sociological research questions about race

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Unpacking Race and Racism | A Resource Guide: Research Topic Ideas

• Racial Identity
• Gender & Race
• Race Relations
• Implicit Bias
• Racism in America
• Racism Around the World
• Anti-Racism
• Black Lives Matter
• Hispanic/Latinx Americans
• Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans
• SWANA Peoples
• American Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous People
• Immigrants/Migrants/Refugees
• Biracial/Multiracial People
• Racism & Religions
• Revisionist History
• Fiction & Criticism

Research Topic Ideas

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Choosing a Research Topic

When choosing a research topic related to the subject of race or racism, it's helpful to start out by thinking of specifics. Either specific instances or time periods of racism throughout history (slavery, apartheid, Japanese internment, etc.) or more modern day examples such as the disproportionate incarceration of people of color or use of deadly force against people of color by police officers. Next, think of a question regarding this specific instance that you would like to find more information about or an answer to. Browse the books and articles in this guide for inspiration or take a look at the short list below of possible research topic ideas, but the possibilities of topics are endless.

• Assimilation ability and historical versus modern racism. Immigrant groups, such as Irish or Italian, were historically discriminated against and are accepted today. Groups without a "white" appearance, however, still face discrimination.
• The idea of "ideal immigrants." 
• The recent resurgence of racism as a whole, especially immigrant discrimination and Islamophobia.
• The differences and similarities between racism in America and in the rest of the world.
• Different forms of racism and their varying impacts.
• Racism as a public health crisis.
• The trauma of racism causing mental health issues.
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Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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• Description
• Aims and Scope
• Editorial Board
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• Submission Guidelines

The official journal of ASA’s Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities , Sociology of Race and Ethnicity publishes the highest quality, cutting-edge sociological research on race and ethnicity regardless of epistemological, methodological, or theoretical orientation. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity provides a fulcrum upon which sociologically-centered work will swing as it also seeks to provide new linkages between the discipline of sociology and other disciplines and areas where race and ethnicity are central components.

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, published four times per year, is devoted to publishing the finest cutting-edge, critical, and engaged public sociological scholarship on race and ethnicity.

Each issue is organized around a core group of original research articles. Depending on the length of the articles, each issue will have approximately nine or ten of these articles. Original articles, of 8,000 to 10,000 words, will represent rigorous sociological research in the sociology of race and ethnicity, broadly conceptualized, with varying methodologies. We are also very interested in publishing theoretically important pieces. The journal also includes a section that features pedagogical application pieces devoted to the teaching of race and ethnicity – “Race and Ethnicity Pedagogy” – as well as Book Reviews and a section on Books of Note.

We are currently welcoming submissions of:

o Regular length journal articles (8,000-10,000 words)

o Shorter pieces on race and ethnicity pedagogy (3,000 words)

The journal’s co-editors, associate editors, and editorial board members are committed to creating a high quality outlet for the most important work in the sociology of race and ethnicity, through timely and constructive peer reviews, careful and engaging editorial decision-making, as well as drawing from all epistemological, theoretical, and methodological perspectives and approaches.

As the national organization for sociologists, ASA, through its Executive Office, is well positioned to provide a unique set of services to its members and to promote the vitality, visibility, and diversity of the discipline. Working at the national and international levels, ASA aims to articulate policy and implement programs likely to have the broadest possible impact for sociology now and in the future.

Electronic Submission

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically via Sagetrack’s ScholarOne Manuscripts. To access this system, go to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sre . You will be required to register with the system before electronically submitting your manuscript to SRE .

Manuscript Preparation Guidelines

Please go to this link to read the SRE Manuscript Preparation Guidelines.

Guidelines for  SRE  authors can also be found on our Sage Track site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sre  under "Instructions and Forms."

Additional details on preparing manuscripts for ASR are published in the ASA Style Guide (7th ed., 2022) available from the American Sociological Association.

Authorship: All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. 

Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools .

Acknowledgements: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.

Ethics: Submission of a manuscript to another professional journal while it is under review by SRE is regarded by the ASA as unethical. Significant findings or contributions that have already appeared (or will appear) elsewhere must be clearly identified. All persons who publish in ASA journals are required to abide by ASA guidelines and ethics codes regarding plagiarism and other ethical issues. This requirement includes adhering to ASA’s stated policy on data-sharing: “As a regular practice, sociologists share data and pertinent documentation as an integral part of a research plan. Sociologists generally make their data available after completion of a project or its major publications, except where proprietary agreements with employers, contractors, or clients preclude such accessibility or when it is impossible to share data and protect the confidentiality of the research participants (e.g., field notes or detailed information from ethnographic interviews)” (ASA Code of Ethics , 2018).

Funding: Sociology of Race and Ethnicity requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: Sociology of Race and Ethnicity encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway .

Reviewer Guidelines

Thank you for agreeing to review a manuscript for Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (SRE) . Reviewing peer manuscripts is one of the cornerstones upon which our discipline is built. As such, it is very important that you take reviewing seriously. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity publishes only the best sociological work in the study of race and ethnicity – regardless of theoretical, epistemological, and methodological orientation. As a peer reviewer, you should reap intellectual benefits of the review process, benefit from reading the most cutting-edge research in the sociology of race and ethnicity, and have the additional satisfaction of constructively assisting the author in making their manuscript the strongest and most contributive it can be. All of this emerges from your prompt, full, and constructive peer review of the manuscript.

In addition to publishing original full-length manuscripts, SRE also publishes pieces on the pedagogy of sociology of race and ethnicity. If you are reviewing for this section, please note that the Pedagogy Section of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity provides a space dedicated to publishing cutting-edge work related to the teaching of the sociology of race and ethnicity, from introductory undergraduate courses to advanced graduate courses. Manuscripts should not exceed 2500- 3000 words in length, including references and footnotes. Papers might address theory, teaching assessment and reflection, analysis of resources, class exercises, service learning or a combination of these topics. All submissions should be clearly informed by the current literature, and (if applicable) provide evidence of teaching effectiveness.

Recently, the American Sociological Association published an article on the best practices of reviewers in the discipline (Brunsma, Prasad, and Zuckerman 2013). What the authors found is summarized here:

• The average time spent on reviewing manuscripts was 3.4 hours with fairly wide variation. Often this variation depends on the qualities of the manuscript;
• Related, the best reviews tend to be ones that are done fairly soon after agreeing to do the review, instead of awaiting the final reminder;
• Lengths of reviews range from 1-3 single-spaced documents;
• Those who review many manuscripts have found that it is better to write the review with the “forest” in mind – the big picture, central issues and arguments in the manuscript, while not forgetting the “trees.” In other words, long lists of negative and problematic details without the bigger picture, makes the reviews less useful for the author;
• Importantly, they found that reviews that are constructive, kind, supportive, are much more useful than those that are destructive, mean, etc. In other words, review unto others as you would have them review unto you.

Their conclusion was this:

“Although the responses do not reveal a silver bullet that can magically reduce manuscript review times, one element of good practice is clear: when you agree to do a review, actually put into your schedule the time that it will take to do it (three to four hours on average). It may be helpful to both author and reviewer if reviewers keep comments to big picture, substantive issues, particularly ‘how the argument holds together; connections between argument and analysis; methodological clarity and appropriateness.’”

At Sociology of Race and Ethnicity we agree with these sentiments of best reviewing practices and believe this will lead to shorter review times, stronger reviews, and, ultimately, a much healthier journal with indeed the best sociological research in race and ethnicity.

One of the top (and most effective) journals in our discipline is Gender & Society . What follows is drawn heavily from their Guidelines for Gender & Society Reviewers (2011). These guidelines provide more specific advice for reviewing manuscripts in a journal that desires not only the strongest reviews, but also the most constructive, supportive, and kind ones. 

• First, read the paper;
• Begin by identifying the paper’s aims, as you see them (this may differ from the author’s statement), clearly stating what the paper argues, and what its contribution is meant to be. This should be one or two sentences that help the editor and author know whether the paper’s main point has come across. In addition, note the strengths of the paper (even if you do not think the paper as a whole is strong);
• Next, present the comments you see as most central to an effective revision of the paper. As Ferree (2004) notes, the core of the review should identify whether the research question contributes to larger theory, whether the analysis actually answers the research question, and whether the conclusions flow from the analyses. Identifying weaknesses can help the author craft a stronger paper, which sometimes means reframing the piece theoretically, refocusing the question, or reinterpreting the analysis; 
• Here, you want to provide clear advice about how the author might address the problems you have identified or the questions you have raised. For example, if you feel the author is missing crucial references that would help them build a better argument, provide those references; if you think the author needs to provide more information about methods, explain what is missing; if you have problems with the analyses or feel that they are not persuasive enough, explain how the analyses could become more persuasive. Do not be overly specific and nitpicky, rewrite the paper for the author, or flood the author with many pages of comments;
• End with the small points that will not dramatically change the paper’s form or argument, such as formatting of tables or figures, excessive use of jargon, writing errors, or other minor changes. Reviewers need not provide line-by-line editing. The journal will help with copy-editing the manuscript – the reviewer’s time and attention is better spent on ensuring that the argument is sound; 
• After writing the review, go back through it and edit out any language that seems emotionally laden. For example, rather than saying “This paper is terrible,” you might note, “This paper has weaknesses in both its theoretical framework and its empirical analyses,” or even “While focused around a very interesting case, this paper currently has weaknesses in both its theoretical framework and its empirical analyses.” Using neutral or supportive language will make the author much more likely to heed your comments. You may indeed feel that the paper is terrible, and that the author has wasted your time and energy. But that frustration shouldn't spill into your review. The goal is to improve the paper. Very occasionally, the reviewer may be so at odds with a paper that it is difficult to write a fair review. In this case, be honest with the editor and author about the intellectual disagreement that affects your reading of the paper;
• Finally, make sure that your review does not notify the author of your recommendation (as the final call is the editor’s); if recommending a rejection, feel free to list a more appropriate journal.

