C h a p t e r O v e r v i e w
Social scientific inquiry is an
interplay of theory and research,
logic and observation, induction
and deduction—and of the
fundamental frames of reference
known as paradigms.
Introduction
Some Social Science Paradigms
Macrotheory and
Microtheory
Early Positivism
Social Darwinism
Conflict Paradigm
Symbolic Interactionism
Ethnomethodology
Structural Functionalism
Feminist Paradigms
Critical Race Theory
Rational Objectivity
Reconsidered
Elements of Social Theory
Two Logical Systems Revisited
The Traditional Model
of Science
Deductive and Inductive
Reasoning: A Case
Illustration
A Graphic Contrast
Deductive Theory Construction
Getting Started
Constructing Your Theory
An Example of Deductive
Theory: Distributive Justice
Inductive Theory Construction
An Example of Inductive
Theory: Why Do People
Smoke Marijuana?
The Links between Theory
and Research
Research Ethics and Theory
C h a p t e r 2
Paradigms,Theory,
and Social Research
Introduction
Certain restaurants in the United States are fond
of conducting political polls among their diners
whenever an election is in the offing. Some take
these polls very seriously because of their uncanny
history of predicting winners. Some movie
theaters have achieved similar success by offering
popcorn in bags picturing either donkeys or elephants.
Years ago, granaries in the Midwest offered
farmers a chance to indicate their political preferences
through the bags of grain they selected.
Such idiosyncratic ways of determining
trends, though interesting, all follow the same
pattern over time: They work for a while, and
then they fail. Moreover, we can’t predict when
or why they will fail.
These unusual polling techniques point to
a significant shortcoming of “research findings”
that are based only on the observation of patterns.
Unless we can offer logical explanations for such
patterns, the regularities we’ve observed may
be mere flukes, chance occurrences. If you flip
coins long enough, you’ll get ten heads in a row.
Scientists might adapt a street expression to describe
this situation: “Patterns happen.”
Logical explanations are what theories seek
to provide. Theories function in three ways in
research. First, they prevent our being taken in
by flukes. If we can’t explain why Ma’s Diner has
so successfully predicted elections, we run the
risk of supporting a fluke. If we know why it has
happened, we can anticipate whether or not it
will work in the future.
Second, theories make sense of observed patterns
in a way that can suggest other possibilities.
If we understand the reasons why broken homes
produce more juvenile delinquency than intact
homes do—lack of supervision, for example—we
can take effective action, such as establishing
after-school youth programs.
Third, theories shape and direct research efforts,
pointing toward likely discoveries through
empirical observation. If you were looking for
your lost keys on a dark street, you could whip
your flashlight around randomly, hoping to
chance upon the errant keys—or you could use
your memory of where you had been and limit
your search to more-likely areas. Theories, by
analogy, direct researchers’ flashlights where
they will most likely observe interesting patterns
of social life.
This is not to say that all social science research
is tightly intertwined with social theory.
Sometimes social scientists undertake investigations
simply to discover the state of affairs, such
as an evaluation of whether an innovative social
program is working or a poll to determine which
candidate is winning a political race. Similarly,
descriptive ethnographies, such as anthropological
accounts of preliterate societies, produce
valuable information and insights in and of
themselves. However, even studies such as these
often go beyond pure description to ask “why.”
Theory relates directly to “why” questions.
This chapter explores some specific ways
theory and research work hand in hand during
the adventure of inquiry into social life. We’ll
begin by looking at some fundamental frames of
reference, called paradigms, that underlie social
theories and inquiry. Whereas theories seek to
explain, paradigms provide ways of looking. In
and of themselves, paradigms don’t explain anything;
however, they provide logical frameworks
within which theories are created. As you’ll see
in this chapter, theories and paradigms intertwine
in the search for meaning in social life.
Some Social Science Paradigms
There is usually more than one way to make
sense of things. In daily life, for example, liberals
and conservatives often explain the same
phenomenon—teenagers using guns at school,
for example—quite differently. So might the parents
and teenagers themselves. But underlying
these different explanations, or theories, are
paradigms—the fundamental models or frames
of reference we use to organize our observations
and reasoning.
paradigm  A model or frame of reference
through which to observe and understand.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 33
Paradigms are often difficult to recognize
as such, because they are so implicit, assumed,
taken for granted. They seem more like “the
way things are” than like one possible point of
view among many. Here’s an illustration of what
I mean.
Where do you stand on the issue of human
rights? Do you feel that individual human beings
are sacred? Are they “endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights,” as asserted by
the U.S. Declaration of Independence? Are there
some things that no government should do to
its citizens?
Let’s get more concrete. In wartime, civilians
are sometimes used as human shields to protect
military targets. Sometimes they are impressed
into slave labor or even used as mobile blood
banks for military hospitals. How about organized
programs of rape and murder in support of
“ethnic cleansing”?
Those of us who are horrified and incensed
by such practices probably find it difficult to
see our individualistic paradigm—represented
in concepts like human rights, liberty, human
dignity—as only one possible point of view
among many. However, many cultures in today’s
world regard the Western (and particularly U.S.)
commitment to the sanctity of the individual
as bizarre. Historically, it has decidedly been a
minority viewpoint.
Although many Asian countries, for example,
now subscribe to some “rights” that belong
to individuals, those are balanced against the
“rights” of families, organizations, and the society
at large. Criticized for violating human rights,
Asian leaders often point to high crime rates and
social disorganization in Western societies as the
cost of what they see as our radical “cult of the
individual.”
I won’t try to change your point of view on
individual human dignity, nor have I given up
my own. It’s useful, however, to recognize that
our views and feelings in this matter result from
the paradigm we have been socialized into. The
sanctity of the individual is not an objective fact
of nature; it is a point of view, a paradigm. All of
us operate within many such paradigms.
When we recognize that we are operating
within a paradigm, two benefits accrue. First,
we can better understand the seemingly bizarre
views and actions of others who are operating
from a different paradigm. Second, at times we
can profit from stepping outside our paradigm.
Suddenly we can see new ways of seeing and
explaining things. We can’t do that as long as we
mistake our paradigm for reality.
Paradigms play a fundamental role in science,
just as they do in daily life. Thomas Kuhn (1970)
draws attention to the role of paradigms in the
history of the natural sciences. Kuhn’s classic
book on this subject is titled, appropriately
enough, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Major scientific paradigms have included such
fundamental viewpoints as Copernicus’s conception
of the earth moving around the sun (instead
of the reverse), Darwin’s theory of evolution,
Newtonian mechanics, and Einstein’s relativity.
Which scientific theories “make sense” depends
on which paradigm scientists are maintaining.
Although we sometimes think of science
as developing gradually over time, marked by
important discoveries and inventions, Kuhn
says that scientific paradigms typically become
entrenched, resisting substantial change. Thus,
theories and research alike tend to follow a given
fundamental direction. Eventually, however, as
the shortcomings of a particular paradigm become
obvious, a new one emerges and supplants
the old. The seemingly natural view that the rest
of the universe revolves around the earth, for
example, compelled astronomers to devise ever
more elaborate ways to account for the motions
of heavenly bodies that they actually observed.
Eventually, however, the shortcomings of that
paradigm would become obvious in the form of
observation that violated the expectations suggested
by the paradigm. These are often referred
to as anomalies, events that fall outside expected
or standard patterns. For a long time in American
society, as elsewhere, a fundamental belief
system regarding sex and gender held that only
men were capable of higher learning. In that
situation, every demonstrably learned woman
was an “anomalous challenge” to the traditional
view. When the old paradigm was sufficiently
challenged, Kuhn suggested, a new paradigm
would emerge and supplant the old one.
Social scientists have developed several
paradigms for understanding social behavior.
The fate of supplanted paradigms in the social
sciences, however, has differed from what
Kuhn observed in the natural sciences. Natural
34 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Some scholars have taken a more intimate
view of social life. Microtheory deals with issues
of social life at the level of individuals and
small groups. Dating behavior, jury deliberations,
and student–faculty interactions are apt subjects
for a microtheoretical perspective. Such studies
often come close to the realm of psychology, but
whereas psychologists typically focus on what
goes on inside humans, social scientists study
what goes on between them.
The basic distinction between macro- and
microtheory cuts across the other paradigms
we’ll examine. Some of them, such as symbolic
interactionism and ethnomethodology, are often
limited to the microlevel. Others, such as the
conflict paradigm, can be pursued at either the
micro- or the macrolevel.
Early Positivism
When the French philosopher Auguste Comte
(1798–1857) coined the term sociologie in 1822,
he launched an intellectual adventure that continues
to unfold today. Most importantly, Comte
identified society as a phenomenon that can be
studied scientifically. (Initially, he wanted to label
his enterprise social physics, but that term was
taken over by another scholar.)
Prior to Comte’s time, society simply was.
To the extent that people recognized different
kinds of societies or changes in society over time,
religious paradigms generally predominated in
explanations of such differences. People often
saw the state of social affairs as a reflection of
God’s will. Alternatively, people were challenged
to create a “City of God” on Earth to replace sin
and godlessness.
Comte separated his inquiry from religion.
He felt that religious belief could be replaced
with scientific study and objectivity. His “positive
philosophy” postulated three stages of history.
A theological stage predominated throughout
the world until about 1300 c.e. During the next
500 years, a metaphysical stage replaced God
with philosophical ideas such as “nature” and
“natural law.”
Comte felt he was launching the third stage
of history, in which science would replace religion
and metaphysics by basing knowledge on
observations through the five senses rather than
on belief or logic alone. Comte felt that society
could be observed and then explained logically
scientists generally believe that the succession
from one paradigm to another represents progress
from a false view to a true one. For example,
no modern astronomer believes that the sun
revolves around the earth.
In the social sciences, on the other hand,
theoretical paradigms may gain or lose popularity,
but they are seldom discarded altogether. The
paradigms of the social sciences offer a variety of
views, each of which offers insights the others
lack and ignores aspects of social life that the
others reveal.
Ultimately, paradigms are neither true nor
false; as ways of looking, they are only more or
less useful. Each of the paradigms we are about
to examine offers a different way of looking at
human social life. Each makes its own assumptions
about the nature of social reality. As we’ll
see, each can open up new understandings, suggest
different kinds of theories, and inspire different
kinds of research.
Macrotheory and Microtheory
Let’s begin with a difference concerning focus, a
difference that stretches across many of the paradigms
we’ll discuss. Some social theorists focus
their attention on society at large, or at least
on large portions of it. Topics of study for such
macrotheories include the struggle between economic
classes in a society, international relations,
or the interrelations among major institutions in
society, such as government, religion, and family.
Macrotheory deals with large, aggregate entities
of society or even whole societies. (Note that
some researchers prefer to limit the macrolevel
to whole societies, using the term mesotheory
for an intermediate level between macro and
micro: studying organizations, communities, and
perhaps social categories such as gender.)
macrotheory  A theory aimed at understanding
the “big picture” of institutions, whole societies,
and the interactions among societies. Karl Marx’s
examination of the class struggle is an example of
macrotheory.
microtheory  A theory aimed at understanding
social life at the intimate level of individuals and
their interactions. Examining how the play behavior
of girls differs from that of boys would be an
example of microtheory.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 35
popular view in Spencer’s time, although it was
not universally accepted.
This excerpt from a social science methods
textbook published in 1950 illustrates the longterm
popularity of the notion that things are
getting better and better.
The use of atomic energy as an explosive
offers most interesting prospects in the civil
as in the military field. Atomic explosives
may be used for transforming the landscape.
They may be used for blasting great holes and
trenches in the earth, which can be transformed
into lakes and canals. In this way,
it may become possible to produce lakes in
the midst of deserts, and thus convert some
of the worst places in the world into oases
and fertile countries. It may also be possible
to make the Arctic regions comfortable by
providing immense and constant sources of
heat. The North Pole might be converted into
a holiday resort.
