Chapter 4 Beginning a Research Project

How Do You Feel About Where You Already Are?

Once you have figured out where you already are (perhaps not spiritually—we sociologists can’t help you there—but in terms of your interests and everyday activities), your next task is to ask yourself some important questions about the interest you’ve identified. Your answers to these questions will help you decide whether your topic is one that will really work for a sociological research project.

Whether you begin by already having an interest in some topic or you decide you want to study something related to one of your hobbies or your everyday experiences, chances are good that you already have some opinions about your topic. As such, there are a few questions you should ask yourself to determine whether you should try to turn this topic into a research project.

Start by asking yourself how you feel about your topic. Be totally honest, and ask yourself whether you believe your perspective is the only valid one. Perhaps yours isn’t the only perspective, but do you believe it is the wisest one? The most practical one? How do you feel about other perspectives on this topic? If you feel so strongly that certain findings would upset you or that either you would design a project to get only the answer you believe to be the best one or you might feel compelled to cover up findings that you don’t like, then you need to choose a different topic. For example, one student wanted to find out whether there was any relationship between intelligence and political party affiliation. He was certain from the beginning that the members of his party were without a doubt the most intelligent. His strong opinion was not in and of itself the problem. However, the rage that he expressed when he was asked to consider how he might feel if he found that the opposing party’s members were more intelligent than those of his party, combined with his utter refusal to grant that it was even a possibility, led him to decide that the topic was probably too near and dear for him to use it to conduct unbiased research.

Of course, just because you feel strongly about a topic does not mean that you should not study it. Sometimes the best topics to research are those about which you do feel strongly. What better way to stay motivated than to study something that you care about? I recently began a study of child-free adults—people who have made the explicit and intentional choice not to have or rear children—precisely because I’m a child-free adult myself.

Although I have strong opinions about my own child-free status, I also feel OK about having those ideas challenged. In fact, for me one of the most rewarding things about studying a topic that is relevant to my own life is learning new perspectives that had never occurred to me before collecting data on the topic. I believe that my own perspective is pretty solid, but I can also accept that other people will have perspectives that differ from my own. And I am certainly willing to report the variety of perspectives that I discover as I collect data on my topic.

If you feel prepared to accept all findings, even those that may be unflattering to or distinct from your personal perspective, then perhaps you should intentionally study a topic about which you have strong feelings. Sociology professor Kathleen Blee (2002)Blee, K. (2002). Inside organized racism: Women and men of the hate movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; Blee, K. (1991). Women of the klan: Racism and gender in the 1920s. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. has taken this route in her research. Blee studies hate movement participants, people whose racist ideologies she studies but does not share. You can read her accounts of this research in two of her most well-known publications, Inside Organized Racism and Women of the Klan. Blee’s research is successful because she was willing to report her findings and observations honestly, even those with which she may have personally taken strong issue. However, if, after honest reflection, you decide that you cannot accept or share with others findings with which you disagree, then you should study a topic about which you feel less strongly.

What Do You Know About Where You Already Are?

Whether or not you feel strongly about your topic, you will also want to consider what you already know about it. There are many ways we know what we know. Perhaps your mother told you something is so. Perhaps it came to you in a dream. Perhaps you took a class last semester and learned something about your topic there. Or you may have read something about your topic in your local newspaper or in People magazine. Maybe you saw a special on Dateline NBC or heard Snookie discussing the topic with her friends on Jersey Shore. We discussed the strengths and weaknesses associated with some of these different sources of knowledge in Chapter 1 “Introduction”, and we’ll talk about other sources of knowledge, such as prior research, a little later on. For now, take some time to think about what you know about your topic from any and all possible sources. Thinking about what you already know will help you identify any biasesPredilections toward a particular perspective that may cause one to neglect alternative perspectives. you may have, and it will help as you begin to frame a question about your topic.

What Is Sociology?

As noted in Chapter 1 “Introduction”, sociology is the scientific study of humans in groups. But let’s go a little further and think about what makes sociology a unique discipline. There are several key insights that make sociology unique, and keeping these in mind will help you frame your research interest in a way that is sociological. First, sociologists recognize that who a person is and what he or she thinks and does is affected by the groups of which that person is a member. Second, sociologists accept that interaction takes place in a way that is patterned. Finally, sociologists acknowledge that while patterns are important, inconsistencies in patterns are equally important. By considering each of these key insights in a little more detail, we can begin to get a better grasp of what makes sociology unique and what makes the topics that sociologists study sociological.