The best review is a constructive review that truly betters the paper. Thank you so much for taking part in this work for the journal!

Guidelines for Sociology of Race and Ethnicity reviewers can also be found on our Sagetrack site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/sre  under "Instructions and Forms."

Soliciting Book Reviews

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity (SRE) is pleased to receive requests to review recently published books (typically within 18 months of publication, but up to 3 years) in the fields of sociology of race and ethnicity and likely to be of interest and relevance to the journal’s readership.

Given that it has been difficult to promote and review books published during the pandemic, every effort will be made to find reviewers for titles that have been released since the start of 2020.

We are especially interested in reviewing books published with presses that tend to receive less coverage in book reviews, and books by authors from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Authors of new books are always welcome to contact the editors to inquire about getting their book reviewed in SRE. You may wish to identify some possible reviewers. Please also include the information for a contact at your publisher.

Publishers are welcome to send announcements about relevant titles to the editors via email. We will not give preference for reviews to those books we receive hard copies of. We understand that shipping and giving away free copies is costly and may disadvantage smaller publishers. For these reasons—as well as to expedite the review process—we always welcome electronic copies of books.

Potential reviewers: thank you for your interest in reviewing for SRE! The journal welcomes correspondence from anyone—faculty, graduate students, and independent researchers—who is interested in reviewing for the journal. Potential reviewers should contact the editor directly with requests to review any titles that have caught their attention. Please note that when requesting a book for review, it helps to describe briefly why you think a review of the book would be appropriate for the journal, and why you are a good fit to be the reviewer. It is common practice for the reviewer to be at an “arms-length” distance from the author(s) of a book, e.g., may be an acquaintance at most of the author(s), but not a friend, a collaborator, department colleague, or otherwise have a close personal or professional relation with the author(s).

The journal encourages and welcomes co-authored book reviews, especially co-authorships that may have a mentoring component, e.g., a faculty member and a graduate student mentee.

SRE primarily accepts requests for single book reviews and, less frequently, reviews of two books (paired reviews) and two to four books (thematic or review essays). Edited volumes will be considered for review in rare circumstances.

Guidelines for Writing Single Book Reviews

A review of a single book should be around 800-100 words, including references. They are normally due 2 months after receipt of a hard or electronic copy of the book, though we understand if extra time is needed.

An effective book review should:

• Help introduce the book to readers.
• Summarize the book’s aims, the claims it makes, and how it uses evidence (and certain methods) to support those claims. Chapter-by-chapter summaries are not necessary so long as the review describes the book’s main claims.
• Identify the book’s intended contributions or interventions and describe how effective the book was in making those contributions and interventions.
• Describe a good audience for the book and who would benefit the most from reading the book.
• Fairly assess the book’s strengths and weaknesses/limitations.
• Where possible, contextualize the book in larger trends and patterns within and outside of the sociology of race and ethnicity, and society more generally.
• Be professional and courteous throughout, and mindful of the American Sociological Association’s guidelines on ethics .

We strongly encourage reviews that are creative and take unique perspectives and formats, so long as the general criteria above are met. For example, the review might also:

• Describe how the book can be used for classroom instruction. We strongly encourage reviews that speak to the usefulness of a book for teaching.
• Speak in the first-person “I” and situate the reviewer’s own relationship to the book, and bring in personal stories (e.g. How did you first come across the book? How and why might you connect with it personally?).
• Be organized thematically (around central themes in the book, or larger themes the reviewer has identified) and not linearly (e.g., chapter-by-chapter snapshots).
• Be organized around a key quotation that aims for a thick description assessment of the book, and uses that quotation as a window into the book’s events, arguments, actors, etc.

The editors welcome any suggestions and ideas for non-standard reviews.

Guidelines for Paired Reviews

A review of two books should be around 1600-2000 words, including references. They are due 3 months after receipt of a hard or electronic copy of both books, though we understand if extra time is needed.

These reviews should be greater than the sum of two otherwise separate reviews. In addition to following the “effective book review” guidelines for single books, a paired review should also:

• Provide equal coverage of the two books.
• Highlight what makes the books distinctive and similar.
• Compare the strengths and weaknesses between the books.

Guidelines for Thematic Reviews

The length of a thematic review of 3-4 books can be negotiated with the editor, but will normally be greater than the sum of 800-1000 word individual reviews. A good baseline for a 3-book review is 3000 words. The submission deadline can be negotiated with the editor, but ideally be within 3-4 months after receipt of a hard or electronic copy of all books, though we understand if extra time is needed.

