Essay on Methods and Techniques of Social Research – Social research is systematic and scientific.
It is not just guesswork and imaginative work. Guesswork, intuition, and common sense all have an important part to play in sociological research, but they cannot produce reliable evidence on their own. Reliable evidence can be produced only by using a research methodology.
“A methodology is a system of rules, principles and procedures that guides scientific investigation”.
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The sociologist is interested in what happens in social world and why it happens. Research methodology provides guidelines for collecting evidence about what takes place and for explaining why it takes place. These findings can be checked and verified by other researchers.
The heart of the research process constitutes the actual procedures that sociologists use to collect their facts. Sociologists use a variety of research methods, systematic techniques for gathering and analysing facts about theories or new phenomena.
The following section gives us an overview and examples of the four most common research methods used in sociology today: (i) Observation, (ii) Questionnaire, (iii) Interview, and (iv) The Social Survey Method. Each of these has its advantages and its drawbacks, and the success of the research project depends largely on the researcher’s choice of an appropriate method.