The Logic of Social Research / Edition 1

by Arthur L. Stinchcombe

Overview

Arthur L. Stinchcombe has earned a reputation as a leading practitioner of methodology in sociology and related disciplines. Throughout his distinguished career he has championed the idea that to be an effective sociologist, one must use many methods. This incisive work introduces students to the logic of those methods.

The Logic of Social Research orients students to a set of logical problems that all methods must address to study social causation. Almost all sociological theory asserts that some social conditions produce other social conditions, but the theoretical links between causes and effects are not easily supported by observation. Observations cannot directly show causation, but they can reject or support causal theories with different degrees of credibility. As a result, sociologists have created four main types of methods that Stinchcombe terms quantitative, historical, ethnographic, and experimental to support their theories. Each method has value, and each has its uses for different research purposes.

Accessible and astute, The Logic of Social Research offers an image of what sociology is, what it's all about, and what the craft of the sociologist consists of.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226774923
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Edition description:	1
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Arthur L. Stinchcombe is professor emeritus of sociology, political science, and organizational behavior at Northwestern University. He is the author of many books, including Constructing Social Theories and, most recently, When Formality Works: Authority and Abstraction in Law and Organizations, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Read an Excerpt

THE LOGIC OF SOCIAL RESEARCH

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By Arthur L. Stinchcombe
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2005 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-77492-3

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Chapter One
Methods for Sociology and Related Disciplines

What Kinds of Theory Do Sociologists Study?

The central purpose of this book is to analyze logically and practically various strategies sociologists have invented to explore for, develop, or test theories of causation in social life. Almost all sociological theories assert that some social condition or conditions cause or produce one or more other social conditions. We have known since Hume that such theoretical links between causes and effects are not easily supported by observation. Sociologists have used four main kinds of solutions to Hume's problem of supporting theories involving causation. And they have contributed to the nearly infinite supply of reassertions that causation cannot itself be observed; one after another method has been attacked because it leaves the question of causation (like everything asserted about the world by all other theories in all sciences) somewhat uncertain. Our purpose as empirical workers of different kinds has been to make such theories as believable as we can, based on the evidence we can collect or create.

I will call the four main methods of addressing causal questions in social science by their common names: (1) quantitative regression methods (and their analogues) on systematically collected observations in the world, especially observations in surveys; (2) historical methods of studying time order and intervening processes between cause and effect in archives of various kinds; (3) ethnographic methods to penetrate deeply into sequences of actions and their context to provide evidence about action as it develops in its natural setting; and (4) experimental methods to verify that manipulations of causes have the effects that their natural analogues are thought to have, to verify "mechanisms" in the causal theories.

I shall elaborate the nature of these methods briefly here, before explaining why this book is organized not by the methods, but by the general logical problems the methods address in different ways. That is, there are no chapters on, say, ethnographic methods, but rather sections on a logical problem such as dealing with causes that are very complex products of one actor (say, an author) but that enter in a much simpler way into the life of another (say, a reader). Such patterns of causation pervade high culture: the arts, the law, medicine, and science. There is no reason that all the methods mentioned above cannot be used to address these patterns, but they have to deal with the same logical structure of investigation.

But there are different strengths and weaknesses, for different purposes, of methods such as surveys, which radically simplify the observations of the complex products before studying the effects, as we might expect from surveys of library use, and those that focus on the complex production process (say, of a book), starting with the author's background and setting and the historically developed genre in which he or she is writing. Although they are on the same theoretical topic, the sorts of things one finds out about that topic are different. Surveys might show that fundamentalists read more books than people of other religious persuasions, but that most of those books are on religious topics. Historical methods might show that narrative biographies of a person's life in different historical periods have been likely to produce sagas praising famous men at some times, family dramas acted out in a simulated living room on stage in other times.