In addition to following the “effective book review” guidelines for single books, a thematic review should also:

• Use the extra words available to lay out the terrain and history, and explain why the shared topics of the books have become popular and important.
• Provide equal coverage of all the books.
• Compare the strengths and weaknesses among the books.
• Include a title.

Special Features

The Reviews section will introduce two new features: “Conversations,” which are casual interviews with authors of noteworthy books; and “Our Two Cents,” a set of (four or more) brief, single-point reflections of a noteworthy book, with or without a reply from the authors. The section will also occasionally host more standard book symposiums for both new and older books.

A Note for First-Time Book Review Authors

The editors are especially interested in helping early career scholars and graduate students, and those writing reviews for the first time. Students preparing for exams, reading closely for dissertation research, and other scholars who are reading texts closely are in a great position to write reviewers, but may need additional guidance. For these scholars, the Book Review Editor is happy to discuss ideas, answer questions, etc. prior to the submission of the completed review.

Style Conventions

References should be avoided if possible. Where they are essential, they should follow  the journal’s guidelines .

Quotations in the text should be enclosed in double quotation marks. Provide the page numbers in a parenthetical notation, e.g. (p. XX). Large quotations (40 words or more) should     be set out as extracts.

At the beginning of the review, the following information should be given, using this format:

AUTHOR’S NAME

TITLE: SUBTITLE

Place of publication: publisher, year of publication, price, ISBN., number of pages.

  Reviewer name and affiliation

For example:

LISA NAKAMURA

CYBERTYPES: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IDENTITY ON THE INTERNET

  New York: Routledge, 2002, $36.95, ISBN. 978-0-415-93837-2, 192 pp.

Robin Banks, University of Springfield

The Editors reserve the right to edit, to request revisions, and to reject reviews.

Name Change Policy  

Sage has introduced a policy to enable name and pronoun changes for our authors. ASA journals published by Sage follow this policy. Going forward, all requests to make a name or pronoun change will be honored. This includes, but is not limited to, name changes because of marriage, divorce, gender affirmation, and religious conversion. For more information, read Sage’s Name Change Policy . 

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

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Understanding Racial/ethnic Disparities in Health: Sociological Contributions *

David r. williams.

1 Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA

2 Departments of African and African American Studies and Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Michelle Sternthal

3 Departments of Environmental and Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA

Associated Data

This paper provides an overview of the contribution of sociologists to the study of racial and ethnic inequalities in health in the U.S. It argues that sociologists have made four principal contributions. First, they have challenged and problematized the biological understanding of race. Second, they have emphasized the primacy of social structure and context as determinants of racial differences in disease. Third, they have contributed to our understanding of the multiple ways in which racism affects health. Finally, sociologists have enhanced our understanding of the ways in which migration history and status can affect health. Sociological insights on racial disparities in health have important implications for the development of effective approaches to improve health and reduce health inequities.

“The most difficult social problem in the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being of the race. There have... been few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference” W.E. B. Du Bois (1899 [1967], p.163).

Racial differences in health date back to some of our earliest health records in the United States with blacks (or African Americans) having poorer health than whites across a broad range of health status indicators. This paper highlights some of the important contributions of sociologists to understanding racial inequities in health. It begins with a brief description of the findings of a seminal study conducted by the African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois in the late 19 th century. It shows how later sociologists have built on this work by elaborating on the ways in which socioeconomic status (SES), racism and migration affect racial differences in health. The implications of this sociological research for policies to reduce disparities in health are also considered.

Du Bois’ Early Research on Race and Health

In his classic 1899 book, the Philadelphia Negro , W.E. B. Du Bois provided a detailed characterization of the “negro problem” in America ( Du Bois 1899 ). His insightful analysis indicated that the higher level of poor health for blacks was one important indicator of racial inequality in the U.S. In the late 19 th and early 20 th century the dominant medical paradigm attributed any observed racial difference in health to innate biological differences between racial groups ( Krieger 1987 ). In contrast, Du Bois (1899) saw racial differences in health as reflecting differences in “social advancements:” the “vastly different conditions” under which blacks and whites lived. He argued that although the causes of racial differences in health were multi-factorial, they were nonetheless primarily social. The list of contributing factors included poor heredity, neglect of infants, bad dwellings, poor food and insanitary living conditions. For example, consumption (tuberculosis) was the leading cause of death for blacks in Philadelphia and Du Bois (1899) indicated that the causative factors were primarily environmental. He stated that “bad ventilation, lack of outdoor life for women and children, poor protection against dampness and cold are undoubtedly the chief causes of the excessive death rate.” Du Bois (1899) also noted that the health of blacks varied within Philadelphia by neighborhood of residence. Death rates were higher in the Fifth Ward, “the worst Negro slum in the city and the worst part of the city in respect to sanitation,” than in the Thirtieth Ward which had “good houses and clean streets.”

