Evaluate the Usefulness of Positivist Approaches to Social Research (20)

Last Updated on October 6, 2026 by Karl Thompson

An A-level sociology essay written for the AQA’s 7192 (3) specification, exam paper 3.

This is a practice 20 mark Theory and Methods essay in the format of the last question on Paper 3. The item below is a practice item I’ve written; it is not from an AQA paper. The guidance on what earns the marks comes from the AQA’s June 2021 Paper 3 mark scheme, which marks every Theory and Methods essay to the same level descriptors.

NB – If you’d like to attempt this question BEFORE looking at the answer below, you can review the topic first: Positivism in Social Research and Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research.

The Question

Item C (practice item)

Positivists believe that sociology should use the methods of the natural sciences. By collecting quantitative data from large samples, they aim to uncover the patterns and correlations that reveal the laws governing social behaviour, while keeping the researcher’s own values out of the research.

However, interpretivists argue that people are not simply shaped by external social forces. They give meanings to their own actions, and these meanings cannot be captured by statistics and questionnaires.

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge, evaluate the usefulness of positivist approaches to social research. (20 marks)

What the Mark Scheme Rewards

To reach the top band (17–20 marks), the AQA’s level descriptors ask for:

• sound, conceptually detailed knowledge of a range of material
• material from the item applied accurately
• explicit analysis and evaluation, reaching appropriate conclusions

On the June 2021 paper the 20 marks split 8 for knowledge and understanding (AO1), 6 for application (AO2) and 6 for analysis and evaluation (AO3).

On a question about usefulness, that means weighing what positivism lets sociologists do against what it misses. Interpretivist criticisms are the obvious evaluation, but they shouldn’t take over the essay. The question is about positivism, and the conclusion has to say how useful it is.

The Essay

Introduction

Positivists believe that sociology can and should use the same methods and approaches to study the social world that “natural” sciences such as biology and physics use to investigate the physical world. As Item C says, they aim to uncover the laws governing social behaviour through quantitative data. This essay will argue that positivist approaches remain useful for explaining large-scale patterns and informing social policy, but that on their own they cannot explain why people act as they do.

What positivism offers: laws, patterns and objectivity

Point: By adopting “scientific” techniques, positivists argue that sociologists should be able, eventually, to uncover the laws that govern societies and social behaviour just as scientists have discovered the laws that govern the physical world.

Explain: Positivists believe that good, scientific research should reveal objective truths about the causes of social action – science tells us that water boils at 100 degrees and this is true irrespective of what the researcher thinks – good social research should tell us similar things about social action. Because positivists want to uncover the general laws that shape human behaviour, they are interested in looking at society as a whole. They are interested in explaining patterns of human behaviour or general social trends. In other words, they are interested in getting to the ‘bigger picture’. To do this, positivists use quantitative methods such as official statistics, structured questionnaires and social surveys, which, as Item C says, allow them to collect data from large samples. These methods also allow the researcher to remain relatively detached from the research process – this way, the values of the researcher should not interfere with the results of the research and knowledge should be objective.

Analyse: The classic example of the positivist tradition is Durkheim’s cross national study of suicide (1897). Durkheim believed that if he could prove that one of the most individual acts any human being could perform, that is, killing himself or herself, could be explained through social factors, then surely any action could be examined in such a way. Durkheim’s analysis of official statistics showed that rates of suicide were higher among unmarried men rather than married men, and in Protestant countries rather than Catholic countries. Durkheim further theorised that the ’causes’ of a higher suicide rate were low social integration and low social regulation. Thus Durkheim’s ‘general law of social action’ is that if people become detached from society they are more likely to kill themselves. This shows the usefulness of positivism at its best: it reveals social causes behind something that looks entirely personal.

Criticise: But Durkheim’s study depended on official statistics, and interpretivists question whether those statistics measure what they claim to. If the data is flawed, the ‘law’ built on it is flawed too.

