
attachments to, or at least preferences for, certain research methods and approaches. One of the reasons
why I try to cover a wide range of research methods in this book is because I am convinced that it is
import- ant for practising and prospective researchers to be familiar with a diversity of methods and how
to implement them. The development of methodological preferences carries the risk of researchers
becoming blinkered and restricted in what they know, but it is undoubtedly the case that such preferences
often do emerge and have implications for the conduct of research.

It is impossible to arrive at an exhaustive list of factors that are relevant to this section, but it is hoped that
the discussion above will provide a flavour of the ways in which the conduct of social research and the
choice of research methods are not hermetically sealed off from wider influences.

The nature and process of social research 7

8
The nature and process of social research

Elements of the process of social research

In this section and the rest of this chapter, I will introduce what I think are the main elements of most
research projects. It is common for writers of textbooks on social research methods to compile flow charts
of the research process, and I am not immune to this temptation, as you will see from, for example, Figures
2.1, 8.1, and 17.1! At this point, I am not going to try to sequence the vari- ous stages or elements of the
research process, as the sequencing varies somewhat according to different re- search strategies and
approaches. All I want to do at this juncture is to introduce some of the main elements—in other words,
elements that are common to all or most varieties of social research. Some of them have already been
touched on in the previous section and all of them will be addressed further and in more detail in later
chapters.

Literature review
The existing literature represents an important element in all research. When we have alighted upon a
topic or issue that interests us, we must read further to determine a number of things. We need to know:

• what is already known about the topic;

• what concepts and theories have been applied to the

topic;
 • what research methods have been applied to the topic;
• what controversies about the topic and how it is studied exist;
• what clashes of evidence (if any) exist;
• who the key contributors to research on the topic are.

Many topics have a rich tradition of research, so it is un- likely that many people, such as students
doing an under- graduate or postgraduate Master’s dissertation, will be able to conduct an
exhaustive review of the literature in such areas. What is crucial is that you establish and read the
key books and articles and some of the main figures who have written in the field. As I suggest in
Chapter 5, it is crucial that you know what is known, so that you cannot be accused of not doing
your homework and therefore of naively going over old ground. Also, being able to link your own
research questions, findings, and discussion to the existing literature is an important and

useful way of demonstrating the credibility and contribu- tion of your research. However, as will become
clear from reading Chapter 5, a literature review is not simply a summary of the literature that has been
read. The writ- ten literature review is expected to be critical. This does not necessarily mean that you are
expected to be highly critical of the authors you read, but it does mean that you are supposed to assess the
significance of their work and how each item fits into the narrative about the literature that you construct
when writing a literature review.

Concepts and theories

Concepts are the way that we make sense of the social world. They are essentially labels that we give to
aspects of the social world that seem to have common features that strike us as significant. As outlined in
Chapter 7, the social sciences have a strong tradition of concepts, many of which have become part of the
language of everyday life. Concepts such as bureaucracy, power, social control, status, charisma, labour
process, cultural capital (see Research in focus 1.1 for an example using this concept), McDonaldization,
alienation, and so on are very much part of the theoretical edifice that generations of social scientists have
constructed. Concepts are a key ingredi- ent of theories. Indeed, it is almost impossible to imagine a theory
that did not have at least one concept embedded in it.

Concepts serve several purposes in the conduct of social research. They are important to how we organize
and signal to intended audiences our research interests. They help us to think about and be more
disciplined about what it is we want to find out about and at the same time help with the organization of
our research findings. In the section on ‘The context of social research methods’ it was noted briefly that
the relationship be- tween theory and research is often depicted as involving a choice between theories
driving the research process in all its phases and theories as a product of the research process. This is
invariably depicted as the contrast be- tween respectively deductive and inductive approaches to the
relationship between theory and research and is something that will be expanded upon in Chapter 2.
Unsurprisingly, this contrast has implications for concepts. Concepts may be viewed as something we
start out

with and that represent key areas around which data are collected in an investigation. In other words, we
might collect data in order to shed light on a concept or more likely several concepts and how they are
connected. This is the approach taken in the investigation reported in Research in focus 1.1. The
alternative view is that con- cepts are outcomes of research. According to this second view, concepts help
us to reflect upon and organize the data that we collect. Of course, these are not mutually exclusive
positions. In research, we often start out with some key concepts that help us to orient to our subject
matter but, as a result of collecting data and interpreting them, we possibly revise those concepts, or new
ones emerge through our reflections.
One of the reasons why familiarity with the existing literature in a research area (the issue covered in the
previous section) is so important is that it alerts us to

some of the main concepts that past researchers have employed and how useful or limited those concepts
have been in helping to unravel the main issues. Research in focus 1.1 provides an example of this
tendency in that the concept of cultural capital is employed for its possible insights into the process of
students being accepted or rejected when applying for entry to Oxford University. Even when we are
reading the literature solely as con- sumers of research—for example, when writing an essay—knowing
what the key concepts are, who is responsible for them, and what controversies there are (if any)
surrounding them can be crucial.

Research questions
Research questions have been mentioned in passing on a couple of occasions, and they are implicit in
some of

The nature and process of social research 9

Key concept 1.1

What are research questions?
A research question is a question that provides an explicit statement of what it is the researcher wants to know about.
A research purpose can be presented as a statement (for example, ‘I want to find out whether (or
why) . . .’), but a question forces the researcher to be more explicit about what is to be investigated. A research
question must have a question mark at the end of it or else it is not a question. It must be interrogatory. Research in
focus 1.1 provides an example of a study with several research questions. A hypothesis is in a sense a form of
research question, but it is not stated as a question and provides an anticipation of what will be found out.

Denscombe (2010) has provided a helpful list of types of research question. This list first appeared in an earlier
edition, which has been embellished by White (2009). The following types of research question are proposed by
Denscombe:

1. Predicting an outcome (does y happen under circumstances a and b?).

2. Explaining causes and consequences of a phenomenon (is y affected by x or is y a consequence of x?). 3. Evaluating
a phenomenon (does y exhibit the benefits that it is claimed to have?).
4. Describing a phenomenon (what is y like or what forms does y assume?).
5. Developing good practice (how can we improve y?).
6. Empowerment (how can we enhance the lives of those we research?).

White (2009) is uneasy about Denscombe’s last category, arguing that an emphasis on political motives of this kind
can impede the conduct of high-quality research. To some extent, this difference of opinion can be attributed to
differences in viewpoint about the purposes of research highlighted in the section on ‘The context of social research
methods’. Rather than the sixth type of research question above, White proposes an alternative:

7. Comparison (do a and b differ in respect of x?).

There are many ways that research questions can be categorized, and it is also difficult to arrive at an exhaustive list,
but these seven types provide a rough indication of the possibilities as well as drawing attention to a controversy
about the wider goals of research.