As noted, sociologists recognize that who a person is and what he or she thinks and does is affected by the groups of which that person is a member. In particular, sociologists pay attention to how people’s experiences may differ depending on aspects of their identities. To help yourself think sociologically, look around you as you are out and about. Do you see people of different racial or ethnic identities from you? Different genders? Different class statuses? How might their experiences differ from yours? How might the very experience you are having at that moment differ for you if you were different somehow? What if you weighed twice as much as you do right now? What if you had green hair instead of brown? Sociologists study what such identities and characteristics mean, how and by whom they are given meaning, how they work together with other meanings, and what the consequences are of those meanings. In other words, sociologists study how people’s social locationsA person’s place in society, generally determined by a combination of aspects of a person’s identity such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and social class status. shape their experiences and their place in society.

Sociologists also accept that social interaction is patterned. In fact, patterns exist even though the people involved in creating them may not have any conception of their contribution. Because sociologists are interested in aggregates, the individuals who collectively create patterns may be separated by many years or miles. As sociologists, however, we are trained to look for consistencies in social patterns across time and space. For example, societies all over the world have for many years created rules, socialized their members, and produced and distributed goods. It is the consistencies across such processes that sociologists aim to understand.

Of course, inconsistencies are just as important as patterns. When, for example, women began to enter the paid labor force in increasing numbers, sociologists became interested in what forces drove this change and what consequences individuals, families, employers, and societies might see as a result (Wolfbein & Jaffe, 1946).Interestingly, one of the earliest pieces from the American Sociological Review investigating such demographic changes in labor force participation was published in 1946 following the unprecedented influx of women into the labor force during World War II. Questions about how gender and work are intertwined are now so common in sociology that many campuses today offer gender and work courses, and the scholarly journal Gender, Work, & Organization was established in 1994 to distribute research on this topic alone.You can read more about this journal at its website: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0968-6673&site=1. Similarly, when mating and dating patterns shifted to include online match services, sociologists did not ignore this new way that humans had found to partner. Instead, they took note of it and considered how it worked, who utilized this new method of matching, and its impact on dating patterns more generally. In fact, according to Sociological AbstractsA database that indexes all major sociological research publications., a database that indexes published sociological research (and which you’ll read more about later on in this chapter), 31 peer-reviewed articles on online dating had been published as of August 2010. As recently as 2004, however, there were no sociological articles on online dating indexed by this database. The increase in publications focusing on online dating very likely had something to do with the changing social landscape. In this case, societal changes, or inconsistencies, drove the sociological research.Want to learn more about the sociological perspective on online dating? Google the name “Pepper Schwartz.” Professor Schwartz is a sexologist and sociologist at the University of Washington whose sociological insights and observations have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers including Glamour and the New York Times and on television shows such as Oprah. She is also the chief relationship expert for PerfectMatch.com, an online dating site.

What Is Not Sociology?

In addition to considering what sociology actually is as a way to help identify a sociological research topic, it is worth considering what sociology is not. While the differences between sociology and chemical engineering may be pretty clear, there are other disciplinesA particular course of study; one division of several academic categories. with which sociology shares interests and the lines between these disciplines may get blurred at times. Thinking about sociology’s similarities to and differences from other disciplines can help us frame a research question that is indeed sociological.

For example, many students pursue double majors in sociology and psychology. While the two disciplines are complementary, they are not the same. Consider the topic of gang membership. While a psychologist may be interested in identifying what traumatic personal experiences or emotional state might drive a person to join a gang, a sociologist is more likely to examine whether there are patterns in terms of who joins gangs. Are members of some social classes more likely than others to join gangs? Does a person’s geographical location appear to play a role in determining the likelihood that he or she will join a gang? In other words, psychologists and sociologists share an interest in human behavior, but psychologists tend to focus on individuals while sociologists consider individuals within the context of the social groups to which they belong.

Philosophers and sociologists also share some common interests, including a desire to understand beliefs about the nature of good and bad. But while a philosopher might consider what general or logical principles make up a good or a bad society, a sociologist is more likely to study how specific social realities, such as the presence of gangs in a community, impact perceptions of that community as either good or bad. Other disciplines that share some overlapping interests with sociology include political science, economics, and history. The differences in approaches toward the study of gang membership between sociology and other similar disciplines are summarized in Table 4.1 “Sociology Compared to Similar Disciplines: The Study of Gangs”

Sociologists as Paparazzi?

