Pub Date : 2022-12-07DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140142
Alina Arseniev-Koehler
Measuring meaning is a central problem in cultural sociology and word embeddings may offer powerful new tools to do so. But like any tool, they build on and exert theoretical assumptions. In this p...
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Pub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00491241221134526
Salomé Do, Étienne Ollion, Rubing Shen
The last decade witnessed a spectacular rise in the volume of available textual data. With this new abundance came the question of how to analyze it. In the social sciences, scholars mostly resorte...
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Pub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140429
Colin Jerolmack
Ethnographic and interview research have made significant contributions to cumulative social science and influenced the public conversation around important social issues. However, debates rage over whether the standards of positivistic social science can or should be used to judge the rigor of interpretive methods. I begin this essay by briefly delineating the problem of developing evaluative criteria for qualitative research. I then explore the extent to which Small and Calarco's Qualitative Literacy helps advance a set of standards attuned to the distinct epistemology of interview and ethnographic methods. I argue that “qualitative literacy” is necessary but not sufficient to help readers decide whether a particular study is high quality. The reader also needs access to enough information about the researcher's data, field site, or subjects that she can independently reanalyze the researcher's interpretations and consider alternative explanations. I also touch on some important differences between ethnography and interviewing that matter for how we evaluate them.
{"title":"What Good is Qualitative Literacy Without Data Transparency?","authors":"Colin Jerolmack","doi":"10.1177/00491241221140429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221140429","url":null,"abstract":"Ethnographic and interview research have made significant contributions to cumulative social science and influenced the public conversation around important social issues. However, debates rage over whether the standards of positivistic social science can or should be used to judge the rigor of interpretive methods. I begin this essay by briefly delineating the problem of developing evaluative criteria for qualitative research. I then explore the extent to which Small and Calarco's Qualitative Literacy helps advance a set of standards attuned to the distinct epistemology of interview and ethnographic methods. I argue that “qualitative literacy” is necessary but not sufficient to help readers decide whether a particular study is high quality. The reader also needs access to enough information about the researcher's data, field site, or subjects that she can independently reanalyze the researcher's interpretations and consider alternative explanations. I also touch on some important differences between ethnography and interviewing that matter for how we evaluate them.","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"52 1","pages":"1059 - 1072"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48199240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140425
Stefanie DeLuca
Increasingly, the broader public, media and policymakers are looking to qualitative research to provide answers to our most pressing social questions. While an exciting and perhaps overdue moment for qualitative researchers, it is also a time when the method is coming under increasing scrutiny for a lack of reliability and transparency. The question of how to assess the quality of qualitative research is therefore paramount, but the field still lacks clear standards to evaluate qualitative work. In their new book, Qualitative Literacy, Mario Luis Small and Jessica McCrory Calarco aim to fill this gap. I argue that Qualitative Literacy offers a compelling set of standards for consumers to assess whether an in-depth interview or participant observation was of sufficient quality and, to an extent, whether sufficient time was spent in the field. However, by ignoring the vital importance of employing systematic, well-justified, and transparent sampling strategies, the implication is that such essential criteria can be ignored, undermining the potential contribution of qualitative research to a more cumulative creation of scientific knowledge.
{"title":"Sample Selection Matters: Moving Toward Empirically Sound Qualitative Research","authors":"Stefanie DeLuca","doi":"10.1177/00491241221140425","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221140425","url":null,"abstract":"Increasingly, the broader public, media and policymakers are looking to qualitative research to provide answers to our most pressing social questions. While an exciting and perhaps overdue moment for qualitative researchers, it is also a time when the method is coming under increasing scrutiny for a lack of reliability and transparency. The question of how to assess the quality of qualitative research is therefore paramount, but the field still lacks clear standards to evaluate qualitative work. In their new book, Qualitative Literacy, Mario Luis Small and Jessica McCrory Calarco aim to fill this gap. I argue that Qualitative Literacy offers a compelling set of standards for consumers to assess whether an in-depth interview or participant observation was of sufficient quality and, to an extent, whether sufficient time was spent in the field. However, by ignoring the vital importance of employing systematic, well-justified, and transparent sampling strategies, the implication is that such essential criteria can be ignored, undermining the potential contribution of qualitative research to a more cumulative creation of scientific knowledge.","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"52 1","pages":"1073 - 1085"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42275990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-04DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140139
Alexandru Cernat, Joseph Sakshaug, Pablo Christmann, Tobias Gummer
Mixed-mode surveys are popular as they can save costs and maintain (or improve) response rates relative to single-mode surveys. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear how design decisions like survey mo...
{"title":"The Impact of Survey Mode Design and Questionnaire Length on Measurement Quality","authors":"Alexandru Cernat, Joseph Sakshaug, Pablo Christmann, Tobias Gummer","doi":"10.1177/00491241221140139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221140139","url":null,"abstract":"Mixed-mode surveys are popular as they can save costs and maintain (or improve) response rates relative to single-mode surveys. Nevertheless, it is not yet clear how design decisions like survey mo...","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"54 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-29DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140427
J. Katz
Taking a sociological view, we can investigate the empirical consequences of variations in the rhetoric of sociological methodology. The standards advocated in Qualitative Literacy divide communities of qualitative researchers, as they are not explicitly connected to an understanding of social ontology, unlike previous qualitative methodologies; they continue the long-growing segregation of the rhetorical worlds of qualitative and quantitative research methodology; and they draw attention to the personal competencies of the researcher. I compare a rhetoric of qualitative methodology that: derives evaluation criteria from perspectives on social ontology that have been developing progressively since the early twentieth century; applies the discipline-wide evaluation criteria of reactivity, reliability, representativeness, and replicability; and asks evaluators to focus on the adequacy of the textual depiction of research subjects.