(Gee 1950: 339–40)
Quite aside from the widespread disenchantment
with nuclear power, contemporary concerns
over global warming and the threat of rising sea
levels illustrate a growing consciousness that
“progress” is often a two-edged sword. Clearly,
most of us operate today from a different
paradigm.
Conflict Paradigm
One of Spencer’s contemporaries took a sharply
different view of the evolution of capitalism. Karl
Marx (1818–1883) suggested that social behavior
could best be seen as a process of conflict: the
attempt to dominate others and to avoid being
dominated. Marx’s conflict paradigm focused primarily
on the struggle among economic classes.
Specifically, he examined the way capitalism
produced the oppression of workers by the owners
of industry. Marx’s interest in this topic did
not end with analytical study; he was also ideologically
committed to restructuring economic
relations to end the oppression he observed.
and rationally and that sociology could be as
scientific as biology or physics.
Comte’s view came to form the foundation
for subsequent development of the social sciences.
In his optimism for the future, he coined
the term positivism to describe this scientific approach,
believing that scientific truths could be
positively verified through empirical observations
and the logical analysis of what was observed.
In recent decades, the idea of positivism has
come under serious challenge, as we’ll see later
in this discussion.
Social Darwinism
Comte’s major work on his positivist philosophy
was published between 1830 and 1842. One year
after the publication of the first volume in that
series, a young British naturalist set sail on HMS
Beagle, beginning a cruise that would profoundly
affect the way we think of ourselves and our
place in the world.
In 1859, when Charles Darwin published
On the Origin of Species, he set forth the idea of
evolution through natural selection. Simply
put, the theory states that as a species coped
with its environment, those individuals most
suited to success would be the most likely to
survive long enough to reproduce. Those less
well suited would perish. Over time the traits
of the survivor would come to dominate the
species. As later Darwinians put it, species
evolved into different forms through the
“survival of the fittest.”
As scholars began to study society analytically,
it was perhaps inevitable that they would
apply Darwin’s ideas to changes in the structure
of human affairs. The journey from simple
hunting-and-gathering tribes to large, industrial
civilizations was easily seen as the evolution of
progressively “fitter” forms of society.
Among others, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
concluded that society was getting better and
better. Indeed, his native England had profited
greatly from the development of industrial
capitalism, and Spencer favored a system of free
competition, which he felt would ensure continued
progress and improvement. Spencer may
even have coined the phrase “the survival of the
fittest.” He certainly believed that this principle
was a primary force shaping the nature of society.
Social Darwinism or social evolution was a
positivism  Introduced by Auguste Comte, this
philosophical system is grounded on the rational
proof/disproof of scientific assertions; assumes a
knowable, objective reality.
36 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
The contrast between the views set forth
by Spencer and Marx indicates the influence of
paradigms on research. These fundamental viewpoints
shape the kinds of observations we are
likely to make, the sorts of facts we seek to discover,
and the conclusions we draw from those
facts. Paradigms also help determine which concepts
we see as relevant and important. Whereas
economic classes were essential to Marx’s analysis,
for example, Spencer was more interested
in the relationship between individuals and
society—particularly the amount of freedom individuals
had to surrender for society to function.
The conflict paradigm proved to be fruitful
outside the realm of purely economic analyses.
Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was especially
interested in small-scale conflict, in contrast to
the class struggle that interested Marx. Simmel
noted, for example, that conflicts among members
of a tightly knit group tended to be more
intense than those among people who did not
share feelings of belonging and intimacy.
In an interesting application of the conflict
paradigm, when Michel Chossudovsky’s (1997)
analysis of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and World Bank suggested that these two international
organizations were increasing global
poverty rather than eradicating it, he directed
his attention to the competing interests involved
in the process. In theory, the chief interest being
served should be that of the poor people of the
world or perhaps the impoverished nations. The
researcher’s inquiry, however, identified many
other interested parties who benefited: the commercial
lending institutions who made loans in
conjunction with the IMF and World Bank, as
well as multinational corporations seeking cheap
labor and markets for their goods, for example.
Chossudovsky concluded that the interests of
the banks and corporations tended to take precedence
over those of the poor people. Moreover,
he found that many policies were weakening
the economies in developing nations, as well as
undermining democratic governments.
Although the conflict paradigm often focuses
on class, gender, and ethnic struggles, we could
appropriately apply it whenever different groups
have competing interests. For example, we could
fruitfully apply it to understanding relations
among different departments in an organization,
fraternity and sorority rush weeks, or student–
faculty–administrative relations, to name just
a few.
Symbolic Interactionism
In his overall focus, Georg Simmel differed
from both Spencer and Marx. Whereas they
were chiefly concerned with macrotheoretical
issues—large institutions and whole societies in
their evolution through the course of history—
Simmel was more interested in how individuals
interacted with one another. In other words, his
thinking and research took a “micro” turn, thus
calling attention to aspects of social reality that
are invisible in Marx’s or Spencer’s theory. For
example, he began by examining dyads (groups
of two people) and triads (groups of three).
Similarly, he wrote about “the web of group
affiliations” (Wolff 1950).
Simmel was one of the first European sociologists
to influence the development of U.S.
sociology. His focus on the nature of interactions
particularly influenced George Herbert Mead
(1863–1931), Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929),
and others who took up the cause and developed
it into a powerful paradigm for research.
Cooley, for example, introduced the idea of
the “primary group,” those intimate associates
with whom we share a sense of belonging, such
as our family and friends. Cooley also wrote of
the “looking-glass self” we form by looking into
the reactions of people around us. If everyone
treats us as beautiful, for example, we conclude
that we are. Notice how fundamentally the concepts
and theoretical focus inspired by this paradigm
differ from the society-level concerns of
Spencer and Marx.
Mead emphasized the importance of our
human ability to “take the role of the other,”
imagining how others feel and how they might
behave in certain circumstances. As we gain
an idea of how people in general see things,
we develop a sense of what Mead called the
“generalized other” (Strauss 1977).
Mead also showed a special interest in the
role of communications in human affairs. Most
interactions, he felt, revolved around the process
conflict paradigm  A paradigm that views human
behavior as attempts to dominate others or avoid
being dominated by others.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 37
of individuals reaching common understanding
through the use of language and other such systems,
hence the term symbolic interactionism.
This paradigm can lend insights into the
nature of interactions in ordinary social life,
but it can also help us understand unusual
forms of interaction, as when researchers
Robert Emerson, Kerry Ferris, and Carol Gardner
(1998), in a study still relevant today, set out to
understand the nature of “stalking.” Through
interviews with numerous stalking victims,
they came to identify different motivations
among stalkers, stages in the development of a
stalking scenario, how people can recognize if
they are being stalked, and what they can do
about it.
Moving from the topic of stalking, here’s one
way you might apply the symbolic interactionism
paradigm to a less dramatic examination of your
own life. The next time you meet someone
new, pay attention to how you get to know
each other. To begin, what assumptions do you
make about the other person based merely on
appearances, how he or she talks, and the circumstances
under which you’ve met. (“What’s
someone like you doing in a place like this?”)
Then watch how your knowledge of each other
unfolds through the process of interaction.
Notice also any attempts you make to manage
the image you are creating in the other person’s
mind.
Ethnomethodology
Whereas some social scientific paradigms emphasize
the impact of social structure on human
behavior—that is, the effect of norms, values,
control agents, and so forth—other paradigms do
not. Harold Garfinkel, a contemporary sociologist,
claims that people are continually creating
social structure through their actions and interactions—that
they are, in fact, creating their
realities. Thus, when you and your instructor
meet to discuss your term paper, even though
there are myriad expectations about how you
both should act, your conversation will differ
somewhat from any of those that have occurred
before, and how you each act will somewhat
modify your expectations in the future. That is,
discussing your term paper will impact the interactions
each of you have with other professors
and students in the future.
Given the tentativeness of reality in this
view, Garfinkel suggests that people are continuously
trying to make sense of the life they
experience. In a sense, he suggests that everyone
is acting like a social scientist, hence the
term ethnomethodology, or “methodology of the
people.”
How would you approach learning about
people’s expectations and how they make sense
out of their world? One technique ethnomethodologists
use is to break the rules, to violate
people’s expectations. Thus, if you try to talk
to me about your term paper but I keep talking
about football, this might reveal the expectations
you had for my behavior might become apparent.
We might also see how you make sense
out of my behavior. (“Maybe he’s using football
as an analogy for understanding social systems
theory.”)
In another example of ethnomethodology,
Johen Heritage and David Greatbatch (1992)
examined the role of applause in British political
speeches: How did the speakers evoke applause,
and what function did it serve? Research within
the ethnomethodological paradigm has often focused
on communications.
There is no end to the opportunities you
have for trying out the ethnomethodological
paradigm. For instance, the next time you get on
an elevator, don’t face front watching the floor
numbers whip by; that’s the norm, or expected
behavior. Just stand quietly facing the rear. See
how others react to this behavior. Just as important,
notice how you feel about it. If you do
this experiment a few times, you should begin
to develop a feel for the ethnomethodological
paradigm.*
We’ll return to ethnomethodology in
Chapter 10, when we discuss field research. For
now, let’s turn to a very different paradigm.
symbolic interactionism  A paradigm that views
human behavior as the creation of meaning
through social interactions, with those meanings
conditioning subsequent interactions.
*I am grateful to my colleague, Bernard McGrane, for
this experiment. Barney also has his students eat dinner
with their hands, watch TV without turning it on,
and engage in other strangely enlightening behavior
(McGrane 1994).
38 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism, sometimes also known
as social systems theory, has grown out of a notion
introduced by Comte and Spencer: A social
entity, such as an organization or a whole society,
can be viewed as an organism. Like other
organisms, a social system is made up of parts,
each of which contributes to the functioning of
the whole.
By analogy, consider the human body. Each
component—such as the heart, lungs, kidneys,
skin, and brain—has a particular job to do. The
body as a whole cannot survive unless each of
these parts does its job, and none of the parts
can survive except as a part of the whole body.
Or consider an automobile. It is composed of
the tires, the steering wheel, the gas tank, the
spark plugs, and so forth. Each of the parts
serves a function for the whole; taken together,
that system can get us across town. None of the
individual parts would be very useful to us by
itself, however.
The view of society as a social system, then,
looks for the “functions” served by its various
components. Social scientists using the structural
functional paradigm might note that the function
of the police, for example, is to exercise
social control—encouraging people to abide by
the norms of society and bringing to justice those
who do not. Notice, though, that the researchers
could just as reasonably ask what functions
criminals serve in society. Within the functionalist
paradigm, we might say that criminals serve
as job security for the police. In a related observation,
Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) suggested
that crimes and their punishment provide an opportunity
to reaffirm society’s values. By catching
and punishing thieves, we reaffirm our collective
respect for private property.
To get a sense of the structural functional
paradigm, suppose you were interested in explaining
how your college or university works.
You might thumb through the institution’s catalog
and begin assembling a list of the administrators
and support staff (such as the president,
deans, registrar, campus security staff, maintenance
personnel). Then you might figure out
what each of them does and relate their roles
and activities to the chief functions of your college
or university, such as teaching or research.
This way of looking at an institution of higher
learning would clearly suggest a different line
of inquiry than, say, a conflict paradigm, which
might emphasize the clash of interests between
people who have power in the institution and
those who don’t.
People often discuss “functions” in everyday
conversation. Typically, however, the alleged
functions are seldom tested empirically. Some
people argue, for example, that welfare, intended
to help the poor, actually harms them in a variety
of ways. It is sometimes alleged that welfare
creates a deviant, violent subculture in society, at
odds with the mainstream. From this viewpoint,
welfare programs actually result in increased
crime rates.