As noted earlier, there are some similarities between the goals of sociologists and those of the paparazzi. A few years ago, shortly before leaving on a trip to New Orleans, I received one of those letters that most of us professional sociologists both dread and receive on a pretty regular basis: a rejection letter. The letter informed me that the paper I had recently submitted, while timely and well written, was being rejected. Apparently the paper lacked focus. In particular, the research question around which the paper was organized was not well focused. As I began to think about how to better focus my research question, and why such focus was so important in the first place, I licked my wounds and boarded a plane to join couple of friends in the Big Easy.

When our taxi pulled up to our lodging in the French Quarter, we noticed the street was lined with cars—and with people who appeared to be living in those cars. On closer examination, we also noticed that most of the car dwellers had cameras, all with very long, wide lenses. Our taxi driver explained that they were paparazzi who were there because Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were in town—and that their house was right next to the building where we’d be staying. As the titleholder to the world’s longest crush on Brad Pitt, I was, needless to say, giddy.If you’ve found yourself asking what any of this has to do with research methods, fear not, we’re getting there. But presumably there are others of you out there who, like me, won’t complain about a brief diversion so long as it involves Brad Pitt.

One of my friends was giddy too—but not for the same reason as me. She decided that she would try to pay for her trip by taking the perfect photograph of Brad and Angelina and selling it to the highest bidder. She reasoned that the paparazzi had chosen our street because it must be the best location to photograph the superstars and their kids. In fact, we did see Brangelina a few times. Now I respect every person’s right to privacy, be they my long-standing crush or anyone else. Thus each time we saw Brangelina and kids, I’d jump in front of the camera while my friend tried to snap the perfect shot. As a result, instead of focusing in on Brad and Angelina, her camera always focused on my head. Needless to say, my friend never got a shot worthy of selling to pay for her trip. She did, however, get several of shots of my gigantic melon (my mother didn’t call me pumpkin head for nothing), with Brad, Angelina, and the kids usually blurred in the background. Figure 4.6 “Blocking the Shot” shows one such shot; Figure 4.7 “The Least-Blurry Photo My Friend Was Able to Get” shows the least-blurry photo she was able to get thanks to my sabotage.

So why am I sharing this story and these terribly unflattering photos? The point is that as a sociological researcher, your job is like that of the paparazzi. Just as the paparazzi don’t get paid unless they point their camera in the right direction and focus in on their subjects in exactly the right way, you will not hit the sociological jackpot unless you aim your sociological lens in the right direction and clearly focus your research question. You could be the most eloquent writer in your class, or even in the world, but if the research question about which you are writing is unclear, your work will ultimately fall flat. As I learned right before my trip to New Orleans, a poorly focused research question trumps all. The good news is that much of this text is dedicated to learning how to write, and then answer, a good research question. We’ve done this throughout the text and will continue to do so by considering specific research questions that sociologists have successfully asked and answered in the past. We’ll also do some brainstorming about questions that are of interest to you and consider ways of framing different questions about the same topic by exploring the variety of methodologies that sociologists use to answer their research questions.

Some Specific Examples

Throughout this chapter, you have seen a number of examples of research questions, and you’ve read about features that distinguish good sociological research questions from not-so-good questions. Putting all this advice together, let’s take a look at a few more examples of possible sociological research questions and consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. Table 4.2 “Sample Sociological Research Questions: Strengths and Weaknesses” does just that. While reading the table, keep in mind that I have only noted what I view to be the most relevant strengths and weaknesses of each question. Certainly each question may have additional strengths and weaknesses not noted in the table. Also, it may interest you to know that the questions in Table 4.2 “Sample Sociological Research Questions: Strengths and Weaknesses” all come from undergraduate sociology student projects that I have either advised in the course of teaching sociological research methods or have become familiar with from sitting on undergraduate thesis committees. The work by thesis students is cited.

Feasibility

We learned about ethics and the limits posed by institutional review boards (IRBs) and disciplinary codes in Chapter 3 “Research Ethics”. Beyond ethics, there are a few practical matters related to feasibility that all researchers should consider before beginning a research project. Are you interested in better understanding the day-to-day experiences of maximum security prisoners? This sounds fascinating, but unless you plan to commit a crime that lands you in a maximum security prison, chances are good that you will not be able to gain access to this population. Perhaps your interest is in the inner workings of toddler peer groups. If you’re much older than four or five, however, it might be tough for you to access even that sort of group. Your ideal research topic might require you to live on a chartered sailboat in the Bahamas for a few years, but unless you have unlimited funding, it will be difficult to make even that happen. The point, of course, is that while the topics about which sociological questions can be asked may seem limitless, there are limits to which aspects of topics we can study, or at least to the ways we can study them.

