Write an essay on ‘Methods of Research’.

Introduction : 1. Social Science is concerned with the understanding and explanation of human behaviour. Data play an important role in the explanation of human behaviour.

2. Social Scientists have developed methods for systematic collection of data, which can be interpreted in more than one ways. What facts do people seek to compare ? What histories do they seek to recount ? How do we analyse social relations ? These are significant questions relevant for present discussion on historical, comparative and functional methods of research.

I. Historical Method : It is not unusual to find inquiries of various types in the social sciences. Inquiries in social sciences could be classified in two categories, the nomothetic and the ideographic.

According to this classification, the ideographic sciences are those which study unique and unrepeatable events, while the nomothetic sciences attempt to make generalizations. Sociology is a suitable example of nomothetic science and History is a good example of ideographic science.

Historians make effort to enhance our accurate knowledge of unique phenomena of the past. The social scientists often confine themselves to three main sources of historical information :

(i) Documents and different historical sources to which historians themselves have access.

(ii) Materials of cultural history and of analytical hisroy.

(iii) Personal sources of authentic observers and witnesses.

When, how and under what circumstances these sources are to be used depends upon the discretion of the researcher’s interest, the scope of the study and the availability of the sources.

II. Comparative Method : This method entails the study of various groups and institutions in order to examine similarities and differences.

The compartive method is simply used in anthropological and ethnological research.

The systematic use of comparision and contrast as method of enquiry became widely accepted among sociologist and social anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth century.

The comparative method is one way of testing hypotheses.

III. Functional Method : The functionalist approach, in sociology and social anthropology, appeared initially as a reaction against the methods and claims of the evolutionists. It was a criticism of the intention and claim of the evolutionists to give a scientific account of the whole social history of mankind.

Functional analysis is a method of sociological and anthropological enquiry, which consists in examining social and cultural items by locating them in a wider context. This generally means showing how these items effect and are affected by others with which they coexist over time, within the same social system.

This method refers to factors and forces of integration, equilibrium and also disequilibrium. At a given point of time, interrelation between different components of society can be studied from the functional point of view.