Du Bois (1899) reported that black men had poorer health than black women and that the gender differences in health were larger for blacks than for whites. These patterns were also attributed to “the social condition of the sexes in the city.” He indicated that although domestic work was the only option for black women, work was more available for black women than for their male counterparts. In addition, the conditions of work for black women were more conducive to health than those of black men. The domestic servant had access to a good house, good food and proper clothing. In contrast, back males lived in poorer housing, on poorly prepared or irregular food and had jobs that provided greater exposure to adverse weather conditions. Du Bois (1899) also speculated that migration and urbanization were influences on black health. He noted, though, that because the migration of blacks from the south to the north was recent, its full impact on black health was not known. However, he documented that in Philadelphia Wards with a high proportion of immigrants, death rates were reduced because of the demographic composition of the population (“the absence of old people and children”).

For much of the 20 th century, as reflected by publications in the two leading journals in American sociology, the health of the black population has not been a central focus of the discipline. To illustrate, we searched the terms “race and health,” “health inequality and race,” “health inequality and ethnicity” and “health disparity” in the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) and the American Sociological Review (ASR) from the earliest dates available electronically (1895, AJS and 1934, ASR) to identify articles addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health. By the year 1989, only 18 relevant articles were identified (10 in AJS and 8 in ASR). However, there was considerably more recent interest in the topic. There were 14 articles published from 1990-2008 (six in AJS and eight in ASR). Although we argue that racial disparities in health were not a central focus of the top journals of the discipline, sociologists have made and continue to make seminal contributions to our understanding of racial disparities in health. Examples include Williams and Collins (1995) in the Annual Review of Sociology, Link and Phelan (1995) in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Markides and Coreil (1986) in Public Health Reports. Sociologists have also been contributors to several landmark publications on race in the last several decades. These include A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society ( Jaynes and Williams 1989 ), Unequal Treatment ( Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2002 ), and America Becoming: Racial Trends and their Consequences ( Smelser, Wilson, and Mitchell 2001 ). As we indicate below, much of the sociological research on race and health has built and elaborated on many of the insights that were present in Du Bois’ (1899) seminal work.

The Persistence of Racial Differences in Health

There is abundant evidence of the continued existence of racial differences in health. Table 1 provides an example of the magnitude and trends of these inequities. It shows racial differences in life expectancy at birth for men and women from 1950 to the present. Gender is an important social status category and there is need for increased attention to how health is distributed by multiple social status categories simultaneously. The racial gap in health is large and persistent over time. White men and women outlived their black counterparts by 7.4 and 9.3 years, respectively in 1950. Although life expectancy has increased for all groups over the last half century, in 2006 white men still lived 6 years longer than African American men and white women had a 4 year advantage over their black peers. And as Du Bois (1899) noted over a century ago, the patterns are gendered. The racial gap in health is larger for men than for women and there have been larger reductions in the racial gap in life expectancy for women than for men over time, reflecting the fact that, of the four racial and gender groups considered, black women have had the largest absolute gains in life expectancy between 1950 and 2006. Moreover, since 1970, the gender difference in life expectancy has been larger for blacks than for whites, with African American women enjoying a higher level of life expectancy than white men.

Racial Differences in Years of Life Expectancy at birth: 1950 - Present

Heron et al. 2009

Other research reveals that African Americans and American Indians have higher age-specific death rates than whites from birth through retirement ( Williams et al 2010 ). Hispanics (or Latinos) have elevated rates of some leading causes of death such as diabetes, hypertension, liver cirrhosis and homicide. Moreover, the elevated rates of disease and death for minorities compared to whites reflect the earlier onset of illness, greater severity of disease and poorer survival ( Williams et al. 2010 ). Even when African Americans have a lower rate of illness than whites, they have a prognosis that is considerably worse than those of their white counterparts. For example, a recent national study found that although blacks have lower current and lifetime rates of major depression than whites, the cases of depression among blacks were more likely to be persistent, severe, disabling, and untreated ( Williams, Gonzalez et al. 2007 ).

What is Race?

Sociological research seeking to understand how and why these large racial differences in health persist has attempted to delineate what “race” is. The U.S. Government's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) currently recognizes five racial categories (white, black or African American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander) and Hispanic or Latino, an ethnic category (Office of Management and Budget 1996). Early research on racial differences in health viewed all observed disparities as reflecting biological differences between racial groups ( Krieger 1987 ). Recent scientific research reveals that human genetic variation, does not naturally aggregate into subgroups that match our racial categories and “race” is in large part a social rather than a biological category ( Cooper, Kaufman and Ward 2003 ).