Assuming you can gain IRB approval to conduct research with the population that most interests you, do you know that that population will let you in? Researchers like Barrie Thorne (1993),Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. who study the behaviors of children, sometimes face this dilemma. In the course of her work, Professor Thorne has studied how children teach each other gender norms. She also studied how adults “gender” children, but here we’ll focus on just the former aspect of her work. Thorne had to figure out how to study the interactions of elementary school children when they probably would not accept her as one of their own. They were also unlikely to be able to read and complete a written questionnaire. Since she could not join them or ask them to read and write on a written questionnaire, Thorne’s solution was to watch the children. While this seems like a reasonable solution to the problem of not being able to actually enroll in elementary school herself, there is always the possibility that Thorne’s observations differed from what they might have been had she been able to actually join a class. What this means is that a researcher’s identity, in this case Thorne’s age, might sometimes limit (or enhance) her or his ability to study a topic in the way that he or she most wishes to study it.Think about Laud Humphreys’s research on the tearoom trade. Would he have been able to conduct this work if he had been a woman?

In addition to your personal or demographic characteristics that could shape what you are able to study or how you are able to study it, there are also the very practical matters of time and money. In terms of time, your personal time frame for conducting research may be the semester during which you are taking this class. Perhaps as an employee one day your employer will give you an even shorter timeline in which to conduct some research—or perhaps longer. How much time a researcher has to complete her or his work may depend on a number of factors and will certainly shape what sort of research that person is able to conduct. Money, as always, is also relevant. For example, your ability to conduct research while living on a chartered sailboat in the Bahamas may be hindered unless you have unlimited funds or win the lottery. And if you wish to conduct survey research, you may have to think about the fact that mailing paper surveys costs not only time but money—from printing them to paying for the postage required to mail them. Interviewing people face to face may require that you offer your research participants a cup of coffee or glass of lemonade while you speak with them. And someone has to pay for the drinks.

In sum, feasibility is always a factor when deciding what, where, when, and how to conduct research. Aspects of your own identity may play a role in determining what you can and cannot investigate, as will the availability of resources such as time and money.

Field Trip: Visit Your Library

Library research, typically one of the early stops along the way to conducting original research, is also an excellent next step as you begin your project. While it is common to brainstorm about topics first, examining the literature will help you hone your specific research question and design. We’ll talk more about reading, evaluating, and summarizing the literature in Chapter 5 “Research Design”, but at this early stage it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the resources your library has to offer. This will help you learn what sorts of questions other sociologists have asked about an area that interests you.

One of the drawbacks (or joys, depending on your perspective) of being a researcher in the 21st century is that we can do much of our work without ever leaving the comfort of our recliners. This is certainly true of familiarizing yourself with the literature. Most libraries offer incredible online search options, including access to Sociological Abstracts, a database that summarizes published articles in most all, but especially the most prestigious, sociology journals. Now is the time to play around with Sociological Abstracts. You can learn more from your professor or librarian about how to access Sociological Abstracts from your particular campus. Once you’ve done so, take a look. Using a keyword search, find a few articles that cover topics similar to those that interest you. At this stage, simply reading an article’s title and abstract (the short paragraph at the top of every article) will give you an idea about how sociologists frame questions about topics that are of interest to you. Hopefully, this in turn will give you some ideas about how you might phrase your research question.

Beyond searching the online resources, go visit your library, scan the shelves, and take a look at the most recent sociology journals the library has on display in its periodicals section. Walk through the social science stacks and peruse the books published by sociologists. This is where you’re likely to find the most fascinating monographs reporting findings from sociologists’ adventures in the field. Introduce yourself to the reference librarian. Being on her or his good side will serve you well as you begin your research project. Your reference librarian may also be able to recommend databases in addition to Sociological Abstracts that will introduce you to published social scientific research on your topic (e.g., Criminal Justice Abstracts, Family and Society Studies Worldwide, Social Services Abstracts, and Women’s Studies International).

Once you have had a chance to peruse the online resources available to you and to check out your library in person, you should be ready to begin thinking about actually designing a research project. We consider the stages of research design in Chapter 5 “Research Design”.