Lance Hannon and James Defronzo (1998)
decided to test this last assertion. Working with
data drawn from 406 urban counties in the
United States, they examined the relationship
between welfare payments and crime rates.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, their data
indicated that higher welfare payments were
associated with lower crime rates. In other
words, welfare programs have the function of
decreasing rather than increasing lawlessness.
In applying the functionalist paradigm to
everyday life, people sometimes make the mistake
of thinking that “functionality,” stability,
and integration are necessarily good, or that the
functionalist paradigm makes that assumption.
However, when social researchers look for the
functions served by poverty, racial discrimination,
or the oppression of women, they are not
justifying them. Just the opposite: They seek to
understand the functions such things play in the
larger society, as a way of understanding why
they persist and how they could be eliminated.
Feminist Paradigms
When Ralph Linton concluded his anthropological
classic, The Study of Man (1937: 490), speaking
of “a store of knowledge that promises to give
man a better life than any he has known,” no
one complained that he had left out women.
Linton was using the linguistic conventions of
structural functionalism  A paradigm that
divides social phenomena into parts, each of
which serves a function for the operation of
the whole.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 39
his time; he implicitly included women in all his
references to men. Or did he?
When feminists first began questioning the
use of masculine pronouns and nouns whenever
gender was ambiguous, their concerns were
often viewed as petty, even silly. At most, many
felt the issue was one of women having their
feelings hurt, their egos bruised. But be honest:
When you read Linton’s words, what did you
picture? An amorphous, genderless human
being, or . . . a man?
In a similar way, researchers looking at the
social world from a feminist paradigm have
called attention to aspects of social life that other
paradigms do not reveal. In part, feminist theory
and research have focused on sex-role differences
and how they relate to the rest of social
organization. These lines of inquiry have drawn
attention to the oppression of women in many
societies, which in turn has shed light on oppression
generally.
Feminist paradigms not only reveal the treatment
of women or the experience of oppression
but often point to limitations in how other aspects
of social life are examined and understood.
Thus, feminist perspectives are often related to
a concern for the environment, for example. As
Greta Gard suggests,
The way in which women and nature have
been conceptualized historically in Western
intellectual tradition has resulted in devaluing
whatever is associated with women,
emotion, animals, nature, and the body,
while simultaneously elevating in value
those things associated with men, reason,
humans, culture, and the mind. One task of
ecofeminism has been to expose these dualisms
and the ways in which feminizing nature
and naturalizing or animalizing women
has served as justification for the domination
of women, animals and the earth.
(1993: 5; quoted in Rynbrandt and Deegan 2002: 60)
Feminist paradigms have also challenged
the prevailing notions concerning consensus in
society. Most descriptions of the predominant
beliefs, values, and norms of a society are written
by people representing only portions of society.
In the United States, for example, such analyses
have typically been written by middle-class white
men—not surprisingly, they have written about
the beliefs, values, and norms they themselves
share. Though George Herbert Mead spoke of
the “generalized other” that each of us becomes
aware of and can “take the role of,” feminist
paradigms question whether such a generalized
other even exists.
Mead used the example of learning to play
baseball to illustrate how we learn about the
generalized other. As shown here, Janet Lever’s
research suggests that understanding the experience
of boys may tell us little about girls.
Girls’ play and games are very different. They
are mostly spontaneous, imaginative, and
free of structure or rules. Turn-taking activities
like jumprope may be played without
setting explicit goals. Girls have far less experience
with interpersonal competition. The
style of their competition is indirect, rather
than face to face, individual rather than team
affiliated. Leadership roles are either missing
or randomly filled.
(Lever 1986: 86)
Social researchers’ growing recognition of
the intellectual differences between men and
women led the psychologist Mary Field Belenky
and her colleagues to speak of Women’s Ways
of Knowing (1986). In-depth interviews with
45 women enabled the researchers to distinguish
five perspectives on knowing that challenge the
view of inquiry as obvious and straightforward:
●● Silence: Some women, especially early in life,
feel themselves isolated from the world of
knowledge, their lives largely determined by
external authorities.
●● Received knowledge: From this perspective,
women feel themselves capable of taking in
and holding knowledge originating with external
authorities.
●● Subjective knowledge: This perspective opens
up the possibility of personal, subjective
knowledge, including intuition.
●● Procedural knowledge: Some women feel they
have learned the ways of gaining knowledge
through objective procedures.
feminist paradigms  Paradigms that (1) view
and understand society through the experiences
of women and/or (2) examine the generally
deprived status of women in society.
40 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
●● Constructed knowledge: The authors describe
this perspective as “a position in which
women view all knowledge as contextual,
experience themselves as creators of knowledge,
and value both subjective and objective
strategies for knowing.”
(Belenky et al. 1986: 15)
“Constructed knowledge” is particularly
interesting in the context of our previous discussions.
The positivistic paradigm of Comte would
have a place neither for “subjective knowledge”
nor for the idea that truth might vary according
to its context. The ethnomethodological
paradigm, on the other hand, would accommodate
these ideas.
Feminist standpoint theory is a term often used
in reference to the fact that women have knowledge
about their status and experience that is not
available to men. Introduced by Nancy Hartsock
(1983), this viewpoint has evolved over time.
For example, scholars have come to recognize
that there is no single female experience, that
different kinds of women (varying by wealth,
ethnicity, or age, for example) have very different
experiences of life in society, all the while
sharing some things in common because of
their gender. This sensitivity to variations in the
female experience is also a main element in what
is referred to as third-wave feminism, which began
in the 1990s.
To try out feminist paradigms, you might
want to explore whether discrimination against
women exists at your college or university. Are
the top administrative positions held equally by
men and women? How about secretarial and
clerical positions? Are men’s and women’s sports
supported equally? Read through the official history
of your school; is it a history that includes
men and women equally? (If you attend an
all-male or all-female school, of course, some of
these questions won’t apply.)
As we just saw, feminist paradigms reflect
not only a concern for the unequal treatment
of women but also an epistemological recognition
that men and women overall perceive and
understand society differently. Social theories
created solely by men, which has been the norm,
run the risk of an unrecognized bias. A similar
case can be made for theories created almost
exclusively by white people.
Critical Race Theory
The roots of critical race theory are generally associated
with the civil rights movement of the mid-
1950s and race-related legislation of the 1960s.
By the mid-1970s, with fears that the strides
toward equality were beginning to bog down,
civil rights activists and social scientists began the
codification of a paradigm based on race awareness
and a commitment to racial justice.
This was not the first time sociologists
paid attention to the status of nonwhites in
U.S. society. Perhaps the best known African
American sociologist in the history of the discipline
was W. E. B. DuBois, who published The
Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Among other things,
DuBois pointed out that African Americans
lived their lives through a “dual consciousness”:
as Americans and as black people. By contrast,
white Americans have seldom reflected on
being white. If you were American, white was
simply assumed. If you were not white, you have
been seen and made to feel like the exception.
So imagine the difference between an African
American sociologist and a white sociologist creating
a theory of social identity. Their theories of
identity would likely differ in some fundamental
ways, even if they were not limiting their analyses
to their own race.
Much of the contemporary scholarship in
critical race theory has to do with the role of
race in politics and government, studies often
undertaken by legal scholars as well as social
scientists. Thus, for example, Derrick Bell (1980)
critiqued the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark
Brown v. Board of Education decision, which struck
down the “separate but equal” system of school
segregation. He suggested that the Court was
motivated by the economic and political interests
of the white, not by the objective of educational
equality for African American students.
In his analysis, Ball introduced the concept of
interest convergence, suggesting that laws will
criticalracetheory  A paradigm grounded in race
awareness and an intention to achieve racial justice.
interest convergence  The thesis that majority
group members will only support the interests of
minorities when those actions also support the
interests of the majority group.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 41
only be changed to benefit African Americans if
and when those changes are seen to further the
interests of whites. Richard Delgado (2002) provides
an excellent overview of how Bell’s reasoning
has been pursued by subsequent critical race
theory scholars.
As a general rule, whenever you find the
word critical in the name of a paradigm or theory,
it will likely refer to a nontraditional view, one
that may be at odds with the prevailing paradigms
of an academic discipline and also at odds
with the mainstream structure of society.
Rational Objectivity Reconsidered
We began this discussion of paradigms with
Comte’s assertion that society can be studied
rationally and objectively. Since his time, the
growth of science and technology, together with
the relative decline of superstition, have put rationality
more and more at the center of social
life. As fundamental as rationality is to most of
us, however, some contemporary scholars have
raised questions about it.
For example, positivistic social scientists
have sometimes erred in assuming that humans
always act rationally. I’m sure your own experience
offers ample evidence to the contrary. Yet
many modern economic models fundamentally
assume that people will make rational choices
in the economic sector: They will choose the
highest-paying job, pay the lowest price, and
so forth. This assumption ignores the power of
tradition, loyalty, image, and other factors that
compete with reason and calculation in determining
human behavior.
A more sophisticated positivism would assert
that we can rationally understand and predict
even nonrational behavior. An example is the
famous “Asch experiment” (Asch 1958). In this
experiment, a group of subjects is presented with
a set of lines on a screen and asked to identify
the two lines that are equal in length.
Imagine yourself a subject in such an experiment.
You are sitting in the front row of a
classroom among a group of six subjects. A set
of lines is projected on the wall in front of you
(see Figure 2-1). The experimenter asks each of
you, one at a time, to identify the line on the
right (A, B, or C) that matches the length of
line X. The correct answer (B) is pretty obvious
to you. To your surprise, however, you find
that all the other subjects agree on a different
answer!
The experimenter announces that all but
one of the group has gotten the correct answer.
Because you are the only one who chose B, this
amounts to saying that you’ve gotten it wrong.
Then a new set of lines is presented, and you
have the same experience. What seems to be the
obviously correct answer is said by everyone else
to be wrong.
As it turns out, of course, you are the only
real subject in this experiment—all the others
are working with the experimenter. The purpose
of the experiment is to see whether you
will be swayed by public pressure to go along
with the incorrect answer. In his initial experiments,
all of which involved young men, Asch
found that a little over one-third of his subjects
did just that.
Choosing an obviously wrong answer in a
simple experiment is an example of nonrational
behavior. But as Asch went on to show, experimenters
can examine the circumstances that
lead more or fewer subjects to go along with
the incorrect answer. For example, in subsequent
studies, Asch varied the size of one group
and the number of “dissenters” who chose the
“wrong” (that is, the correct) answer. Thus, it is
possible to study nonrational behavior rationally
and scientifically.
More radically, we can question whether
social life abides by rational principles at all.
In the physical sciences, developments such as
FIGURE 2-1
The Asch Experiment. Subjects in the Asch experiment have a
seemingly easy task: to determine whether A, B, or C is the same length
as X. But there’s more here than meets the eye.
X A B C
© Cengage Learning®
42 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
chaos theory, fuzzy logic, and complexity have
suggested that we may need to rethink fundamentally
the orderliness of events in the physical
world. Certainly the social world might be no
tidier than the world of physics.
The contemporary challenge to positivism,
however, goes beyond the question of whether
people always behave rationally in their political,
economic, and other areas of behavior. In part,
the criticism of positivism challenges the idea
that scientists can be as objective as the positivistic
ideal assumes. Most scientists would agree
that personal feelings can and do influence the
problems scientists choose to study, what they
choose to observe, and the conclusions they
draw from their observations.
There is an even more radical critique of
the ideal of objectivity. As we glimpsed in the
discussions of feminism and ethnomethodology,
some contemporary researchers suggest that
subjectivity might actually be preferable in some
situations. Let’s take a moment to return to the
dialectic of subjectivity and objectivity.
To begin, all our experiences are inescapably
subjective. There is no way out. We can see only
through our own eyes, and anything peculiar to
our eyes will shape what we see. We can hear
things only the way our particular ears and
brain transmit and interpret sound waves. You
and I, to some extent, hear and see different realities.