Sociologists have long shown that established racial classification systems are arbitrary and evolved from systems of stratification, power and ideology ( Frazier 1947 ; Blauner, 1972 ; Omi and Winant 1994 ). In critiques of the conceptual, methodological and conceptual implications of using race as a variable in health research, sociologists have rejected the dominant view of the last century that racial disparities in health primarily reflect biological differences between racial groups ( Wilkinson and King 1987 ; Williams 1997 ; American Sociological Association 2003 ). Troy Duster (1984), for example, has shown how an emphasis on the genetic sources of racial disparities in health can serve important ideological functions in society. Views of race that focus on biology can divert attention from the social origins of disease, reinforce social norms of racial inferiority, and promote the maintenance of the status quo. If racial differences in health are caused by inherent genetic differences, then social policies and structures that initiate and sustain the production of disease are absolved from responsibility. Sociologists have also emphasized that science is not value free and that preconceived opinions, political agendas and cultural norms, consciously or unconsciously, can shape scientific research by determining which research questions are asked and which projects are funded (Duster 1984).

Sociologists have also noted a recent trend on the part of some geneticists to use current racial categories to capture genetic differences between population groups ( Frank 2008 ). These researchers argue that data from multiple loci on the human genome can provide fairly accurate characterization of individuals into continental ancestral groups that approximate our current racial categories ( Risch et al. 2002 ). These data on “continental ancestry” have been used to suggest that there is enormous practical value in using race as a biological category. However, Serre and Pablo (2004) have shown that sampling biases play a key role in conclusions regarding the continental clustering of populations. Thus, although genetic markers can uniquely identify most individuals, variations in biological characteristics relevant for health risks are not inherently structured into meaningful “racial” categories such that identifying ancestry provides little direct information regarding whether an individual has a specific genetic characteristic ( Cooper et al. 2003 ). Sociologist Reanne Frank (2008) has noted the worrying trend in health disparities research of keeping the logic of genetic racial differences intact but substituting the language of “ancestral background” for the language of “race.”

Sociologists also emphasize that although the contribution of genetics to racial variations in major chronic diseases is likely to be small, research on racial differences in health should seek to understand how social exposures combine with biology to affect the social distribution of disease ( Williams et al.2010 ). However, all conclusions about the contribution of genetics should be based on explicit tests of genetic traits. In addition, researchers should pay more attention to issues of population sampling when making inferences to larger populations about observed genetic variation and to genetic variation within race, as well as, differences across racial groups. Most importantly, sociologists and other social scientists need to devote more concerted and systematic attention to developing valid and reliable measures of the relevant aspects of the social environment for the study of gene-environment interactions.

Research indicates that even in the case of single gene disorders, the severity and timing of genetic expression are affected by environmental triggers, and that established genetic risks can be exacerbated or become protective in the presence of specific environmental exposures ( Shields, Fullerton and Olden 2009 ). Recent sociological research illustrates how gene environment interactions can potentially shed light on the mechanisms linking the social environment to disease. For example, analysis of data for adolescents in the Add Health Study found that genetic traits interacted with family processes (e.g., daily family meals), school processes (e.g., repeating a grade) and friendship network variables (e.g., friend delinquency) to predict delinquency and violence among male adolescents ( Guo and Roettger 2008 ).

In contemporary society, racial groups differ on a broad range of social, behavioral, nutritional, psychological, residential, occupational and other variables. And given that biology is not static but is adaptive to the environmental conditions in which the human organism exists, there are likely to be interactions between the social environment with both innate and acquired biological factors. Thus, although variation in gene frequency is unlikely to play a major role in accounting for racial disparities, differences in gene expression linked to the occupancy of different environmental contexts could play a critical role. Epigenetics refers to changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes in the nucleotide sequences of the DNA. Recent research reveals that exposure to risk factors and resources in the social environment can produce changes in gene expression ( Williams et al. 2010 ). Future research on racial inequities in health needs to more systematically explore the extent to which the distinctive residential and occupational environments of racial minorities can give rise to patterns of social exposures that can produce epigenetic changes in gene expression and tissue and organ function ( Kuzawa and Sweet 2009 ).

Social Structure and Race

Sociological research has long explored the role of social structure and social stratification as a key determinant of health. Social structure refers to enduring patterns of social life that shape an individual's attitudes and beliefs; behaviors and actions; and material and psychological resources. Among the social structures investigated within sociology, social class, usually operationalized as socioeconomic status (SES), has proven particularly relevant for understanding racial disparities in health. In a seminal study in the 1840s, Engels (1984) showed how life expectancy in Liverpool, England varied by the occupation of the residents. Moreover, he showed how specific exposures in both occupational and residential environments were related to the elevated risk of particular diseases. More recent sociological research has found that SES is inversely associated with high quality health care, stress, exposure to social and physical toxins, social support, and healthy behaviors. Accordingly, SES remains one of the strongest known determinants of variations in health status ( Williams and Collins 1995 ).

Sociological work on class informs the study of racial disparities in health, because as Du Bois (1899) noted at the turn of the century, race is strongly intertwined with SES. Recent research continues to find that SES differences between the races account for a substantial component of the racial/ethnic differences in health ( Hayward et al. 2000 ; Williams and Collins 1995 ; Hummer 1996 ). However, sociologists have emphasized that race and SES are two related but not interchangeable systems of social ordering that jointly contribute to health risks ( Navarro 1990 ; Williams and Collins 1995 ). Accordingly, attention needs to be given to both race- and class-based factors that undergird racial health disparities.