1. Quantitative. The methods usually called "quantitative" in sociology have as their main technique eliminating the alternatives to a given simple causal theory that is weakly supported by an observed correlation, by examination of the relations among variables having relatively simple and abstract measures, such as can be created by a few survey questions. Such relations among variables are ordinarily collected mainly by surveys or other repetitive quantitative observations in "natural settings," rather than in laboratories. They do that elimination by showing that the pattern of partial correlations (or other partial regression coefficients) is not compatible with the alternative theories, but instead supports the simple causal theory at stake. They start, of course, by showing that the presumed cause is at least correlated with the presumed effect. But although Hume in effect already said, "Correlation is not [strong evidence of] causation," one of the possible theories that would produce the observed correlation is that simple causal theory. Each time one eliminates one or more other theories of that correlation, one increases the likelihood of the simple causal theory. This is a very abstracted description of what is going on, so perhaps the following example will help.

Many of the advantages and disadvantages that children enjoy in school and in their placement in the labor market are summed up by the resources available in their family of origin, by the fact that their father or mother or both had good jobs, or at the other extreme that one or both did not have jobs or had bad ones. Consequently, one theory of the disadvantage in school and the labor market of African Americans is that their parents were disadvantaged in their turn by the low occupational standing of their parents, and so on back to the original forced occupation in plantation work in the slave system.

If that were true, then the fact that slaves set free before the Civil War were more often of mixed race becomes relevant. This was partly because planters and other slave owners more often freed their mistresses and "illegitimate" children, and partly because they more often freed household slaves, craftsmen, and slave supervisors, who were more often of mixed race. Consequently the "color" of a family (a very rough measure of mixed race) is a measure of early manumission of their ancestors. It also measures the longer exposure of ancestors under slavery to those aspects of majority culture that one learns as a servant, craftsman, or supervisor, even before possible earliermanumission. That is, generations since field slavery of a family, and so generations with higher human capital as valued in the United States, is roughly measured by color (for this process in the Caribbean, see Stinchcombe 1995a, pp. 138-152, 159-171).

The number of generations since rural servitude of families of American whites varies a good deal by where they came from. In the commercial farming environment in the Low Countries down the Rhine to northern Italy, and including England and the Seine valley in Europe, a modern "free peasantry" existed very early, with more feudal servitude in the interior plains, and more egalitarian traditional labor contracts in mountainous areas (except for some slavery, not of field slaves, in the Caucasus until the early eighteenth century). In central Europe coercive inheritable servile tenures in rural areas were decaying by the early eighteenth century, while in Russia serfdom was not abolished until the late nineteenth century. Temporary servile ("indentured servant") contracts existed in the American colonies well into the eighteenth century, and in Hawaii until the nineteenth century, though only a few of the indentured servants there were Hispanics.

The varying colors of whites do not map very well the history of families' liberation from servile tenures and the entailed human capital deprivation, so we are forced to lump "whites" all together here. Taking account of the mixture of sources of U.S. white immigrants, I would hazard an estimate of an average of about twenty-five to thirty generations, or roughly six centuries. The regression study design suggested below does not depend on this estimate; it essentially ignores all differences in cumulated human capital since servile conditions in family lines before the nineteenth century.

The accumulation of human capital in a family line in the generations since slavery or servitude might, then, be enough to explain the difference in achievement and placement between the races. This would turn the theoretical question from one of how far African Americans are disadvantaged by current practices, to how long their legacy of human capital has been accumulating. One would probably want to set whites at the value of the lightest category of African Americans for "color" (in effect saying that the effect of slavery erodes at periods over about ten generations). And another rough measure of that human capital deposit of generations since slavery and of other more recent causes of improved cultural legacies might be parents' occupational or educational position. The combination of estimating these two effects should better tell us which African Americans ought to be as well off as the average white person with a long period of accumulation of family-line human capital (by the coefficient of color, as manifest also by the coefficients of their parents' occupational and educational position).

Now partial regression coefficients could be calculated for several dependent (i.e., "effect") variables: the interviewed person's years of schooling, grade averages, and placement in the labor market, on three "independent" or "causal" variables: "race," "color," and "parent's occupational standing" (e.g., for the color variable, 0 for dark African Americans, gradually increasing to 1 for the lightest blacks and for whites; and for the "race" variable, 1 for all people with any African ancestors, 0 for those with "all white" ancestors).

