Tag: objectivity

  • What is the difference between science and religion?

    Science is empirical, open, evolving and objective, but is religion the opposite?

  • Scientific Quantitative Methodology in Sociology

    Positivists prefer to the limit themselves the study of objective ‘social facts’ and use statistical data and the comparative method to find correlations, and multivariate analysis to uncover statistically significant ‘causal’ relationships between variables and thus derive the laws of human behaviour. This post explores the Positivist approach to social research, defining and explaining all of the above…

  • Why Did Labour Gain Seats in the 2017 General Election?

    In the recent June 2017 General Election, Labour won more votes than it did in 2001, 2005, 2010 or 2015, proving almost all the forecasts and commentators wrong.According to this Guardian article there are three main reasons for this… It motivated young people to get out and vote. A lot’s been made of the historically…

  • Sociology and Value Freedom

    Value Freedom in Social Research refers to the ability of the researcher to keep his or her own values (personal, political and religious) from interfering with the research process. The idea that ‘facts’ should not be influenced by the researcher’s own beliefs is a central aspect of ‘science’ – and so when we say that…

  • Experiments in Sociology – An Introduction

    Experiments aim to measure the effect which an independent variable (the ’cause’) has on a dependent variable (‘the effect’). The key features of an experiment are control over variables, precise measurement, and establishing cause and effect relationships. In order to establish cause and effect relationships, the independent variable is changed and the dependent variable is measured; all…