According to Karl Popper, what distinguishes a scientific statement from a non-scientific one?

It is capable of being falsified by observation

It is derived inductively from facts

It has been verified by many observations

It is accepted by the scientific community

Gunnar Myrdal's recommendation for dealing with the problem of values in social research was to:

State the researcher's value premises explicitly

Eliminate all values through statistical techniques

Rely only on official statistics

State the researcher's value premises explicitly

Study only societies other than one's own

Assertion (A): Grounded theory is an inductive strategy. Reason (R): In grounded theory, concepts and propositions are developed from the data rather than deduced from an existing theory before fieldwork. Choose the correct option.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

Which of the following is NOT one of Goode and Hatt's criteria for a usable hypothesis?

It should be proved true before data collection

It should be conceptually clear

It should have empirical referents

It should be related to available techniques

Conceptualising Social Reality and Formulating Research Design

Unit 2 of the syllabus, Research Methodology and Methods, has four blocks. This chapter covers the first two. 'Conceptualizing Social Reality' asks what kind of knowledge social science can have at all — philosophy of science, scientific method and epistemology, hermeneutic traditions, objectivity and reflexivity, and the ethics and politics of research. 'Formulating Research Design' moves to the researcher's workbench — reading research, data and documents; induction and deduction; fact, concept and theory; and hypotheses, research questions and objectives. The next chapter takes the methods and techniques themselves.

1. Philosophy of science: from positivism to paradigms

Sociology was born claiming the authority of science. Auguste Comte named it and held that knowledge passes through the theological, metaphysical and positive stages, the last seeking laws from observed facts. Durkheim's rules carried this positivism into method. The twentieth century complicated it. Karl Popper argued that no number of confirming observations proves a universal law, while one contrary observation can refute it; so the mark of a scientific statement is falsifiability, and science advances by bold conjectures and attempted refutations. Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), showed that scientists ordinarily work within a paradigm — a shared set of exemplary problems, methods and assumptions — doing normal science until accumulating anomalies produce a crisis and a paradigm shift; rival paradigms are partly incommensurable. Imre Lakatos proposed research programmes with a protected hard core, and Paul Feyerabend, in Against Method, argued that the only principle that does not inhibit progress is 'anything goes'.

Epistemological position	What counts as knowledge of society	Typical method
Positivism	Observable regularities, explained by general laws, as in natural science	Survey, statistics, hypothesis testing
Interpretivism	The meanings actors give to action, understood from inside	Ethnography, in-depth interviews, textual interpretation
Critical theory and critical realism	Underlying structures and mechanisms that may not be directly observable, studied with an interest in emancipation	Historical-structural analysis, mixed methods

2. Hermeneutic traditions, objectivity and reflexivity

The hermeneutic tradition begins with Schleiermacher's rules for interpreting scripture and with Wilhelm Dilthey, who separated the Geisteswissenschaften (human or cultural sciences), which seek understanding (verstehen) of lived experience, from the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences), which seek causal explanation (erklären). Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method, 1960) argued that understanding always starts from prejudices — pre-judgements given by tradition — and proceeds as a fusion of horizons between interpreter and text. The hermeneutic circle names the movement by which the parts are understood through the whole and the whole through the parts. Weber's verstehen and Geertz's thick description are this tradition's sociological heirs.

Objectivity is contested rather than abandoned. Weber separated value-relevance in choosing a problem from value-freedom in reaching conclusions. Gunnar Myrdal (Objectivity in Social Research, 1969) held that value-free research is impossible and that the honest course is to state one's value premises explicitly. Reflexivity turns the research gaze on the researcher: Alvin Gouldner, in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970), called for a reflexive sociology aware of its own domain assumptions, and Bourdieu asked sociologists to objectify their own position in the academic field. Feminist standpoint theorists (Dorothy Smith, Sandra Harding) added that knowledge produced from the lives of the marginalised can be less partial, not more.

3. Ethics and politics of research

Informed consent — participants know the purpose, risks and their right to withdraw, and agree freely. Covert research is justified only exceptionally.
Confidentiality and anonymity — identities are protected in data storage and in publication.
Avoiding harm — physical, psychological, social and legal; the researcher's responsibility extends beyond the fieldwork.
Honesty in reporting — no fabrication, falsification or plagiarism, and acknowledgement of sponsors.

📖 The cases that made the rules

Stanley Milgram's obedience experiments (1963) deceived subjects into believing they were giving electric shocks; Laud Humphreys's Tearoom Trade (1970) observed men covertly and traced them to their homes; Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment (1971) was stopped after guards abused prisoners. On the political side, Project Camelot (1964–65), a US Army-funded study of insurgency in Latin America, was cancelled amid protest, raising the question of who sponsors research and to what end. Each case is a standing reference in debates on consent, deception and the uses of knowledge.

4. Formulating research design: induction and deduction, fact-concept-theory, hypotheses

A research design is the plan that links a question to evidence. It begins with reading existing research, data sets and documents critically — asking who produced them, for what purpose and with what categories — and then chooses a logic. Deduction reasons from a general theory to a specific hypothesis that is tested against data (the logic of the survey and the experiment). Induction reasons from specific observations to general patterns (the logic of ethnography; grounded theory, developed by Glaser and Strauss in 1967, builds theory systematically from data). In practice research cycles between the two, a movement Walter Wallace pictured as the 'wheel of science'.