Such an analysis would ask the question of how closely those African Americans whose human capital legacy was equal to that of whites equaled whites in educational or occupational achievement. If the "race" coefficient was very small, this would show that there was "no discrimination since slavery," just a slow course of "catching up" from the oppression of slavery itself. The quantitative result then pits one theory (that the causes of lower African American achievement are the slow accumulation of many kinds of human capital over generations) against another (that some factor like continuing discrimination explains the difference in achievement).

Conversely, if such controls did not eliminate the direct effect of "African American" versus "white," this would be good evidence that, in spite of our valiant calculation efforts, we cannot eliminate the effect of race discrimination. The alternative to the discrimination theory that has been eliminated is that African Americans who are "almost white," who have educated parents with good jobs, who therefore have evidently been accumulating a stock of human capital in the family nearly as long as whites, as well as having the occupational achievement in the previous generation representing that accumulated human capital, should have the same levels as whites of child achievement in education and in the labor market. The "discrimination coefficient" not being zero eliminates the alternative, "slow accumulation of human capital across generations." The analysis then would support the discrimination theory originally precariously supported by the correlation between status and race, but now in a much stronger position because some of its competitors have been eliminated as the whole of the explanation.

Such a strategy of regression elimination of alternative theories in quantitative data collected, often by interviews, with simple measures of many variables measured simultaneously (sometimes over time) will be called "quantitative" for simplicity. There is no inherent reason that historical, ethnographic, and experimental methods should not also be quantitative, but I will simplify the contrast.

2. Historical. Historical methods in sociology are mostly connected to comparisons of countries or of other social units. The point is to study sequences of conditions, actions, and effects that have happened in natural settings, in sufficient detail to get signs of sequences that are causally connected. In particular, such studies sometimes concentrate on contexts that change the meanings of actions or the conditions under which actions are carried out, so that similar actions have different effects in different times and places. A very good way to get variations in context is to compare times and places that have distinctive contexts.

A particularly important form of the causal pattern is what has come to be called "path dependency." For example, after the North American colonies had been organized by different companies, each company set up local administrations in America with varying powers to make local decisions in "legislatures." It was therefore easier to organize the postrevolutionary American government in a federal fashion. Many powers remained where they had been during the colonial period, in what were now the separate states but before had been the separate colonies.

In the nineteenth century, then, the conflict over slavery and its extension to the West took place in an environment in which both the South and the North had subunits, ones we call "states," able to raise taxes, already having militia organizations, having legislatures to organize themselves for war and policing, and the like. That is, being on a federalist path shaped the kind of civil war that one would have later, by having highly competent local "democratic" state governments on both sides. The Civil War then became, in the southern tag for it, a "War between the States." The context of the actions involved in civil war then was determined by the federalist path that one had been on previously.

But it is important to notice also that the nature of the "federalist path" was the continuing existence of institutional forms: persistent ways of organizing and validating social action. The context of the American Civil War in particular consisted of state legislatures with substantial power over labor relations (e.g., slave versus free), social welfare legislation (e.g., local hospitals), local coercive power (from county sheriffs and jails to state militias), schools, local banks, and the like. These then were institutional forms created by history that had continuing power and legitimacy, and so could be powerful causes in the 1840s and 1850s, and consequently in the political organization of the war itself.

Even after the Civil War in the United States, the southern states were reorganized with essentially the same boundaries, the same counties, the same laws and regulations except in the area of slavery, and legislatures elected more or less in the same way as before the war, and having the same local powers. After a while many of the same people were back in power, elected again. In some sense, then, history explains itself. Put another way, we do not know what causes of social action will be in a time and place without knowing what causes previous-that is, historical-action has placed there. In such cases, then, the causal picture is "inherently historical," because the causes are themselves historical creations.