And both of us experience quite different
physical “realities” than, say, do bats. In what to
us is total darkness, a bat “sees” things such as
flying insects by emitting a sound we humans
can’t hear. Echolocation or the reflection of the
bat’s sound creates a “sound picture” precise
enough for the bat to home in on the moving
insect and snatch it up in its teeth. In a similar
vein, scientists on the planet Xandu might
develop theories of the physical world based
on a sensory apparatus that we humans can’t
even imagine. Maybe they have X-ray vision or
hear colors.
Despite the inescapable subjectivity of our
experience, we humans seem to be wired to
seek an agreement on what is really real, what is
objectively so. Objectivity is a conceptual attempt to
get beyond our individual views. It is ultimately
a matter of communication, as you and I attempt
to find a common ground in our subjective experiences.
Whenever we succeed in our search, we
say we are dealing with objective reality. This is the
agreement reality discussed in Chapter 1.
To this point, perhaps the most significant
studies in the history of social science were conducted
in the 1930s by a Turkish American social
psychologist, Muzafer Sherif (1935), who slyly
said he wanted to study “auto-kinetic effects.”
To do this, he put small groups in totally darkened
rooms, save for a single point of light in
the center of the wall in front of the participants.
Sherif explained that the light would soon begin
to move about, and the subjects were to determine
how far it was moving—a difficult task
with nothing else visible as a gauge of length
or distance.
Amazingly, each of the groups agreed on the
distance the point of light moved about. Oddly,
however, the different groups of subjects arrived
at quite different conclusions as to how much
the light was moving. Strangest of all, the point
of light had remained stationary. If you stare at
a fixed point of light long enough it will seem
to move about (Sherif’s “auto-kinetic effect”).
Notice, however, that each of the groups agreed
on a specific delusion. The movement of the light
was real to them, but it was a reality created out
of nothing: a socially constructed reality.
Whereas our subjectivity is individual, then,
our search for objectivity is social. This is true in
all aspects of life, not just in science. Whereas
you and I prefer different foods, we must agree
to some extent on what is fit to eat and what is
not, or else there could be no restaurants or grocery
stores. The same argument could be made
regarding every other form of consumption.
Without agreement reality, there could be no
movies or television, no sports.
Social scientists as well have found benefits
in the concept of a socially agreed-on objective
reality. As people seek to impose order on
their experience of life, they find it useful to
pursue this goal as a collective venture. What
are the causes and cures of prejudice? Working
together, social researchers have uncovered
some answers that hold up to intersubjective
scrutiny. Whatever your subjective experience
of things, for example, you can discover for
yourself that as education increases, prejudice
generally tends to decrease. Because each of us
can discover this independently, we say that it is
objectively true.
Some Social Science Paradigms ■ 43
From the seventeenth century through the
middle of the twentieth, however, the belief in
an objective reality that people could see and
measure ever more clearly predominated in science.
For the most part, it was not simply held
as a useful paradigm but held as The Truth. The
term positivism has generally represented the belief
in a logically ordered, objective reality that
we can come to know better and better through
science. This is the view challenged today by
postmodernists and others who suggest that
perhaps only our perceptions and experiences
are real.
Some say that the ideal of objectivity conceals
as much as it reveals. As we saw earlier,
in years past much of what was regarded as objectivity
in Western social science was actually
an agreement primarily among white, middleclass
European men. Equally real experiences
common to women, to ethnic minorities, to
non-Western cultures, or to the poor were not
necessarily represented in that reality.
Thus, early anthropologists are now criticized
for often making modern, Westernized
“sense” out of the beliefs and practices of nonliterate
tribes around the world, sometimes by
portraying their subjects as superstitious
savages. We often call orally transmitted beliefs
about the distant past “creation myth,” whereas
we speak of our own beliefs as “history.”
Increasingly today, there is a demand to find
the native logic by which various peoples make
sense out of life and to understand it on its
own terms.
Ultimately, we’ll never be able to completely
distinguish between an objective reality
and our subjective experience. We can’t know
whether our concepts correspond to an objective
reality or are simply useful in allowing us
to predict and control our environment. So desperate
is our need to know what is really real,
however, that both positivists and postmodernists
are sometimes drawn into the belief that
their own view is real and true. There is a dual
irony in this. On the one hand, the positivist’s
belief that science precisely mirrors the objective
world must ultimately be based on faith;
this conviction cannot be proved by “objective”
science, because that’s precisely what is at issue.
And the postmodernists, who say nothing is
objectively so and everything is ultimately
subjective, do at least feel that that is really the
way things are.
Postmodernism is often portrayed as a denial
of the possibility of social science, but that’s not
the point I’m making. This textbook makes no
assumption about the existence or absence of an
objective reality. At the same time, human beings
demonstrate an extensive and robust ability
to establish agreements as to what is “real.” This
appears in regard to rocks and trees, as well as
ghosts and gods, and even more-elusive ideas
such as loyalty and treason. Whether something
like “prejudice” really exists, research into its
nature can take place, because enough people
agree that prejudice does exist, and researchers
can use agreed-on techniques of inquiry to
study it.
Another social science paradigm, critical
realism, suggests that we define “reality” as that
which can be seen to have an effect. Since prejudice
clearly has an observable effect in our lives,
it must be judged “real” in terms of this point of
view. This paradigm fits interestingly with an
oft-quoted statement by early U.S. sociologist,
W. I. Thomas: “If men define situations as real, they
are real in their consequences” (1928: 571–72).
This book will not require or even encourage
you to choose among positivism, postmodernism,
or any of the other paradigms discussed in this
chapter. In fact, I invite you to look for value in
any and all as you seek to understand the world
that may or may not exist around you.
Similarly, as social researchers, we are not
forced to align ourselves entirely with either positivism
or postmodernism. Instead, we can treat
them as two distinct arrows in our quiver. Each
approach compensates for the weaknesses of the
other by suggesting complementary perspectives
that can produce useful lines of inquiry.
For example, the reknown British physicist
Stephen Hawking has elegantly described the
appealing simplicity of the positivistic model but
tempers his remarks with a recognition of the
way science is practiced.
postmodernism  A paradigm that questions the
assumptions of positivism and theories describing
an “objective” reality.
critical realism  A paradigm that holds things are
real insofar as they produce effects.
44 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
According to this way of thinking, a scientific
theory is a mathematical model that describes
and codifies the observations we make. A
good theory will describe a large range of
phenomena on the basis of a few simple
postulates and will make definite predictions
that can be tested. If the predictions agree
with the observations, the theory survives
that test, though it can never be proved
to be correct. On the other hand, if the
observations disagree with the predictions,
one has to discard or modify the theory.
(At least, that is what is supposed to happen.
In practice, people often question the
accuracy of the observations and the
reliability and moral character of those
making the observations.)
(2001: 31)
In summary, a rich variety of theoretical
paradigms can be brought to bear on the study
of social life. With each of these fundamental
frames of reference, useful theories can be constructed.
We turn now to some of the issues
involved in theory construction, which are of
interest and use to all social researchers, from
positivists to postmodernists—and all those in
between.
Elements of SocialTheory
As we have seen, paradigms are general frameworks
or viewpoints: literally “points from which
to view.” They provide ways of looking at life
and are grounded in sets of assumptions about
the nature of reality.
Where a paradigm offers a way of looking,
a theory aims to explain what we see. Theories
are systematic sets of interrelated statements intended
to explain some aspect of social life. Thus,
theories flesh out and specify paradigms. Recall
from Chapter 1 that social scientists engage in
both idiographic and nomothetic explanations.
Idiographic explanations seek to explain a limited
phenomenon as completely as possible—
explaining why a particular woman voted as
she did, for example—whereas nomothetic
explanations attempt to explain a broad range of
phenomena at least partially: identifying a few
factors that account for much voting behavior
in general.
Let’s look a little more deliberately now at
some of the elements of a theory. As I mentioned
in Chapter 1, science is based on observation.
In social research, observation typically
refers to seeing, hearing, and (less commonly)
touching. A corresponding idea is fact. Although
for philosophers “fact” is as complex a notion
as “reality,” social scientists generally use the
term to refer to some phenomenon that has
been observed. It is a fact, for example, that
Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney in the
2012 presidential election.
Scientists aspire to organize many facts under
“rules” called laws. Abraham Kaplan (1964: 91)
defined laws as universal generalizations about
classes of facts. The law of gravity is a classic
example: Bodies are attracted to each other in
proportion to their masses and in inverse proportion
to the distance separating them.
Laws must be truly universal, however,
not merely accidental patterns found among a
specific set of facts. It is a fact, Kaplan points out
(1964: 92), that in each of the U.S. presidential
elections from 1920 to 1960, the major candidate
with the longest name won. That is not a law,
however, as shown by elections since. The earlier
pattern was a coincidence.
Sometimes called principles, laws are important
statements about what is so. We speak of
them as being “discovered,” granting, of course,
that our paradigms affect what we choose to look
for and what we see. Laws in and of themselves
do not explain anything. They just summarize
the way things are. Explanation is a function of
theory, as we’ll see shortly.
There are no social science laws that claim
the universal certainty of those of the natural
sciences. Social scientists debate among themselves
whether such laws will ever be discovered.
Perhaps social life essentially does not abide by
invariant laws. This does not mean that social
life is so chaotic as to defy prediction and explanation.
As we saw in Chapter 1, social behavior
falls into patterns, and those patterns quite often
make perfect sense, although we may have to
look below the surface to find the logic.
As I just indicated, laws should not be
confused with theories. Whereas a law is an
observed regularity, a theory is a systematic explanation
for observations that relate to a particular
aspect of life. For example, someone might offer
Two Logical Systems Revisited ■ 45
a theory of juvenile delinquency, prejudice, or
political revolution.
Theories explain observations by means
of concepts. Jonathan Turner (1989: 5) calls
concepts the “basic building blocks of theory.”
Concepts are abstract elements representing
classes of phenomena within the field of study.
The concepts relevant to a theory of juvenile
delinquency, for example, include “juvenile”
and “delinquency,” for starters. A “peer group”—
the people you hang around with and identify
with—is another relevant concept. “Social
class” and “ethnicity” are undoubtedly relevant
concepts in a theory of juvenile delinquency.
“School performance” might also be relevant.
A variable is a special kind of concept. Some
of the concepts just mentioned refer to things,
and others refer to sets of things. As we saw in
Chapter 1, each variable comprises a set of attributes;
thus, delinquency, in the simplest case, is
made up of delinquent and not delinquent. A theory
of delinquency would aim at explaining why
some juveniles are delinquent and others are not.
Axioms or postulates are fundamental assertions,
taken to be true, on which a theory is
grounded. In a theory of juvenile delinquency,
we might begin with axioms such as “Everyone
desires material comforts” and “The ability to
obtain material comforts legally is greater for the
wealthy than for the poor.” From these we might
proceed to propositions: specific conclusions, derived
from the axiomatic groundwork, about
the relationships among concepts. From our
beginning axioms about juvenile delinquency,
for example, we might reasonably formulate the
proposition that poor youths are more likely to
break the law to gain material comforts than are
rich youths.
This proposition, incidentally, accords with
Robert Merton’s classic attempt to account for
deviance in society. Merton (1957: 139–57)
spoke of the agreed-on means and ends of a society.
In Merton’s model, nondeviants are those
who share the societal agreement as to desired
ends (such as a new car) and the means prescribed
for achieving them (such as to buy it).
One type of deviant—Merton called this type
the “innovator”—agrees on the desired end but
does not have access to the prescribed means for
achieving it. Innovators find another method,
such as crime, of attaining the desired end.
From propositions, in turn, we can derive
hypotheses. A hypothesis is a specified testable
expectation about empirical reality that follows
from a more general proposition. Thus, a researcher
might formulate the hypothesis, “Poor
youths have higher delinquency rates than do
rich youths.” Research is designed to test hypotheses.
