How to Conduct Social Science Research

Social science is the study of human society. It includes a group of diverse academic disciplines including history, sociology, political science, anthropology, law, geography, economics and education. Although these fields focus on different aspects of human society, they follow the same general methods for conducting research.

Instructions

1. Pick a topic to research. Narrow the topic down as much as you can. Develop one question, a hypothesis, to answer about this topic. For example, you might want to study elections in the United States. You could narrow this down to congressional elections and ask the following question: What factors do voters consider when voting for their Representative?

2. Develop a research design explaining how you will answer this question. Base your outline on one of two research methods--qualitative or quantitative. The qualitative method uses the researcher's personal observations of the data to draw inferences, while the quantitative approach uses statistical analyses of the data. The research design explains which method you will use and outlines the specific steps you will take to answer your hypothesis.

3. Describe previous research relating to your hypothesis by providing an overview of these investigations, which is called the literature review.

4. Collect the data that you will use for your research. Gather this data yourself or use data that has been collected by others. Gathering your own data can be difficult and time-consuming, so it is easier to use previously collected data. Be sure to reference where you get your data from. The type of data used will determine whether your study will be qualitative or quantitative in nature. For example, if you are relying on a case study, which is an in-depth study of a person, group or event, use the qualitative approach. However, use the quantitative method if you are using surveys with fixed responses that can be converted into numbers.

5. Analyze and draw conclusions from the data using your own observations or statistical analysis. Generalize your conclusions, which means using your findings to explain similar outcomes in other cases not included in your study.

Tips & Warnings

• If you are using quantitative analysis, a solid foundation in algebra and calculus will help you learn these techniques more easily.

• Quantitative researchers also use statistical software packages, such as SPSS and STATA, for performing their data analysis, so you will need to learn these programs.

• Quantitative analysis requires knowledge of statistics, especially regression techniques. Each discipline will usually offer a research methodology class to train you to construct research designs and a statistics class to teach the techniques used to analyze data.

References

• Designing Social Research: Norman Blaikie
• Social Research Methods
• The International Consortium for the Advancement of Academic Publication

Resources

• Social Sciences Virtual Library