Fact, concept and theory depend on one another. A fact is an empirically verifiable observation; a concept is an abstraction that names a class of facts (status, anomie, dominant caste); a theory is a set of logically related propositions explaining relations among concepts. Goode and Hatt, in Methods in Social Research (1952), showed that theory defines which facts are relevant and summarises them, while new facts initiate, reformulate, reject or clarify theory. Concepts must be operationalised — given indicators by which they can be measured. A hypothesis is a tentative, testable statement of relationship between two or more variables; a research question frames what the study seeks to answer where no firm prediction is possible; objectives state concretely what the study will do. Goode and Hatt required a usable hypothesis to be conceptually clear, empirically referable, specific, related to available techniques and related to a body of theory.

Term	Meaning
Independent variable	The presumed cause, varied or observed first
Dependent variable	The presumed effect
Null hypothesis	States no relationship; the statistical test asks whether it can be rejected
Validity / reliability	Whether a measure captures what it claims to / whether it gives consistent results on repetition

Key takeaways

Positivism seeks laws from observation; Popper replaces verification with falsifiability; Kuhn describes normal science within paradigms punctuated by paradigm shifts.
Hermeneutics, from Dilthey to Gadamer, separates understanding from explanation and treats interpretation as a circle and a fusion of horizons.
Objectivity is handled by Weber's value-freedom, Myrdal's explicit value premises and Gouldner's and Bourdieu's reflexivity.
Research ethics rest on informed consent, confidentiality, avoiding harm and honest reporting; Milgram, Humphreys, Zimbardo and Project Camelot are the classic cautionary cases.
Deduction tests hypotheses derived from theory; induction builds theory from data; a usable hypothesis is clear, empirically referable, specific and tied to theory and technique.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

According to Karl Popper, what distinguishes a scientific statement from a non-scientific one?
1. It is capable of being falsified by observation
2. It is derived inductively from facts
3. It has been verified by many observations
4. It is accepted by the scientific community
Show answer
Answer: A — It is capable of being falsified by observation
Popper's criterion of demarcation is falsifiability: a scientific theory forbids certain observations and so can be refuted. Acceptance by a community is closer to Kuhn's account of paradigms.
In Kuhn's account, the phase in which scientists solve puzzles within an accepted framework is called:
1. Research programme
2. Conjecture and refutation
3. Normal science
4. Revolutionary science
Show answer
Answer: C — Normal science
Normal science is puzzle-solving within a paradigm; revolutionary science follows crisis. Research programmes are Lakatos's; conjecture and refutation is Popper's.
Who distinguished the Geisteswissenschaften from the Naturwissenschaften on the ground that the former seek understanding and the latter explanation?
1. Karl Popper
2. Auguste Comte
3. Wilhelm Dilthey
4. Emile Durkheim
Show answer
Answer: C — Wilhelm Dilthey
Dilthey grounded the human sciences in the understanding of lived experience, distinct from causal explanation in natural science — the division Weber later tried to bridge.
Gunnar Myrdal's recommendation for dealing with the problem of values in social research was to:
1. Eliminate all values through statistical techniques
2. Rely only on official statistics
3. State the researcher's value premises explicitly
4. Study only societies other than one's own
Show answer
Answer: C — State the researcher's value premises explicitly
Myrdal held that value-free social science is an illusion because valuations enter at every stage; the remedy is to make value premises explicit so that readers can judge their influence.
Which of the following studies are standard references in debates on research ethics? Select all that apply.
1. Milgram's obedience experiments
2. Durkheim's Suicide
3. Humphreys's Tearoom Trade
4. Project Camelot
Show answer
Answer: A — Milgram's obedience experiments; C — Humphreys's Tearoom Trade; D — Project Camelot
Milgram (deception and distress), Humphreys (covert observation and tracing subjects) and Project Camelot (military sponsorship) are the classic ethics cases. Durkheim's Suicide used official statistics and raises no comparable ethical issue.
Assertion (A): Grounded theory is an inductive strategy. Reason (R): In grounded theory, concepts and propositions are developed from the data rather than deduced from an existing theory before fieldwork. Choose the correct option.
1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true
Show answer
Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Glaser and Strauss's grounded theory moves from data to theory through coding and constant comparison; that direction of reasoning is exactly what makes it inductive.
A measuring instrument gives the same results every time it is administered to the same group, but does not actually measure the concept it claims to. It is:
1. Neither valid nor reliable
2. Reliable but not valid
3. Valid but not reliable
4. Both valid and reliable
Show answer
Answer: B — Reliable but not valid
Consistency on repetition is reliability; measuring the intended concept is validity. A measure can be consistently wrong, so reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.
Which one-word term did Kuhn use for the shared framework of exemplary problems, methods and assumptions within which normal science is done?
Numerical answer — type the value.
Show answer
Answer: paradigm
A paradigm defines legitimate problems and methods for a scientific community; when anomalies accumulate, a crisis may lead to a paradigm shift, as from Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy.
Which of the following is NOT one of Goode and Hatt's criteria for a usable hypothesis?
1. It should be proved true before data collection
2. It should be conceptually clear
3. It should have empirical referents
4. It should be related to available techniques
Show answer
Answer: A — It should be proved true before data collection
A hypothesis is by definition tentative and is tested by data; requiring it to be proved beforehand defeats its purpose. Clarity, empirical referents, specificity, relation to techniques and relation to theory are Goode and Hatt's criteria.
The call for a 'reflexive sociology' aware of its own domain assumptions was made in which book?
1. Methods in Social Research
2. The Sociological Imagination
3. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology
4. Truth and Method
Show answer
Answer: C — The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology
Alvin Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970) criticised Parsonian functionalism's domain assumptions and proposed reflexive sociology. The Sociological Imagination (1959) is C. Wright Mills's; Truth and Method is Gadamer's.