Empirical Research and Methodology

Traditionally the divide between sociology and law, social policy has been bridged by the socio-legal scientists. But the disciplines which belong to the field of humanities attract more and more increasing interest. For decades, social scholars have aimed at improvement of carried out by them researches by enhancing scientific procedures. They came to a conclusion that the experimental design strategies which they apply in physical and biological sciences are very helpful and instructive. The control group strategies and the strategy of randomization as well as the experimental design strategies got well-known and accepted during this period. However, soon followed the disappointment of the scientists; they learned many things, but the positivist approach to the research turned out to be a limitation of their thinking, it actually overlooked the valuable information. As a consequence, other scientific procedures also turned out to be applicable for social science research.

It should be given the definition of empirical research. It is any research which includes collection of new information. This type of research is a subject of study on “Research Methods” courses. These courses study the various ways of making link between theory and empirical evidence. The suggestion of Gerry Rose is two basic ways: when empirical is applied for theory testing; and when empirical evidence serves for helping in creation of new theories.

Consequently, methodology has to do with the methods and principles which are applied in an activity. In the chapter devoted to the methodology the researcher gives the explanation of how he carried out the research, methods of data collecting, materials which were used in the research etc. He explains the choice of the methods.

After a person has chosen the research topic, the choice of the method is the following important step. Two variants are possible: a qualitative method consists in collection of information by interview; a quantitative study lies in carrying out a survey through self-completion questionnaire.

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