In other words, research will support
(or fail to support) a theory only indirectly—by
testing specific hypotheses that are derived from
theories and propositions.
Let’s look more clearly at how theory and
research come together.
Two Logical Systems Revisited
The Traditional Model of Science
Most of us have a somewhat idealized picture
of “the scientific method.” It is a view gained as
a result of the physical-science education we’ve
received ever since our elementary school days.
Although this traditional model of science tells
only a part of the story, it’s helpful to understand
its logic.
There are three main elements in the traditional
model of science: theory, operationalization,
and observation. At this point we’re already
well acquainted with the idea of theory.
Theory
According to the traditional model of science,
scientists begin with a thing, from which they
derive testable hypotheses. For example, as social
scientists we might have a theory about the
causes of juvenile delinquency. Let’s assume that
we have arrived at the hypothesis that delinquency
is inversely related to social class. That is,
as social class goes up, delinquency goes down.
Operationalization
To test any hypothesis, we must specify the
meanings of all the variables involved in it, in
hypothesis  A specified testable expectation about
empirical reality that follows from a more general
proposition; more generally, an expectation about
the nature of things derived from a theory. It is a
statement of something that ought to be observed
in the real world if the theory is correct.
46 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
observational terms. In the present case, the variables
are social class and delinquency. To give these
terms specific meaning, we might define delinquency
as “being arrested for a crime,” “being
convicted of a crime,” or some other plausible
phrase, whereas social class might be specified in
terms of family income, for the purposes of this
particular study.
Once we have defined our variables, we
need to specify how we’ll measure them. (Recall
from Chapter 1 that science, in the classical
ideal, depends on measurable observations.)
Operationalization literally means specifying
the exact operations involved in measuring a
variable. There are many ways we can attempt
to test our hypothesis, each of which allows for
different ways of measuring our variables.
For simplicity, let’s assume we’re planning
to conduct a survey of high school students. We
might operationalize delinquency in the form of
the question “Have you ever stolen anything?”
Those who answer “yes” will be classified as
delinquents in our study; those who say “no”
will be classified as nondelinquents. Similarly,
we might operationalize social class by asking
respondents, “What was your family’s income
last year?” and providing them with a set of family
income categories: under $10,000; $10,000–
$24,999; $25,000–$49,999; $50,000–$99,999;
$100,000 and above.
At this point someone might object that delinquency
can mean something more than or different
from having stolen something at one time
or another, or that social class isn’t necessarily
the same as family income. Some parents might
think body piercing is a sign of delinquency
even if their children don’t steal, and to some,
social class might include an element of prestige
or community standing as well as how much
money a family has. For the researcher testing a
hypothesis, however, the meaning of variables is
exactly and only what the operational definition
specifies.
In this respect, scientists are very much like
Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the
Looking Glass [1895] 2009. “When I use a word,”
Humpty Dumpty tells Alice, “it means just what I
choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” Alice replies, “whether you
can make words mean so many different things.”
To which Humpty Dumpty responds, “The question
is, which is to be master—that’s all” ([1895]
2009: 190)
Scientists have to be “masters” of their
operational definitions for the sake of precision
in observation, measurement, and communication.
Otherwise, we would never know
whether a study that contradicted ours did so
only because it used a different set of procedures
to measure one of the variables and thus
changed the meaning of the hypothesis being
tested. Of course, this also means that to evaluate
a study’s conclusions about juvenile delinquency
and social class, or any other variables,
we need to know how those variables were
operationalized.
The way we have operationalized the variables
in our imaginary study could be open
to other problems, however. Perhaps some
respondents will lie about having stolen anything,
in which cases we’ll misclassify them
as nondelinquent. Some respondents will not
know their family incomes and will give mistaken
answers; others may be embarrassed and
lie. We’ll consider issues like these in detail in
Part 2.
Our operationalized hypothesis now is that
the highest incidence of delinquents will be
found among respondents who select the lowest
family income category (under $10,000); a
lower percentage of delinquents will be found
in the $10,000–$24,999 category; still fewer delinquents
will be found in the $25,000–$49,999
and $50,000–$99,999 categories; and the lowest
percentage of delinquents will be found in the
$100,000 and above categoriey. Now we’re
ready for the final step in the traditional model
of science—observation. Having developed
theoretical clarity and specific expectations, and
having created a strategy for looking, all that
remains is to look at the way things actually are.
operationalization  One step beyond conceptualization.
Operationalization is the process of developing
operational definitions, or specifying the
exact operations involved in measuring a variable.
operational definition  The concrete and specific
definition of something in terms of the operations
by which observations are to be categorized. The
operational definition of “earning an A in this
course” might be “correctly answering at least
90 percent of the final exam questions.”
Two Logical Systems Revisited ■ 47
These findings would disconfirm our hypothesis
regarding family income and delinquency.
Disconfirmability, or the possibility of falsification,
is an essential quality in any hypothesis. In other
words, if there is no chance that our hypothesis
will be disconfirmed, it hasn’t said anything
meaningful. You cannot test whether a hypothesis
is true unless your test contains the possibility
of deciding it is false.
For example, the hypothesis that juvenile delinquents
commit more crimes than do nondelinquents
cannot possibly be disconfirmed, because
criminal behavior is intrinsic to the idea of delinquency.
Even if we recognize that some young
people commit crimes without being caught and
labeled as delinquents, they couldn’t threaten
our hypothesis, because our actual observations
would lead us to conclude they were law-abiding
nondelinquents.
Figure 2-2 provides a schematic diagram of
the traditional model of scientific inquiry. In it we
see the researcher beginning with an interest in
a phenomenon (such as juvenile delinquency).
Next comes the development of a theoretical
understanding, in this case that a single concept
(such as social class) might explain others. The
theoretical considerations result in an expectation
about what should be observed if the theory is
correct. The notation Y 5 f (X) is a conventional
way of saying that Y (for example, delinquency)
is a function of (depends on) X (for example,
social class). At that level, however, X and Y still
have rather general meanings that could give rise
to quite different observations and measurements.
Operationalization specifies the procedures that
will be used to measure the variables. The lowercase
y in Figure 2-2, for example, is a precisely
measurable indicator of capital Y. This operationalization
process results in the formation of
a testable hypothesis: For example, self-reported
theft is a function of family income. Observations
aimed at finding out whether this statement accurately
describes reality are part of what is typically
called hypothesis testing. (See the Tips and Tools
box, “Hints for Stating Hypotheses,” for more on
the process of formulating hypotheses.)
PercentDelinquent
Under $10,000 20
$10,000–$24,999 15
$25,000–$49,999 10
$50,000–$99,999 5
$100,000 and above 2
PercentDelinquent
Under $10,000 15
$10,000–$24,999 15
$25,000–$49,999 15
$50,000–$99,999 15
$100,000 and above 15
Observation
The final step in the traditional model of science
involves actual observation, looking at the world
and making measurements of what is seen.
Let’s suppose our survey produced the following
data:
Observations producing such data would confirm
our hypothesis. But suppose our findings were as
follows:
FIGURE 2-2
TheTraditional Image of Science.The deductive model of scientific
inquiry begins with a sometimes vague or general question, which is
subjected to a process of specification, resulting in hypotheses that can
be tested through empirical observations.
X causes Y
THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING
HYPOTHESIS
Y = f(X ) Theoretical expectation
Operationalization
y = f(x) Testable hypothesis
y = f(x) Observation
(hypothesis testing)
?
Idea/interest
“What causes Y ? ”
© 2016 Cengage Learning®
48 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Hints for Stating Hypotheses
Riley E. Dunlap
Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University
Ahypothesisisthebasicstatementthatistestedinresearch.Typicallya
hypothesisstatesarelationshipbetweentwovariables.(Althoughitis
possibletousemorethantwovariables,youshouldsticktotwofornow.)
Becauseahypothesismakesapredictionabouttherelationshipbetween
thetwovariables,itmustbetestablesoyoucandetermineiftheprediction
isrightorwrongwhenyouexaminetheresultsobtainedinyourstudy.A
hypothesismustbestatedinanunambiguousmannertobeclearlytest-
able.Whatfollowsaresuggestionsfordevelopingtestablehypotheses.
Assume you have an interest in trying to predict some phenomenon
such as“attitudes toward women’s liberation,”and that you can
measure such attitudes on a continuum ranging from“opposed to women’s
liberation”  to  “neutral”  to  “supportive of women’s liberation.”Also
assume that, lacking a theory, you’ll rely on“hunches”to come up with
variables that might be related to attitudes toward women’s liberation.
In a sense, you can think of hypothesis construction as a case of
filling in the blank:  “_____ is related to attitudes toward women’s
liberation.”  Your job is to think of a variable that might plausibly be
related to such attitudes, and then to word a hypothesis that states a
relationship between the two variables (the one that fills in the“blank”
and“attitudes toward women’s liberation”).You need to do so in a precise
manner so that you can determine clearly whether the hypothesis is
supported or not when you examine the results (in this case, most likely
the results of a survey).
Thekeyistowordthehypothesiscarefullysothattheprediction
itmakesisquitecleartoyouaswellasothers.Ifyouuseage,notethat
saying  “Ageisrelatedtoattitudestowardwomen’sliberation”doesnot
saypreciselyhowyouthinkthetwoarerelated(infact,theonlywaythis
hypothesiscouldbefalsifiedisifyoufailtofindastatisticallysignificant
relationshipofanytypebetweenageandattitudestowardwomen’slib-
eration).Inthiscaseacoupleofstepsarenecessary.Youhavetwooptions:
1.	 “Age is related to attitudes toward women’s liberation, with
younger adults being more supportive than older adults.”(Or, you
could state the opposite, if you believed older people are likely to
be more supportive.)
2.	 “Age is negatively related to support for women’s liberation.”  Note
here that I specify  “support”for women’s liberation (SWL) and then
predict a negative relationship—that is, as age goes up, I predict
that SWL will go down.
In this hypothesis, note that both of the variables (age, the independent
variable or likely“cause,”and SWL, the dependent variable or
likely“effect”) range from low to high.This feature of the two variables
is what allows you to use“negatively”(or“positively”) to describe the
relationship.
Notice what happens if you hypothesize a relationship between
gender and SWL. Because gender is a nominal variable (as you’ll learn in
Chapter 5), it does not range from low to high—people are either male
or female (the two attributes of the variable gender). Consequently, you
must be careful in stating the hypothesis unambiguously:
1.	 “Sex is positively (or negatively) related to SWL”  is not an adequate
hypothesis, because it doesn’t specify how you expect sex to be
related to SWL—that is, whether you think men or women will be
more supportive of women’s liberation.
2.	 It’s tempting to say something like“Women are positively related
to SWL,”but this really doesn’t work, because female is only an
attribute, not a full variable (sex is the variable).
3.	 “Sex is related to SWL, with women being more supportive than
men”would be my recommendation. Or, you could say,“with men
being less supportive than women,”which makes the identical
prediction. (Of course, you could also make the opposite prediction,
that men are more supportive than women are, if you wished.)
4.	 Equally legitimate would be“Women are more likely to support
women’s liberation than are men.”(Note the need for the second
“are,”or you could be construed as hypothesizing that women support
women’s liberation more than they support men—not quite
the same idea.)
The previous examples hypothesized relationships between a
“characteristic”(age or sex) and an“orientation”(attitudes toward
women’s liberation). Because the causal order is pretty clear (obviously
age and sex come before attitudes, and are less alterable), we could state
the hypotheses as I’ve done, and everyone would assume that we were
stating causal hypotheses.
Finally,youmayrunacrossreferencestothenull hypothesis,
especially in statistics. Such a hypothesis predicts no relationship
(technically, no statistically significant relationship) between the two
variables, and it is always implicit in testing hypotheses. Basically, if you
have hypothesized a positive (or negative) relationship, you are hoping
that the results will allow you to reject the null hypothesis and verify
your hypothesized relationship.