Table 2 illustrates the complex relationship between race and SES by presenting national data on life expectancy at age by race and education. It shows that there is a 5 year racial difference in life expectancy at age 25 but an even larger difference, within each race by education. It also indicates that the racial differences in health cannot be simply reduced to SES because there are residual racial differences at every level of education. These data illustrate the notion of the potential “double jeopardy” facing non-dominant racial groups who experience health risks associated with both their stigmatized racial status and low SES ( Ferraro and Farmer 1996 ). The life expectancy data at age 25 also reveal that the racial gap in life expectancy is greater at the higher levels of education compared to the lowest level. This is generally consistent with the “diminishing returns” hypothesis, which argues that racial minorities receive declining health returns as SES increases ( Farmer and Ferraro 2005 ). This pattern exists for some but not all health outcomes. Sociologists have also shown that race and SES can combine with gender and other social statuses, in complex ways, to create patterns of interaction and intersectionality ( Schulz and Mullings 2006 ).

Years of Life Expectancy at Age 25, United States

Sociological work on social class has also contributed to our understanding of racial disparities by underscoring the multidimensionality of SES indicators ( Hauser 1994 ). Sociologists have shown that it requires assessing the multiple dimensions to SES to fully characterize its contribution to racial disparities in health. Moreover, all of the indicators of SES are non-equivalent across race. For example, compared to whites, blacks and some other racial minorities have lower income at every level of education, less wealth (net assets) at every level of income, higher rates of unemployment at all levels of education, higher exposure to occupational hazards even have adjusting for job experience and education and less purchasing power because of higher costs of goods and services in their residential contexts ( Williams and Collins 1995 ). Sociological research has also highlighted the role of SES at the community level as captured by neighborhood level markers of economic hardship, social disorder and concentrated disadvantage ( Wilson 1990 ; Massey and Denton 1993 ). Other sociological research has called attention to large racial/ethnic inequalities in wealth and in documenting that these gaps reflect, at least in part, the historical legacy of institutional discrimination ( Conley 1999 ; Oliver and Shapiro 2006 ). While income captures the flow of economic resources (such as wages) into the household, wealth captures the economic reserves that are reflected in savings, home equity, and other financial assets. National data reveal, that for every dollar of wealth that white individuals have, blacks have 9 cents and Hispanics have 12 cents (Orzechowski 2003). These striking disparities exist at every level of income. For example, for every dollar of wealth that poor whites in the lowest quintile of income have, poor blacks have one penny and poor Latinos have two pennies.

Racism and Health

Sociological research has also shed important light on how factors linked to race contribute to racial differences in health. This work has identified multiple ways in which racism initiates and sustains health disparities ( Williams and Mohammed 2009 ). This research explicitly draws on the larger literature in sociology on racism and conceptualizes it as a multilevel construct, encompassing institutional and individual discrimination, racial prejudice and stereotypes as well as internalized racism ( Feagin and McKinney 2003 ; Bonilla-Silva, 1997 ; Massey and Denton 1993 ).

At the institutional level, sociological research has underscored the role of residential racial segregation as a primary institutional mechanism of racism and a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health ( Massey and Denton 1993 ; LaVeist 1989 ; Williams and Collins 2001 ) and has helped shape local and federal policies. Sociologists have documented how segregation produces the concentration of poverty, social disorder and social isolation, and creates pathogenic conditions in residential environments ( Massey 2004 ; Schulz et al. 2002 ; Williams and Collins 2001 ). For example, an examination of the 171 largest cities found that the worst urban context in which white individuals lived was better than the average context of black neighborhoods ( Sampson, and Wilson 1995 ). These differences in neighborhood quality and community conditions are driven by residential segregation by race – a neglected but enduring legacy of institutional racism in the U.S. Considerable evidence suggests that because of segregation, the residential conditions under which African Americans, American Indians and an increasing proportion of Latinos live are distinctive from those of the rest of the population.

Sociologists have also identified multiple pathways through which segregation can adversely affect health ( Morenoff 2003 ; Williams and Collins 2001 ; Schulz et al. 2002 ). First, segregation restricts SES attainment by limiting access to quality elementary and high school education, preparation for higher education and job opportunities. Second, the residential conditions of concentrated poverty and social disorder created by segregation make it difficult for residents to eat nutritiously, exercise regularly and avoid advertising for tobacco and alcohol. For example, the lack of recreation facilities and concerns about personal safety can discourage leisure time physical exercise. Third, the concentration of poverty can lead to exposure to elevated levels of financial stress and hardship as well as other chronic and acute stressors at the individual, household and neighborhood level. Fourth, the weakened community and neighborhood infrastructure in segregated areas can also adversely affect interpersonal relationships and trust among neighbors. Fifth, the institutional neglect and disinvestment in poor, segregated communities contributes to increased exposure to environmental toxins, poor quality housing and criminal victimization. Finally, segregation adversely affects both access to care and the quality of care. Research has linked residential segregation to an elevated risk of illness and death and shown that it contributes to the racial disparities in health ( Williams and Collins 2001 ; Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2003 ).

