Sociological Methodology, Volume 34, 2004: v. 34 - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

This volume of "Sociological Methodology" includes a wide range of lively papers offering fresh solutions to old and new problems and challenges in sociological research. The book introduces innovative solutions to both new and old problems with the key analytic tasks in empirical sociological research - measurement and analysis. It also provides important contributions to a wide range of sociological research methods.

Contraportada

This volume of Sociological Methodology includes a wide range of lively papers offering fresh solutions to old and new problems and challenges in sociological research:

• Sociologists and historians frequently tread the same ground, perhaps with different intentions, and often with reservations about each others’ research techniques. What are appropriate methods and methodological strategies for historical sociological research? Should those methods and strategies be the same as the methods and strategies of sociological history? If not the same, then how should they differ? Four lively and candid papers in this volume consider and debate these and related questions.


• The modern world is time-obsessed. Sociologists, sociological theories, and sociological methods all share this preoccupation with time. Sociology offers methods and measures for examining time on ratio scales (e.g. years of age), interval scales (e.g. periods and cohorts), ordinal scales (e.g. the sequence of events) and nominal scales (e.g. historical eras). Three papers in this volume consider new strategies and methods for measuring time in population surveys and for analyzing time data from survey or non-survey sources.


• Space is as fundamental to the social world as to the physical universe. One paper considers new methods for analyzing the distribution of people and events in space.


• Network analysis holds great promise for the conceptualization and empirical study of social structures and social processes. But network analysis requires methods that are suited to its distinctive conceptualization of its subject matter. Two chapters in this volume contribute new measurement and analysis methods for network analysis.


• The distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods is traditional, but it becomes less and less useful as methods appear for quantitative analysis of qualitative data. One paper in this volume offers new methods for quantifying qualitative data.

In short, Sociological Methodology 2004 contains important contributions to a wide range of sociological research methods.