Thus the keys to historical exploration of causal theories are penetration of the details of processes and sequences that in fact connected causes to effects over time, combined with attention to what deposits of causal forces are in a social environment, put there by past action (for a deep exploration of one method for thinking about this, see Bearman, Faris, and Moody, 1999). Then in turn their continuing effects would be shaped by new conditions later on in the sequence. To put it another way, the context of social action is shaped by the path history has taken, and is constituted in part by institutions, practices, and ideas that would not be causes at a given time at all, if history had not put them there.

3. Ethnography. In the early history of anthropological description of new peoples, the observer might see many things that seemed strange to him (or more rarely at that time, to her), all attached to a given "people." For example, one might find nomadic people dependent on herds of domesticated animals that supplied nearly all the needs of the people, which moved from pasture area to pasture area along with the tribe who lived off the herd. This is a special style of domestication of animals, and quite different from having animals in pens and barns and chicken coops.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
1. Methods for Sociology and Related Disciplines
What Kind of Theory Do Sociologists Study?
The Formation of Methodological Factions
An Outline of the Argument
Problem I: The Centrality of Distances in Study Design for Causal Theories
Problem II: Economy in Data Collection
Problem III: Using Data to Refine Concepts and "Measurements" of Concepts
Problem IV: Contexts; Differences and Distances between Contexts; Contexts Shaping Causal Processes
Problem V: Using Data to Find Mechanisms and Processes; Relation of Such Process Concepts to Concepts of Units of Analysis
Problem VI: Testing Theories by Testing Hypotheses with Data
Problem VII: Using Data to Refine Theories
Self-Evaluation
 
2. Distances as Central to Causal Reasoning and Methods
The Minimum Piece of Causal Information Is Two Distances
Difference, Distance, Units, Causes within Units
Closer and Farther: Numbers, Lines, and Curves
The Centrality of Distances in Later Chapters of This Book
 
3. The Basic Structure of Economy in Social Research
The Centrality of Distances in Study Design
Differences among Cultures or Societies
Intensity of Observation
Sparse Fields and the Expense of Getting a Grip on a Case
Stinchcombe Methods Slavery Short Version
Clemens Books Short Version
Theoretical Methods to Increase Economies in Data Collection
Theory Allowing One to Use Data from a "Lower" Level
The Theoretical Penumbra and Exploratory Research
Getting Unconfounded Distances
When Not to Follow my Advice on Sampling Extreme Cases Intensively
"Nearby" Theories and the Value of Data
Process Data
Becker Short Version
Context
Appendix: General Note on American "Random" Samples
 
4. Using Data to Refine Concepts of Distances between Units of Analysis
"Sensitizing Concepts” and Improving Them
Institutionalized Definitions
"Informal" Institutions
Methodological Implications of the Examples    
Extending the Notion
Distances between Situations
Quantitative and Qualitative Distances
Exemplification of Discrete Variables
Stinchcombe Logic of Analogy Short Version
The Opposite End: Exact Concepts
Criteria for Good Concepts with Good Measurements
Stinchcombe Psychology of Rebellion Short Version
Uses of Exactness
Principles of Refining Concepts of Distances
 
5. Refining Concepts about Contexts
Concepts about Context, and Context-Specific Concepts         
Books for Context, Articles for Causation with Assumed Context
Contexts to Study Meanings
The Relation of Context to Distances between Units of Analysis
Periodization and Localization in Historical Sociology
Clemens Time Short Version
Geographical and Temporal Boundaries of Context
Exactness of Concepts of Context; Institutions as Contexts of Organizations
Schneiberg-Clemens Institutionalism Methods Short Version
Concepts and Variables about Contexts
Summary on Concepts of Context
 