Interpretivist criticism 1: positivist methods are not as objective as they claim

Point: Interpretivists argue that the ‘objective’ quantitative methods favoured by positivists are not actually objective at all.

Explain: If we look at positivist methods in more detail, there are a number of subjective factors that influence the research process. Somebody has to write the structured questionnaires that are used to collect quantitative data, meaning there is probably selection bias over the questions used – and official statistics are collected by people. Atkinson criticised suicide statistics on these grounds, and interpretivists more generally have criticised both police crime statistics and imprisonment statistics for being socially constructed.

Analyse: This goes to the heart of the positivist claim in Item C, that quantitative research keeps the researcher’s values out. If values enter when the questions are written, or when officials decide what counts as a suicide or a crime, then the detachment positivists value is partly an illusion.

Criticise: Positivists can reply that these are problems with particular data sources, not with the scientific approach itself. Better questionnaire design, piloting and careful use of statistics reduce the problem, even if they can’t remove it.

Interpretivist criticism 2: people are not puppets

Point: The second part of Item C points to a deeper criticism: interpretivists argue that human beings are not just puppets, merely reacting to social forces.

Explain: People are unpredictable, and sometimes irrational. Because individuals are thinking and self-aware, they can react to their situations in different ways. Max Weber argued that human behaviour has a “sense of purpose”. Human beings attribute their own meanings to their actions, and different people can engage in the same action for different reasons. In order to understand human action, we need to ask individuals why they are doing what they are doing! Interpretivists, or anti-positivists, argue that one can only truly understand social action by understanding the meanings and motivations that people give to their own actions. They don’t believe that one’s actions are simply shaped by one’s position in the social structure, rather that they are a result of micro level interactions in daily life and how individuals interpret these micro-level interactions.

Analyse: An Interpretivist approach to social research would be much more flexible and qualitative, seeking to see the world through the eyes of the respondents. Good examples of Interpretivist research include Paul Willis’ study of ‘the lads’, Venkatesh’s study Gang Leader for a Day and Douglas’s study of suicide, which explored the different meanings behind suicide. What all of these qualitative studies provide is an in-depth account of the lives of the people being researched. You get ‘their story’ and get to see the ‘world through their eyes’ – the researcher allows the respondents to speak for themselves and we can gain an empathetic understanding as they tell us what they think is important, and find out why they act in the way they do according to their interpretation of the world. Douglas is especially useful here, because he studied the same topic as Durkheim and reached a different kind of explanation.

Criticise: The rich data from the above studies doesn’t easily translate into statistics and you can’t generalise these findings to the wider population, but Interpretivists argue that these qualitative studies are better because you get a much fuller understanding, at a human level, of why people act in the way that they do. Whether that makes positivism less useful depends on what the research is for.

Positivist criticisms of interpretivism

Point: Positivists have their own criticisms of the alternative, which strengthen the case for positivism’s usefulness.

Explain: A Positivist criticism of Interpretivist research is that it may lack objectivity because of the intense involvement of the researcher with the respondents, and that the government cannot use Interpretivist research to inform social policy because it is too expensive to get sample sizes that represent the whole of the population. Positivists are also uncomfortable with the idea that there is no ‘end goal’ to Interpretivist research: it just goes on and on, leading to an open-ended post-modern relativism.

Analyse: This is where positivism’s usefulness is clearest. Governments need to know how many people are affected by a problem, and whether a policy has worked, and only representative quantitative data can tell them.

Criticise: But usefulness to policy makers is not the same as truth. A representative survey that asks the wrong questions is useful only in a narrow sense.

Positivist research today

Point: Sociologists have not completely abandoned the positivist tradition today – many researchers still do quantitative research focusing on correlations and generalisations.

Explain: An excellent recent example is Wilkinson and Pickett’s cross national research on the effects of inequality, published in The Spirit Level (2009). It suggests a general ‘law’ of society: the greater the level of inequality in a society, the more social problems such as violence and mental illness there are.