Tips andTools
Two Logical Systems Revisited ■ 49
Deductive and Inductive
Reasoning: A Case Illustration
In Chapter 1, I introduced deductive and inductive
reasoning, with a promise that we would
return to them later. It’s later.
As you probably recognized, the traditional
model of science just described is a nice example
of deductive reasoning: From a general theoretical
understanding, the researcher derives
(deduces) an expectation and finally a testable
hypothesis. This picture is tidy, but in reality,
science uses inductive reasoning as well. Let’s
consider a real research example as a vehicle
for comparing the deductive and inductive linkages
between theory and research. Years ago,
Charles Glock, Benjamin Ringer, and I (1967)
set out to discover what caused differing levels of
church involvement among U.S. Episcopalians.
Several theoretical or quasi-theoretical positions
suggested possible answers. I’ll focus on only
one here: what we came to call the “Comfort
Hypothesis.”
In part, we took our lead from the Christian
injunction to care for “the halt, the lame, and
the blind” and those who are “weary and heavy
laden.” At the same time, ironically, we noted
the Marxist assertion that religion is an “opiate
for the masses.” Given both, it made sense to
expect the following, which was our hypothesis:
“Parishioners whose life situations most deprive
them of satisfaction and fulfillment in the secular
society turn to the church for comfort and
substitute rewards” (Glock, Ringer, and Babbie
1967: 107–8).
Having framed this general hypothesis, we
set about testing it. Were those deprived of
satisfaction in the secular society in fact more
religious than those who received more satisfaction
from the secular society? To answer this,
we needed to distinguish who was deprived.
The questionnaire, which was constructed for
the purpose of testing the Comfort Hypothesis,
included items that seemed to offer indicators of
whether parishioners were relatively deprived or
gratified in secular society.
To start, we reasoned that men enjoy more
status than women do in our generally maledominated
society. Though hardly novel, this
conclusion laid the groundwork for testing the
Comfort Hypothesis. If we were correct in our
hypothesis, women should appear more religious
than men. Once the survey data had been collected
and analyzed, our expectation about gender
and religion was clearly confirmed. On three
separate measures of religious involvement—
ritual (such as church attendance), organizational
(such as belonging to church organizations),
and intellectual (such as reading church publications)—women
were more religious than men.
On our overall measure, women scored 50 percent
higher than men.
In another test of the Comfort Hypothesis,
we reasoned that in a youth-oriented society,
old people would be more deprived of secular
gratification than the young would. Once again,
the data confirmed our expectation. The oldest
parishioners were more religious than the
middle-aged, who were more religious than
young adults.
Social class—measured by education and
income—afforded another test of the Comfort
Hypothesis. Once again, the test succeeded. Those
with low social status were more involved in the
church than those with high social status were.
The hypothesis was even confirmed in a
test that went against everyone’s commonsense
expectations. Despite church posters showing
worshipful young families and bearing the
slogan “The Family That Prays Together Stays
Together,” the Comfort Hypothesis suggested
that parishioners who were married and had
children—the clear American ideal at that
time—would enjoy secular gratification in that
regard. As a consequence, they should be less
religious than those who lacked one or both
family components. Thus, we hypothesized that
parishioners who were both single and childless
should be the most religious; those with
either spouse or child should be somewhat less
religious; and those married with children—
representing the ideal pictured on all those
posters—should be the least religious of all.
That’s exactly what we found.
null hypothesis  In connection with hypothesis
testing and tests of statistical significance, that
hypothesis that suggests there is no relationship
among the variables under study. You may conclude
that the variables are related after having
statistically rejected the null hypothesis.
50 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Finally, the Comfort Hypothesis suggested
that the various kinds of secular deprivation
should be cumulative: Those with all the characteristics
associated with deprivation should
be the most religious; those with none should
be the least. When we combined the four individual
measures of deprivation into a composite
measure, the theoretical expectation was exactly
confirmed. Comparing the two extremes,
we found that single, childless, elderly, lowerclass
female parishioners scored more than
three times as high on the measure of church
involvement than did young, married, upperclass
fathers. Thus was the Comfort Hypothesis
confirmed.
I like this research example because it so
clearly illustrates the logic of the deductive
model. Beginning with general, theoretical
expectations about the impact of social deprivation
on church involvement, one could derive
concrete hypotheses linking specific measurable
variables, such as age and church attendance. The
actual empirical data could then be analyzed to
determine whether empirical reality supported
the deductive expectations.
I say this example shows how it was possible
to address the issue of religiosity deductively, but,
alas, I’ve been fibbing. To tell the truth, although
we began with an interest in discovering what
caused variations in church involvement among
Episcopalians, we didn’t actually begin with a
Comfort Hypothesis, or any other hypothesis for
that matter. The study is actually an example of
the inductive model. (In the interest of further
honesty, Glock and Ringer initiated the study,
and I joined it years after the data had been
collected.) A questionnaire was designed to
collect information that might shed a bit of light
on why some parishioners participated in the
church more than others, but it was not guided
by any precise, deductive theory.
Once the data were collected, the task of
explaining differences in religiosity began with
an analysis of variables that have a wide impact
on people’s lives, including gender, age, social class,
and family status. Each of these four variables was
found to relate strongly to church involvement,
in the ways already described. Indeed, they had a
cumulative effect, also already described. Rather
than being good news, however, this presented
a dilemma.
Glock recalls discussing his findings with colleagues
over lunch at the Columbia faculty club.
Once he had displayed the tables illustrating the
impact of each individual variable as well as their
powerful composite effect, a colleague asked,
“What does it all mean, Charlie?” Glock was at a
loss. Why were those variables so strongly related
to church involvement?
That question launched a process of reasoning
about what the several variables had in
common, aside from their impact on religiosity.
Eventually we saw that each of the four variables
also reflected differential status in the secular society.
He then had the thought that perhaps the issue
of comfort was involved. Thus, the inductive
process had moved from concrete observations to
a general theoretical explanation.
It seems easier to lay out the steps involved
in deductive than inductive research. Deductive
research begins with a theory, from which we
may derive hypotheses—which are then tested
through observations. Inductive research begins
with observations and proceeds with a search
for patterns in what we have observed. In a
quantitative study, we can search for correlations
or relationships between variables (discussed
further in Chapter 16). Thus, once a relationship
has been discovered between gender and religiosity,
our attention turns to figuring out logical
reasons why that is so.
Most qualitative research is oriented toward
the inductive rather than the deductive approach.
However, qualitative research does not,
by definition, allow us to use statistical tools to
find correlations that point toward patterns in
need of explanation (see Chapter 14). Although
there are computer programs designed for recording
and analyzing qualitative data, the qualitative
inductive analyst needs a strong reserve of
insight and reflection to tease important patterns
out of a body of observations.
A Graphic Contrast
As the preceding case illustration shows, theory
and research can usefully be done both inductively
and deductively. Figure 2-3 shows a
graphic comparison of the two approaches as applied
to an inquiry into study habits and performance
on exams. In both cases, we are interested
in the relationship between the number of hours
Two Logical Systems Revisited ■ 51
spent studying for an exam and the grade earned
on that exam. Using the deductive method, we
would begin by examining the matter logically.
Doing well on an exam reflects a student’s ability
to recall and manipulate information. Both of
these abilities should be increased by exposure
to the information before the exam. In this fashion,
we would arrive at a hypothesis suggesting
a positive relationship between the number of
hours spent studying and the grade earned on
the exam. We say “positive” because we expect
grades to increase as the hours of studying
increase. If increased hours produced decreased
grades, that would be called a “negative,” or
“inverse,” relationship. The hypothesis is represented
by the graph line in part 1(a), representing
the deductive model in Figure 2-3. In part (a)
we see the expectation of a simple, positive, linear
relationship between the two variables. Part (b)
represents what we observe when we study the
two variables. Finally, part (c) is the need to decide
whether the observations are close enough
to what was expected to justify accepting the
hypothesis.
FIGURE 2-3
Deductive and Inductive Methods. Both deduction and induction are legitimate and valuable approaches to understanding. Deduction begins with
an expected pattern that is tested against observations, whereas induction begins with observations and seeks to find a pattern within them.
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1. Deductive Method
a. Hypothesis
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b. Observations
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c. Accept or reject hypothesis?
100
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2. Inductive Method
a. Observations
100
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b. Finding a pattern
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c. Tentative conclusion
© Cengage Learning®
52 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Our next step would be to make observations
relevant to testing our hypothesis. The shaded
area in part 1(b) of the figure represents perhaps
hundreds of observations of different students,
specifically, how many hours they studied and
what grades they received. Finally, in part 1(c),
we compare the hypothesis and the observations.
Because observations in the real world seldom, if
ever, match our expectations perfectly, we must
decide whether the match is close enough to consider
the hypothesis confirmed. Stated differently,
can we conclude that the hypothesis describes
the general pattern that exists, granting some
variations in real life? Sometimes, answering this
question necessitates methods of statistical analysis,
which will be discussed in Part 4 of this book.
Now suppose we used the inductive method
to address the same research question. In this
case, we would begin with a set of observations,
as in part 2(a) of Figure 2-3. Curious about the
relationship between hours spent studying and
grades earned, we might simply arrange to collect
relevant data. Then we’d look for a pattern
that best represented or summarized our observations.
In part 2(b) of the figure, the pattern
is shown as a curved line running through the
center of our observations.
The pattern found among the points in this
case suggests that with 1 to 15 hours of studying,
each additional hour generally produces
a higher grade on the exam. With 15 to about
25 hours, however, more study seems to lower
the grade slightly. Studying more than 25 hours,
on the other hand, results in a return to the initial
pattern: More hours produce higher grades.
Using the inductive method, then, we end up
with a tentative conclusion about the pattern of
the relationship between the two variables. The
conclusion is tentative because the observations
we have made cannot be taken as a test of the
pattern—those observations are the source of the
pattern we’ve created.
As I discussed in Chapter 1, in actual practice,
theory and research interact through a
never-ending alternation of deduction and induction.
A good example is the classic work of
Emile Durkheim on suicide ([1897] 1951). When
Durkheim pored over table after table of official
statistics on suicide rates in different areas, he
was struck by the fact that Protestant countries
consistently had higher suicide rates than Catholic
ones did. Why should that be the case? His
initial observations led him to create inductively
a theory of religion, social integration, anomie,
and suicide. His theoretical explanations in turn
led deductively to further hypotheses and further
observations.
The suicide data analyzed by Durkheim pale
in comparison with what is now referred to as
big data, enormous data sets created through
the automatic monitoring of ongoing processes.
If you have purchased books, CDs, or anti-itch
lotions from Amazon.com or a similar online
seller, those purchases were recorded in a huge
data set containing the online purchases of
everyone else. Hence, you may find yourself
looking at a message such as, “Other people who
bought this book also bought . . .” Or your web
surfing may be spiced with ads for products or
services vaguely related to actions you have previously
taken online. If you’ve ever contributed
to a political campaign or signed an online petition,
you’re very likely to have received related
notifications and requests subsequently.
Similarly, you have probably read about the
controversial bulk data-collection programs of
the National Security Administration (NSA),
monitoring telephone calls and Internet communications
for the purpose of identifying possible
terrorist connections and activities. The rise in
big data collection and processing by commercial,
governmental, and other agencies raises serious
debates over the prospects for privacy in modern
society.
In summary, the scientific norm of logical
reasoning provides a two-way bridge between
theory and research. Scientific inquiry in practice
often alternates between deduction and induction.
Both methods involve an interplay of logic
and observation. And both are routes to the construction
of social theories.
