SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Sociological Inquiry, Social Fact
Document Summary
Any sociologist worth her (or his) salt has a broad repertoire of techniques or methods for finding answers to questions. This must be so because finding good answers to different kinds of questions requires different kinds of techniques. So, it will be the nature of the questions to which you want to find answers that determines your choice of method. There are two major approaches to or traditions of sociological inquiry. One tradition can be traced back to the work of the french sociologist mile. As you will recall from chapter 1, durkheim saw sociology as the study of social facts. Sociologists, he said, should study social facts in much the same way that chemists study chemical facts and biologists study biological facts. Durkheim was proposing, in other words, that sociology follow the research model established by natural scientists. As scientists, sociologists should observe and measure the actions of social facts.