{"title":"The Sociological Power of Methodological Rhetoric","authors":"J. Katz","doi":"10.1177/00491241221140427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221140427","url":null,"abstract":"Taking a sociological view, we can investigate the empirical consequences of variations in the rhetoric of sociological methodology. The standards advocated in Qualitative Literacy divide communities of qualitative researchers, as they are not explicitly connected to an understanding of social ontology, unlike previous qualitative methodologies; they continue the long-growing segregation of the rhetorical worlds of qualitative and quantitative research methodology; and they draw attention to the personal competencies of the researcher. I compare a rhetoric of qualitative methodology that: derives evaluation criteria from perspectives on social ontology that have been developing progressively since the early twentieth century; applies the discipline-wide evaluation criteria of reactivity, reliability, representativeness, and replicability; and asks evaluators to focus on the adequacy of the textual depiction of research subjects.","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"52 1","pages":"1086 - 1102"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45644620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-28DOI: 10.1177/00491241221140426
John Levi Martin
Small and Calarco have done the field a great service; we must go further and arm readers with better understandings of when authors have in fact fulfilled Small and Calarco’s strictures.
{"title":"Cognitive Plausibility and Qualitative Research","authors":"John Levi Martin","doi":"10.1177/00491241221140426","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221140426","url":null,"abstract":"Small and Calarco have done the field a great service; we must go further and arm readers with better understandings of when authors have in fact fulfilled Small and Calarco’s strictures.","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"52 1","pages":"1048 - 1058"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47087547","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-24DOI: 10.1177/00491241221134523
Rosa W. Runhardt
This article uses the interventionist theory of causation, a counterfactual theory taken from philosophy of science, to strengthen causal analysis in process tracing research. Causal claims from pr...
本文运用科学哲学中的反事实理论——干涉主义因果理论，在过程追溯研究中加强因果分析。从pr…
{"title":"Concrete Counterfactual Tests for Process Tracing: Defending an Interventionist Potential Outcomes Framework","authors":"Rosa W. Runhardt","doi":"10.1177/00491241221134523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221134523","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses the interventionist theory of causation, a counterfactual theory taken from philosophy of science, to strengthen causal analysis in process tracing research. Causal claims from pr...","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"53 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-11DOI: 10.1177/00491241221134522
O. Smallenbroek, F. Hertel, C. Barone
In social stratification research, the most frequently used social class schema are based on employment relations (EGP and ESEC). These schemes have been propelled to paradigms for research on soci...
{"title":"Measuring Class Hierarchies in Postindustrial Societies: A Criterion and Construct Validation of EGP and ESEC Across 31 Countries","authors":"O. Smallenbroek, F. Hertel, C. Barone","doi":"10.1177/00491241221134522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241221134522","url":null,"abstract":"In social stratification research, the most frequently used social class schema are based on employment relations (EGP and ESEC). These schemes have been propelled to paradigms for research on soci...","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"52 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50167753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01Epub Date: 2022-12-02DOI: 10.1177/00491241221122603
Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Jacob G Foster
Public culture is a powerful source of cognitive socialization; for example, media language is full of meanings about body weight. Yet it remains unclear how individuals process meanings in public culture. We suggest that schema learning is a core mechanism by which public culture becomes personal culture. We propose that a burgeoning approach in computational text analysis - neural word embeddings - can be interpreted as a formal model for cultural learning. Embeddings allow us to empirically model schema learning and activation from natural language data. We illustrate our approach by extracting four lower-order schemas from news articles: the gender, moral, health, and class meanings of body weight. Using these lower-order schemas we quantify how words about body weight "fill in the blanks" about gender, morality, health, and class. Our findings reinforce ongoing concerns that machine-learning models (e.g., of natural language) can encode and reproduce harmful human biases.
{"title":"Machine Learning as a Model for Cultural Learning: Teaching an Algorithm What it Means to be Fat.","authors":"Alina Arseniev-Koehler, Jacob G Foster","doi":"10.1177/00491241221122603","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00491241221122603","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Public culture is a powerful source of cognitive socialization; for example, media language is full of meanings about body weight. Yet it remains unclear how individuals process meanings in public culture. We suggest that schema learning is a core mechanism by which public culture becomes personal culture. We propose that a burgeoning approach in computational text analysis - neural word embeddings - can be interpreted as a formal model for cultural learning. Embeddings allow us to empirically model schema learning and activation from natural language data. We illustrate our approach by extracting four lower-order schemas from news articles: the gender, moral, health, and class meanings of body weight. Using these lower-order schemas we quantify how words about body weight \"fill in the blanks\" about gender, morality, health, and class. Our findings reinforce ongoing concerns that machine-learning models (e.g., of natural language) can encode and reproduce harmful human biases.</p>","PeriodicalId":21849,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Methods & Research","volume":"51 1","pages":"1484-1539"},"PeriodicalIF":6.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10653277/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45938371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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