Although both inductive and deductive
methods are valid in scientific inquiry, individuals
may feel more comfortable with one approach
than the other. Consider this exchange
big data  Extremely large data sets generated
through the automatic monitoring of ongoing
processes, such as Amazon monitoring purchases
or the National Security Administration’s monitoring
of telephone and Internet communications.
Deductive Theory Construction ■ 53
in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story “A Scandal
in Bohemia,” as Sherlock Holmes answers
Dr. Watson’s inquiry (Doyle [1891] 1892: 13):
“What do you imagine that it means?”
“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake
to theorise before one has data. Insensibly
one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead
of theories to suit facts.”
Some social scientists would more or less agree
with this inductive position (see especially the
discussion of grounded theory in Chapter 10),
whereas others would take a more deductive
stance. Most, however, concede the legitimacy of
both approaches.
With this understanding of the deductive
and inductive links between theory and research
in hand, let’s now delve more deeply into how
theories are constructed using either of these two
different approaches.
DeductiveTheory Construction
To see what’s involved in deductive theory construction
and hypothesis testing, imagine that
you’re going to construct a deductive theory.
How would you go about it?
Getting Started
The first step in deductive theory construction is
to pick a topic that interests you. The topic can
be very broad, such as “What is the structure of
society?” or it can be narrower, as in “Why do
people support or oppose the idea of a woman’s
right to an abortion?” Whatever the topic, it
should be something you’re interested in understanding
and explaining.
Once you’ve picked your topic, the next step
is to undertake an inventory of what’s already
known or thought about it. In part, this means
writing down your own observations and ideas.
Beyond that, it means learning what other
scholars have said about it. You can talk to other
people, and you’ll want to read the scholarly literature
on the topic. Appendix A provides guidelines
for using the library—you’ll likely spend a
lot of time there.
Your preliminary research will probably
uncover consistent patterns discovered by prior
scholars. For example, religious and political
variables will stand out as important determinants
of attitudes about abortion. Findings such
as these will be very useful to you in creating
your own theory. We’ll return to techniques of
the literature review in more detail as the book
continues.
In this process, don’t overlook the value of
introspection. Whenever we can look at our own
personal processes—including reactions, fears,
and prejudices—we may gain important insights
into human behavior in general. I don’t mean
to say that everyone thinks like you or me, but
introspection can provide a useful source of
insights that can inform our inquiries.
Constructing Your Theory
Now that you’ve reviewed previous work on the
topic, you’re ready to begin constructing your
theory. Although theory construction is not a
lockstep affair, the process generally involves
something like the following steps.
1.	 Specify the topic.
2.	 Specify the range of phenomena your theory
addresses. Will your theory apply to all of
human social life, will it apply only to U.S.
citizens, only to young people, or what?
3.	 Identify and specify your major concepts and
variables.
4.	 Find out what is known (propositions) about
the relationships among those variables.
5.	 Reason logically from those propositions to
the specific topic you’re examining.
We’ve already discussed items (1) through
(3), so let’s focus now on (4) and (5). As you
identify the relevant concepts and discover
what’s already been learned about them, you
can begin to create a propositional structure that
explains the topic under study.
Let’s look now at an example of how these
building blocks fit together in deductive theory
construction and empirical research.
An Example of Deductive Theory:
Distributive Justice
A topic of interest to scholars is the concept
of distributive justice, people’s perceptions
of whether they are being treated fairly by
54 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
life, whether they are getting “their share.”
Guillermina Jasso describes the theory of
distributive justice more formally, as follows:
The theory provides a mathematical description
of the process whereby individuals,
reflecting on their holdings of the goods
they value (such as beauty, intelligence,
or wealth), compare themselves to others,
experiencing a fundamental instantaneous
magnitude of the justice evaluation (J),
which captures their sense of being fairly
or unfairly treated in the distributions of
natural and social goods.
(Jasso 1988: 11)
Notice that Jasso has assigned a symbolic representation
for her key variable: J will stand for
distributive justice. She does this to support her
intention of stating her theory in mathematical
formulas. Though theories are often expressed
mathematically, we’ll not delve too deeply into
that practice here.
Jasso indicates that there are three kinds of
postulates in her theory. “The first makes explicit
the fundamental axiom which represents the
substantive point of departure for the theory.”
She elaborates as follows: “The theory begins
with the received Axiom of Comparison, which
formalizes the long-held view that a wide class
of phenomena, including happiness, self-esteem,
and the sense of distributive justice, may be understood
as the product of a comparison process”
(Jasso 1988: 11).
Thus, your sense of whether you’re receiving
a fair share of the good things of life comes from
comparing yourself with others. If this seems
obvious to you, that’s not a shortcoming of the
axiom. Remember, axioms are the taken-forgranted
beginnings of theory.
Jasso continues to do the groundwork for
her theory. First, she indicates that our sense of
distributive justice is a function of “Actual Holdings
(A)” and “Comparison Holdings (C)” of some
good. Let’s consider money, for example. My
sense of justice in this regard is a function of how
much I actually have, compared with how much
others have. By specifying the two components
of the comparison, Jasso can use them as variables
in her theory.
Next, Jasso offers a “measurement rule” that
further specifies how the two variables, A and C,
will be conceptualized. This step is needed because
some of the goods to be examined are concrete
and commonly measured (such as money),
whereas others are less tangible (such as respect).
The former kind, she says, will be measured conventionally,
whereas the latter will be measured
“by the individual’s relative rank . . . within a
specially selected comparison group.” The theory
will provide a formula for making that measurement
(Jasso 1988: 13).
Jasso continues in this fashion to introduce
additional elements, weaving them into mathematical
formulas to be used in deriving predictions
about the workings of distributive justice in
a variety of social settings. Here is just a sampling
of where her theorizing takes her (1988: 14–15).
●● Other things [being] the same, a person
will prefer to steal from a fellow group
member rather than from an outsider.
●● The preference to steal from a fellow
group member is more pronounced in
poor groups than in rich groups.
●● In the case of theft, informants arise only
in cross-group theft, in which case they
are members of the thief’s group.
●● Persons who arrive a week late at
summer camp or for freshman year of
college are more likely to become friends
of persons who play games of chance
than of persons who play games of skill.
●● A society becomes more vulnerable to
deficit spending as its wealth increases.
●● Societies in which population growth is
welcomed must be societies in which the
set of valued goods includes at least one
quantity-good, such as wealth.
Jasso’s theory leads to many other propositions,
but this sampling should provide a good
sense of where deductive theorizing can take
you. To get a feeling for how she reasons her
way to these propositions, let’s look briefly at
the logic involved in two of the propositions that
relate to theft within and outside one’s group.
●● Other things [being] the same, a person will
prefer to steal from a fellow group member
rather than from an outsider.
Beginning with the assumption that thieves
want to maximize their relative wealth, ask
Inductive Theory Construction ■ 55
yourself if that goal would be best served by
stealing from those you compare yourself with
or from outsiders. In each case, stealing will
increase your Actual Holdings, but what about
your Comparison Holdings?
A moment’s thought should suggest that
stealing from people in your comparison group
will lower their holdings, further increasing
your relative wealth. To simplify, imagine there
are only two people in your comparison group:
you and I. Suppose we each have $100. If you
steal $50 from someone outside our group,
you will have increased your relative wealth
by 50 percent compared with me: $150 versus
$100. But if you steal $50 from me, you will
have increased your relative wealth 200 percent:
$150 to my $50. Your goal is best served by stealing
from within the comparison group.
●● In the case of theft, informants arise only
in cross-group theft, in which case they are
members of the thief’s group.
Can you see why it would make sense for
informants (1) to arise only in the case of crossgroup
theft and (2) to come from the thief’s comparison
group? This proposition again depends
on the fundamental assumption that everyone
wants to increase his or her relative standing.
Suppose you and I are in the same comparison
group, but this time the group contains additional
people. If you steal from someone else
within our comparison group, my relative standing
in the group does not change. Although your
wealth has increased, the average wealth in the
group remains the same (because someone else’s
wealth has decreased by the same amount). So
my relative standing remains the same. I have no
incentive to inform on you.
If you steal from someone outside our comparison
group, however, your nefarious income
increases the total wealth in our group. Now my
own wealth relative to that total is diminished.
Because my relative wealth has suffered, I’m
more likely to inform on you in order to bring
an end to your stealing. Hence, informants arise
only in cross-group theft.
This last deduction also begins to explain
why these informants come from the thief’s
own comparison group. We’ve just seen how
your theft decreased my relative standing. How
about members of the other group (other than
the individual you stole from)? Each of them
actually profits from the theft, because you have
reduced the total with which they compare
themselves. Hence, they have no reason to inform
on you. Thus, the theory of distributive justice
predicts that informants arise from the thief’s
own comparison group.
This brief peek into Jasso’s derivations
should give you some sense of the enterprise of
deductive theory. Of course, the theory guarantees
none of the given predictions. The role
of research is to test each of them to determine
whether what makes sense (logic) actually
occurs in practice (observation).
See the Tips and Tools box, “Generating a
Hypothesis from a Theory,” for a look at creating
hypotheses for deductive purposes.
InductiveTheory Construction
As we have seen, quite often social scientists
begin constructing a theory through the inductive
method by first observing aspects of social
life and then seeking to discover patterns that
may point to relatively universal principles.
Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967) coined
the term grounded theory in reference to this method.
Field research—the direct observation of
events in progress—is frequently used to develop
theories through observation. In a long and rich
tradition, anthropologists have used this method
to good advantage.
Among modern social scientists, no one
has been more adept at seeing the patterns of
human behavior through observation than
Erving Goffman, in a research career that
stretched from the 1950s to the 1970s:
A game such as chess generates a habitable
universe for those who can follow it, a plane
of being, a cast of characters with a seemingly
unlimited number of different situations and
acts through which to realize their natures
and destinies. Yet much of this is reducible
to a small set of interdependent rules and
practices. If the meaningfulness of everyday
activity is similarly dependent on a closed,
finite set of rules, then explication of them
would give one a powerful means of analyzing
social life.
(1974: 5)
56 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Generating a Hypothesis from a Theory
As we have seen, the deductive method of research typically focuses on
the testing of a hypothesis. Let’s take a minute to look at how to create a
hypothesis for testing.
Hypotheses state an expected causal relationship between two
(or more) variables. Let’s suppose you’re interested in student political
orientations, and your review of the literature and your own reasoning
suggest to you that college major will play some part in determining
students’political views. Already, we have two variables: collegemajor
and political orientation. Moreover, politicalorientation is the dependent
variable—you believe it depends on something else, on the independent
variable, which in this case is collegemajor.
Now we need to specify the attributes comprising each of these
variables. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume political orientation includes
only liberal or conservative. And to simplify the matter of major, let’s
suppose your research interests focus on the presumed differences
between business students and those in the social sciences.
Even with these simplifications, you would need to specify more
concretely how you would recognize a liberal or a conservative when
you came across them in your study.This process of specification will
be discussed at length in Chapter 5. For now, let’s assume you will
ask student-subjects whether they consider themselves liberals or
conservatives, letting each student report on what the terms mean to
them. (As we’ll see later, this simple dichotomy is unlikely to work in
practice, as some students would want to identify themselves as independents
or something else.)
Identifying students’majors isn’t as straightforward as you might
think. For example, what disciplines compose the social sciences in your
study? Also, must students be declared majors or simply be planning to
major in one of the relevant fields?
Once these issues have been settled, you are ready to state your
hypothesis. For example, it might be the following:
“Students majoring in the social sciences will be more likely to
identify themselves as liberals than are those majoring in business.”
In addition to this basic expectation, you may wish to specify  “more
likely”in terms of how much more likely. Chapter 16 will provide some
options in this regard.