6. Units of Analysis and Mechanisms: Turning Causes into Effects
The Interdependence of Concepts and Units of Analysis
Abbott Short Version
Investigating Analogies and Their Causal Meaning
Analogies between Distances as the Core of Analogies between Units of Analysis
An Example of a Mechanism Paper
Five Main Kinds of Mechanisms and Units of Analysis
Stinchcombe Mechanisms Short Version
A Basic Mechanism with Variants: Complex Cultural Objects, Their Creators, and Their Users
Methodological Strategy on Texts, Discourse, and Reception
Objects and Actions, Griswold and the Artist-Audience Relation
Griswold Short Version
Back to Books versus Articles
Reception versus Production
Scholarly Citations as Evidence of "Serious" Reception
Interpretation
Explanation by Interpretation
Summary: Methods for the Sociology of High Culture
Bargains as Social Systems and Creators of Social Orders
Summary on Bargains
Methods to Study When Bargains Hold
Mobilization as a Mechanism
Social Movement Theory and Diffusion Theory
"Seekers," "Cosmopolitans," "Other Adopters," and "Opponents"
Stinchcombe Time Short Version
Ties of Trust
Adoption and Rejection after Adoption: New Things in the Life World
Comparative Racism: Methods for Sorting Out Mechanisms
Why Historical?
Conclusion
 
7. Testing Theories by Testing Hypotheses with Data
Regression as Creating a Parameterized Comparison Group, as a "Null Hypothesis" for "Residual Analysis"
A Note on R2
Hierarchical Models
Observations on Partial Distances
Rules of Thumb for Increasing Power of Observations for Causal Studies
Stinchcombe Causes Short Version
Strong Hierarchical Reasoning: Statistical Form
Back to the Residuals Method
The Character of "Resolution" as a Methodological Criterion
Refining Fieldwork Observations
Resolution on a Grand Scale
The "Preferences" of Organizations
Strategic Questions in "Testing" Theories
An Overall View of What These Strategies Do
Variances, Interactions, Boundaries, Scope Conditions and General Complexification
Complexification and Fish Scale Models of Science
Summary on Testing
 
8. Improving Theories with Data
Theories as Crafted
What Does Crafting Mean?
Crafting Methods         
Stinchcombe Slavery Short Version
Stinchcombe Information Short Version
Heimer and Staffen Methods Short Version
Elegance, Power, and Economy
Stinchcombe Rebellion No Answers Short Version
Responsibility
Heimer and Staffen Responsibility Short Version
Complex Causal Roles of Concepts, Complex Concepts, and Complex Fieldwork Studies
Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

"This is an important book. Arthur Stinchcombe introduces some much-needed practical wisdom into the topic of sociological methodology. Some of the silliest debates in the field seem to be about which method is superior to the rest. Stinchcombe lays waste to this notion and shows that we learn more when multiple methods are applied to the same problem. There is no other book like it."--Joel Podolny, Harvard University

From the Publisher

"This is an important book. Arthur Stinchcombe introduces some much-needed practical wisdom into the topic of sociological methodology. Some of the silliest debates in the field seem to be about which method is superior to the rest. Stinchcombe lays waste to this notion and shows that we learn more when multiple methods are applied to the same problem. There is no other book like it."

Joel Podolny

[Stinchcombe] elaborates on the four main methods used to address causal questions in social science: quantitative regression, historical, ethnographic, and experimental methods. The book is not organized around these methods buy around the general logical problems these methods address in different ways. Each method has value, and each has its uses for different research purposes. The logical problems elaborated on are the importance of distance or differences in studying causation, data collection, the use of data to refine and measure concepts, the influence of contexts on causal processes, the use of data to find mechanisms and processes, testing theories by testing hypotheses, and the use of data to refine theories.”

International Journal of Public Opinion Research

"This book will be of interest and value not only to senior social science students. Philosophers of both science and social science will find much to consider in it. . . . Discerning readers, particularly those educated in the humanities and social sciences, will be afforded the opportunity of both experiencing a master at work and appreciating a masterwork."

Loyola Journal of Social Sciences - Geoff Waters

This book will be of interest and value not only to senior social science students. Philosophers of both science and social science will find much to consider in it. . . . Discerning readers, particularly those educated in the humanities and social sciences, will be afforded the opportunity of both experiencing a master at work and appreciating a masterwork.

— Geoff Waters

Loyola Journal of Social Sciences