ReviseSociology

Category: Sociology and science

  • Karl Popper: Sociology can be Scientific…

    Popper believed that social science could be scientific, but that that social scientific knowledge has to be based on deduction and falsification (rather than induction and verification). For Popper, sociology can be scientific if it makes precise predictions through the use of the hypothetic-deductive model. In the hypothetic-deductive model, researchers start with a specific, testable,…

  • Sociology and Science – Some Key Terms

      Bias – where someone’s personal, subjective feelings or thoughts affect one’s judgement. Falsification – where scientists attempt to design experiments to disprove a hypothesis rather to prove a hypothesis correct. Generalisability – the extent to which research findings can be applied to other (similar) cases Hawthorne effect – where respondents alter their behaviour because…

  • Is Sociology A Science?

    Positivists argued that sociologists should study society using ‘objective’ quantitative scientific methods. Interpretivists and others argue that sociology should not and cannot be scientific and that it should be more humanistic with multiple interpretations, and they also question whether science itself is truly objective!