Analyse: However, most researchers today have abandoned the extreme idea that society exists independently of the individual and that people are predictable. For example, Anthony Giddens developed the concept of structuration to point out that people have to consciously make society, even though they often end up reproducing similar structures.

Criticise: This suggests the most useful approach today is not pure positivism but a combination, where quantitative patterns show what is happening and qualitative research explains why.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is clearly still some usefulness in understanding society at a macro level and recognising the fact that individuals are ‘steered’ by the social structure, but we need to combine this with understanding people’s thoughts and feelings to truly explain human action. Positivist approaches are most useful for identifying large-scale patterns and informing policy, as Durkheim and The Spirit Level show. They are least useful for explaining the meanings behind action, as the second part of Item C suggests. Positivism is useful, then, but as one half of sociological research rather than the whole of it.

Short Version of This Essay

• Introduction: positivism as natural-science method (Item C). Argue: useful for patterns and policy, not enough on its own.
• What positivism offers: laws, the bigger picture, quantitative methods, large samples, detachment. Durkheim on suicide. Depends on official statistics.
• Not objective: questionnaires written by people; statistics socially constructed (Atkinson). Positivists: better design reduces the problem.
• Not puppets: Weber and meaning (Item C); interpretivist studies – Willis, Venkatesh, Douglas. Can’t generalise; usefulness depends on purpose.
• Positivist criticisms of interpretivism: subjectivity; no use for policy; relativism. Policy use isn’t the same as truth.
• Positivism today: Wilkinson and Pickett; Giddens’ structuration. Combination of approaches most useful.
• Conclusion: useful as one half of sociological research, not the whole of it.

How This Essay Measures Up Against the Mark Scheme

This is a reading of the essay against the AQA’s level descriptors for the 20 mark Theory and Methods essay, not an official mark. The item is a practice one.

• Range of knowledge. Positivism, laws, objectivity, detachment, social construction, meaning, structuration, with Durkheim, Atkinson, Weber, Willis, Venkatesh, Douglas, Wilkinson and Pickett, and Giddens.
• Application. The first paragraph of Item C (natural-science methods, large samples, laws, values) is used in the opening sections. The second paragraph (meanings, not puppets) frames the main criticism.
• Evaluation. Every section ends by asking how useful positivism really is, and the conclusion takes a position. The interpretivist material is used as evaluation of positivism, not as a separate topic.
• Staying on the question. The risk with this question is writing two halves – positivism, then interpretivism – that never meet. Each section here comes back to usefulness.

KT’s Commentary

The word that matters in this question is usefulness. Most students can describe positivism and list interpretivist criticisms; fewer actually say what positivism is useful for. The strongest answers distinguish between kinds of usefulness: for spotting large-scale patterns, for informing policy, for explaining meaning. Then they judge positivism against each.

Use Durkheim and Douglas together if you can. They studied the same thing in two different ways, which makes the comparison do the evaluating for you.

Related Posts

• Positivism in Social Research – the main post on positivism, including Durkheim
• Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – the difference between the two approaches
• Applying material from Item C, evaluate the view that theoretical factors are the most important influence on a sociologist’s choice of research method (20) – a real AQA 20 marker on related material
• Outline and explain two reasons why Positivists generally prefer to use quantitative methods (10)
• Research Methods Essays – How to Write Them

Source: Item C is a practice item written by ReviseSociology. Mark scheme guidance summarised from AQA (2021) A-level Sociology 7192/3 mark scheme, June 2021, for educational purposes.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods revision notes bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of A level sociology papers 1 and 3. It contains the following:

1. 74 pages of revision notes
2. 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
3. Five theory and methods essays
4. ‘How to write methods in context essays’.

Signposting

This post has been written for students studying theory and methods as part of the AQA’s A-Level Sociology course. For more exam practice, see my page on sociology past papers and exam advice.