3.2: Three General Research Methods

If sociological theories may be thought of as conceptual frameworks used for interpreting social phenomena, sociological methods would be strategies used for collecting evidence that assist in arriving at conclusions about such phenomena. Sociological methods are generally organized around the three following approaches: (1) qualitative, (2) quantitative, and (3) comparative. Similar to the analogy of glasses through which different theoretical perspectives are viewed, methods also have different approaches to collecting evidence. For the sake of making methods as easy as theory to understand, we may think of methods as different ways of telling stories.

In our first story-telling strategy, qualitative methods are much like telling stories by composing narratives about an experience in doing research. As these stories are often long, they require a lot of detail or aspects that provide an in-depth description of a given social phenomenon and its interpretation. For this reason, it’s important to spend some time familiarizing oneself with the resources from which this information is gathered. As these resources are often human subjects (actual people without whom sociologists talk), establishing good rapport may afford the researcher better access to detailed information. Given that this may require asking a lot of questions about many aspects of a topic, it’s typically best to do so by limiting the number of resources or cases a researcher identifies—something methodologists refer to as sampling. In effect, qualitative methods tell stories about social phenomena through long narratives that include few cases, but many aspects of these cases.

In 2015, Rosalind S. Chou and Joe Feagan published The Myth of the Model Minority, wherein their research was compiled using extensive qualitative methods. In this critical work, Chou and Feagin deconstruct the pervasive “model minority” stereotype applied to Asian Americans. Arguing that this myth masks the enduring reality of systemic and everyday racism, the authors draw on in-depth qualitative research to document the lived experiences of racial oppression. The study’s methodological core consists of ethnographic methods which included extensive participant observation within Asian American communities and organizations over a five-year period. This immersive ethnographic approach was supplemented by dozens of semi-structured, long-form interviews with Asian American students and adults. Through this rich qualitative and ethnographic data, the authors provide detailed accounts of the overt and covert racist barriers their respondents face in educational and professional settings, as well as the significant psychological toll of navigating white-dominated spaces. The analysis reveals how the model minority stereotype functions as a form of racist framing that perpetuates their marginalization, pits them against other minority groups, and invalidates their experiences of discrimination. The book concludes that systemic white racism remains a powerful force in the lives of Asian Americans, necessitating a rejection of the model minority myth and its divisive consequences. In this way, qualitative methods afforded Chou and Feagin the in-depth and rich information used in compiling the details of this story.

In the second storytelling strategy, quantitative methods tell a much more abbreviated story of social phenomena. This abbreviated story, however, is no less worthy of sociological inquiry, as it too, like qualitative storytelling, has many methodological virtues. To begin, quantitative storytelling uses numbers to provide information about social phenomena. That is, the details of a given phenomenon’s social dynamics are represented by numbers, instead of in-depth qualitative storytelling descriptors. However, in order for these numbers to be meaningful, researchers must capture a larger sample of sources than the limited sample that qualitative storytelling requires. In this way, where qualitative storytelling presents thick descriptive narratives about many aspects of a mere few cases, quantitative storytelling tends to survey a wide range of cases from many sources, but only about a limited number of aspects of such cases.

The very first research study of race and racism in America came from W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), the first African American to earn an Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. In this groundbreaking study, Du Bois presented a comprehensive empirical analysis of the African American community in Philadelphia’s Seventh Ward. Du Bois employed a mixed-methods approach that pioneered the use of descriptive statistics, surveys, interviews, and historical and institutional analysis.

It was the methods that substantiated Du Bois’ refutation of prevailing notions of Black inferiority by situating the community’s social conditions within their broader historical and structural contexts. The study’s statistical findings documented stark racial inequalities in income, occupation, health, education, and crime. For instance, Du Bois meticulously catalogs the restricted occupational opportunities for Black men and women, noting their systematic exclusion from skilled trades and their overrepresentation in domestic service and low-wage labor. He statistically links these economic disadvantages to higher rates of poverty, housing overcrowding, and mortality within the Black community. Ultimately, Du Bois argues that these outcomes are not the result of inherent racial traits but are the products of centuries of enslavement, widespread racial prejudice and discrimination, and the structural barriers preventing socioeconomic advancement.

The Philadelphia Negro is a foundational text in urban sociology, criminology, and the critical study of race, establishing a methodological and theoretical precedent for future scholarship on racial inequality in the United States. For Du Bois, in the quantitative portions of his study where he used statistical data to tell this story of the African Americans in Philadelphia, he was able to effectively utilize the power of numbers to substantiate his findings about the plight of Black men and women.

Finally, in the third storytelling strategy, comparative methods tell a story by highlighting the similarities and differences between social phenomena. Although this comparative storytelling may sound distinct from both qualitative and quantitative storytelling, it may actually use either or even both to render this model. Additionally, this type of storytelling can often lend itself to focusing on research that is already established by literally comparing and contrasting content from either qualitative or quantitative studies. For example, in content analysis, an analytical strategy where a researcher will look at various artifacts associated with a social phenomenon and interpret their social significance, a comparative storyteller can identify sociological patterns among these aspects and provide a meaningful interpretation through analysis.

In a sweeping historical and sociological analysis, Howard Winant’s The World Is a Ghetto, uses comparative methods to argue that the racial break of the post-World War II period—marked by the collapse of global white supremacy and the emergence of new racial formations—constitutes a central, yet unresolved, problem for modern democracy. The book’s primary methodological strength lies in its large-scale comparative approach, which systematically analyzes the distinct yet interconnected trajectories of racial politics across multiple national contexts. Winant conducts a detailed comparative analysis of the United States and Brazil as contrasting hemispheric examples of race and democracy and extends this framework to include South Africa and the European Union. This comparative method allows him to theorize about the global character of race, demonstrating how the Great Transformation of the 20th century was a worldwide phenomenon, even as it manifested through unique national histories, policies, and modes of resistance. Through this work, Winant challenges nation-specific and exceptionalist theories of race, instead positing a global theory of racial formation. He concludes that the contemporary world remains defined by the dictatorship of race, where democracy is perpetually contested and undermined by the enduring power of a racial hierarchy, a condition that requires a continued transnational political project to overcome. For Winant, the comparative model allowed him to identify the similarities and differences of these locations—the output of which provided a better sense of how race and racial formation emerged in the 20th century.