Deductive theory construction and hypothesis testing offer a
clear example of what philosopher Karl Popper (1934) described as the
principle of falsifiability in science. No conclusion can be considered
“scientific”unless it is possible to state observations that would contradict
or disprove it.This is what distinguishes scientific conclusions from
religious, political, or philosophical beliefs. A belief you hold dear may
very well be true, but unless we can agree on circumstances that would
disprove it, it cannot be considered proven.
Tips andTools
In a variety of research efforts, Goffman uncovered
the rules of such diverse behaviors as
living in a mental institution (1961) and managing
the “spoiled identity” of being disfigured
(1963). In each case, Goffman observed the
phenomenon in depth and teased out the rules
governing behavior. Goffman’s research provides
an excellent example of qualitative field research
as a source of grounded theory.
Our earlier discussion of the Comfort Hypothesis
and church involvement shows that
qualitative field research is not the only method
of observation appropriate to the development of
inductive theory. Here’s another detailed example
to illustrate further the construction of inductive
theory using quantitative methods.
An Example of Inductive Theory:
Why Do People Smoke Marijuana?
During the 1960s and 1970s, marijuana use
on U.S. college campuses was a subject of
considerable discussion in the popular press.
Some people were troubled by marijuana’s
popularity; others welcomed it. What interests
us here is why some students smoked marijuana
and others didn’t. A survey of students at the
University of Hawaii by David Takeuchi (1974)
provided the data to answer that question. While
the reasons and practices regarding pot may have
changed, the subtle redefinition of what needed
explaining is still instructive.
At the time of the study, a huge number of
explanations were being offered for drug use.
People who opposed drug use, for example, often
suggested that marijuana smokers were academic
failures trying to avoid the rigors of college
life. Those in favor of marijuana, on the other
hand, often spoke of the search for new values:
Marijuana smokers, they said, were people who
had seen through the hypocrisy of middle-class
values.
Takeuchi’s analysis of the data gathered from
University of Hawaii students, however, did not
The Links between Theory and Research ■ 57
support any of the explanations being offered.
Those who reported smoking marijuana had essentially
the same academic records as those who
didn’t smoke it, and both groups were equally
involved in traditional “school spirit” activities.
Both groups seemed to feel equally well integrated
into campus life.
There were other differences between the
groups, however:
1.	 Women were less likely than men to smoke
marijuana.
2.	 Asian students (a large proportion of the
student body) were less likely to smoke marijuana
than non-Asians were.
3.	 Students living at home were less likely to
smoke marijuana than those who were living
in their own apartments.
As in the case of religiosity, the three variables
independently affected the likelihood of a
student’s smoking marijuana. About 10 percent
of the Asian women living at home had smoked
marijuana, in contrast to about 80 percent of the
non-Asian men living in apartments. And, as in
the religiosity study, the researchers discovered a
powerful pattern of drug use before they had an
explanation for that pattern.
In this instance, the explanation took a peculiar
turn. Instead of explaining why some
students smoked marijuana, the researchers
explained why some didn’t. Assuming that all
students had some motivation for trying drugs,
the researchers suggested that students differed
in the degree of “social constraints” preventing
them from following through on that motivation.
U.S. society is, on the whole, more permissive
with men than with women when it comes
to deviant behavior. Consider, for example, a
group of men getting drunk and boisterous. We
tend to dismiss such behavior with references
to “camaraderie” and “having a good time,”
whereas a group of women behaving similarly
would probably be regarded with disapproval.
We have an idiom, “Boys will be boys,” but no
comparable idiom for girls. The researchers reasoned,
therefore, that women would have more
to lose by smoking marijuana than men would.
In other words, being female provided a constraint
against smoking marijuana.
Students living at home had obvious constraints
against smoking marijuana, compared
with students living on their own. Quite aside
from differences in opportunity, those living at
home were seen as being more dependent on
their parents—hence more vulnerable to additional
punishment for breaking the law.
Finally, the Asian subculture in Hawaii has
traditionally placed a higher premium on obedience
to the law than other subcultures have,
so Asian students would have more to lose if
they were caught violating the law by smoking
marijuana.
Overall, then, a “social constraints” theory
was offered as the explanation for observed differences
in the likelihood of smoking marijuana.
The more constraints a student had, the less
likely he or she would be to smoke marijuana.
It bears repeating that the researchers had no
thoughts about such a theory when their research
began. The theory came from an examination
of the data.
The Links betweenTheory
and Research
Throughout this chapter, we have seen various
aspects of the links between theory and research
in social science inquiry. In the deductive model,
research is used to test theories. In the inductive
model, theories are developed from the analysis
of research data. This final section looks more
closely into the ways theory and research are
related in actual social science inquiry.
Whereas we have discussed two idealized
logical models for linking theory and research,
social science inquiries have developed a great
many variations on these themes. Sometimes
theoretical issues are introduced merely as a
background for empirical analyses. Other studies
cite selected empirical data to bolster theoretical
arguments. In neither case do theory and research
really interact for the purpose of developing
new explanations. Some studies make no use
of theory at all, aiming specifically, for example,
at an ethnographic description of a particular social
situation, such as an anthropological account
of food and dress in a particular society.
As you read social research reports, however,
you’ll often find that the authors are conscious of
the implications of their research for social theories
and vice versa.
58 ■ Chapter 2: Paradigms, Theory, and Social Research
Research Ethics andTheory
In Chapter 1, I introduced the subject of research
ethics and said we would return to that topic
throughout the book. At this point, what ethical
issues do you suppose theory engenders?
In this chapter, we have seen how the
paradigms and theories that guide research inevitably
impact what is observed and how it is
interpreted. Choosing a particular paradigm or
theory does not guarantee a particular research
conclusion, but it will affect what you look for
and what you ignore. Whether you choose a
functionalist or a conflict paradigm to organize
your research on police–community relations, for
example, will make a big difference.
This is a difficult issue to resolve in practice.
Choosing a theoretical orientation for the
purpose of encouraging a particular conclusion
would be regarded as unethical as a general
matter, but when research is linked to an intention
to bring about social change, the researcher
will likely choose a theoretical orientation
appropriate to that intention. Let’s say you’re
concerned about the treatment of homeless
people by the police in your community. You
might organize your research in terms of interactionist
or conflict paradigms and theories that
would reveal any instances of mistreatment that
may occur.
Two factors counter the potential problem of
bias from theoretical orientation. First, as we’ll
see in the remainder of the book, social science
research techniques—the various methods of
observation and analysis—place a damper on our
simply seeing what we expect. Even if you expect
to find the police mistreating the homeless and
use theories and methods that will reveal such
mistreatment, you will not observe what isn’t
there if you apply those theories and methods
appropriately.
Second, the collective nature of social
research offers further protection. As we’ll
discuss more in Chapter 17, peer review in which
researchers evaluate each other’s efforts will
point to instances of shoddy and/or biased
research. Moreover, with several researchers
studying the same phenomenon, perhaps using
different paradigms, theories, and methods,
the risk of biased research findings is further
reduced.
Main Points
Introduction
●● Theories function in three ways in research:
(1) helping to avoid flukes, (2) making sense of
observed patterns, and (3) shaping and directing
research efforts.
Some Social Science Paradigms
●● Social scientists use a variety of paradigms to
organize how they understand and inquire into
social life.
●● A distinction between types of theories that cut
across various paradigms is macrotheory (theories
about large-scale features of society) versus
microtheory (theories about smaller units or
features of society).
●● The positivistic paradigm assumes that we
can scientifically discover the rules governing
social life.
●● The Social Darwinist paradigm sees a progressive
evolution in social life.
●● The conflict paradigm focuses on the attempt of
individuals and groups to dominate others and
to avoid being dominated.
●● The symbolic interactionist paradigm examines
how shared meanings and social patterns develop
in the course of social interactions.
●● Ethnomethodology focuses on the ways people
make sense out of social life in the process
of living it, as though each were a researcher
engaged in an inquiry.
●● The structural functionalist (or social systems)
paradigm seeks to discover what functions the
many elements of society perform for the whole
system.
●● Feminist paradigms, in addition to drawing
attention to the oppression of women in
most societies, highlight how previous images
of social reality have often come from, and
reinforced, the experiences of men.
●● Like feminist paradigms, critical race theory
both examines the disadvantaged position of a
social group (African Americans) and offers a
different vantage point from which to view and
understand society.
●● Some contemporary theorists and researchers
have challenged the long-standing belief in an
objective reality that abides by rational rules.
They point out that it is possible to agree on an
“intersubjective” reality, a view that characterizes
postmodernism.
Elements of Social Theory
●● The elements of social theory include observations,
facts, and laws (which relate to the reality being
observed), as well as concepts, variables, axioms
Review Questions and Exercises ■ 59
or postulates, propositions, and hypotheses (which
are logical building blocks of the theory itself).
Two Logical Systems Revisited
●● In the traditional image of science, scientists
proceed from theory to operationalization to
observation. But this image does not accurately
depict how scientific research is actually done.
●● Social scientific theory and research are linked
through the two logical methods of deduction
(the derivation of expectations and hypotheses
from theories) and induction (the development
of generalizations from specific observations).
●● In practice, science is a process involving an
alternation of deduction and induction.
Deductive Theory Construction
●● Guillermina Jasso’s theory of distributive justice
illustrates how formal reasoning can lead to a
variety of theoretical expectations that can be
tested by observation.
Inductive Theory Construction
●● David Takeuchi’s study of factors influencing
marijuana smoking among University of Hawaii
students illustrates how collecting observations
can lead to generalizations and an explanatory
theory.
The Links between Theory and Research
●● In practice, there are many possible links between
theory and research and many ways of
going about social inquiry.
Research Ethics and Theory
●● Researchers should not use paradigm and
theory selection as a means of achieving desired
research results.
●● The collective nature of social research offers
protection against biased research findings.
Key Terms
The following terms are defined in context in the
chapter and at the bottom of the page where the
term is introduced, as well as in the comprehensive
glossary at the back of the book.
Proposing Social Research:
Theory
As this chapter has indicated, social research can be
pursued within numerous theoretical paradigms—
each suggesting a somewhat different way to
approach the research question. In this portion of
your proposal, you should identify the paradigm(s)
that will shape the design of your research.
We have also seen that paradigms provide
frameworks within which causal theories may
be developed. Perhaps your research project will
explore or test an existing theory. Or more ambitiously,
you may propose a theory or hypothesis for
testing. This is the section of the proposal in which
to describe this aspect of your project.
Not all research projects are formally organized
around the creation and/or testing of theories and
hypotheses. However, your research will involve
theoretical concepts, which should be described in
this section of the proposal. As we’ll see more fully
in Chapter 17, this portion of your proposal will reflect
the literature on previous theory and research
that has shaped your own thinking and research
plans.
Review Questions and Exercises
1.	 Consider the possible relationship between
education and prejudice that was mentioned in
Chapter 1. Describe how you might examine
that relationship through (a) deductive and
(b) inductive methods.
2.	 Review the relationships between theory and
research discussed in this chapter. Select a research
article from an academic journal and
classify the relationship between theory and
research you find there.
3.	 Using one of the many search engines (such as
Google, Bing, Yahoo, Chrome, or another of
your choosing), find information on the web
concerning at least three of the following paradigms:
functionalism, symbolic interactionism,
conflict paradigm, ethnomethodology, feminist
paradigms, critical race theory, rational
objectivity. Give the web locations and report
on the theorists discussed in connection with
the information you found.
4.	 See if you can locate Judith A. Howard (2000),
“Social Psychology of Identities,” Annual Review
of Sociology 26:367–93. doi: 10.1146. What
paradigm does Howard find most useful for
the study of social identities? Explain why she
feels that it is the appropriate paradigm. Do you
agree? Why or why not?
big data
conflict paradigm
critical race theory
critical realism
feminist paradigms
hypothesis
interest convergence
macrotheory
microtheory
null hypothesis
operational definition
operationalization
paradigm
positivism
postmodernism
structural functionalism
symbolic interactionism