Segregation probably has a larger impact on the health of African Americans than other groups because blacks currently live under a level of segregation that is higher than that of any other immigrant group in U.S. history ( Massey and Denton 1993 ). In addition, the association between segregation and SES varies by minority racial group. For Latinos and Asians, segregation is inversely related to household income but segregation is high at all levels of SES for blacks ( Massey 2004 ). The highest SES blacks (incomes greater than $50,000) in the 2000 Census were more segregated than the poorest Latinos and Asians (incomes less than $15,000) ( Massey 2004 ).

At the individual level, experiences of discrimination have been shown to be a source of stress that adversely affects health ( Williams and Mohammed 2009 ). Research has documented elevated levels of exposure to both chronic and acute measures of discrimination for socially stigmatized racial and immigrant groups in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand ( Williams and Mohammed 2009 ). Exposure to discrimination has been shown to be associated with increased risk of a broad range of indicators of physical and mental illness. In addition, discrimination, like other measures of social stress, adversely affects patterns of health care utilization and adherence behaviors and is predictive of increased risk of using multiple substances to cope with stress including tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs. Several studies have found that, in multiple national contexts, racial discrimination makes an incremental contribution to SES, in accounting for observed racial disparities in health ( Williams and Mohammed 2009 ).

While much research has focused on the pervasive role of racism in perpetuating health disparities, sociologists have also enhanced our understanding of the complex ways communities respond to discrimination. Some research has explored the harmful health effects of internalized racism—in which minority groups accept the dominant society's ideology of their inferiority as accurate ( Williams and Mohammed 2009 ). Other research has identified cultural and psychosocial resources that foster resilience. For example, sociological research has found that religious involvement can enhance health in the face of racial discrimination and also buffer the negative effects of interpersonal discrimination on health ( Bierman 2006 ; Ellison, Musick, and Henderson 2008 ). Other research indicates that ethnic identity can serve as a resource in the face of discrimination ( Mossakowski 2003 ). Having a sense of ethnic pride and engaging in ethnic practices can enhance mental health directly and the strength of ethnic identification can reduce the stress of discrimination on mental health.

Migration and Health

Du Bois’ (1899) insight that immigrant status affects the health profile of a population is relevant to understanding contemporary patterns of health. Asians and Latinos have lower overall age adjusted mortality rates than whites. In the 2000 U.S. Census, 67% of Asians and 40% of Latinos were foreign born ( Malone et al. 2003 ). Processes linked to migration make an important contribution to the observed mortality rates for these groups. National data reveal that immigrants of all racial groups have lower rates of adult and infant mortality than their native born counterparts ( Hummer et al.1999 ; Singh and Miller 2004 ; Singh and Yu 1996 ). Moreover, across multiple immigrant groups, with increasing exposure to American society, health tends to decline. This pattern is especially surprising for Latinos. Hispanic immigrants, especially those of Mexican background, have high rates of poverty and low levels of access to health insurance in the United States. However, their levels of health are equivalent and sometimes superior to that of the white population. This pattern has been called the Hispanic paradox ( Markides and Eschbach 2005 ).

Sociological research has shed important light on the complex association between migration and health. First, research has shown that when a broad range of health outcomes are considered, a complex pattern emerges. For example, although Hispanics have comparable levels of infant mortality to whites, women of all Hispanic groups have a higher risk of low birth weight and prematurity than whites ( Frisbie, Forbes, and Hummer 1998 ). Similarly, in the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), virtually all immigrants reported better physical health status, such as chronic physical conditions than the native born ( Williams and Mohammed 2008 ). In contrast, for psychological distress, many immigrant groups (most Latino groups, Pacific Islanders and Koreans) reported worse health than the native born, while other immigrants groups (blacks, Puerto Ricans and Filipinos) had better health and still others (Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese) did not differ from their native born counterparts.

Second, sociological research has shown that migration status combines in complex ways with SES to affect health. Immigrant populations differ markedly in SES upon arrival in the United States ( Rumbaut 1996 ). For example, Asian and African immigrants have markedly higher levels of education than other immigrant groups and U.S.-born whites. In contrast, immigrants from Mexico, have low levels of education at the time of migration to the U.S. and face major challenges with socioeconomic mobility in the second generation. Sociological research has shown that these differences in SES importantly affect patterns and trajectories of health. For immigrant populations largely made up of low SES individuals, traditional indicators of SES tend to be unrelated to health in the first generation but exhibit the expected associations in health by the second generation ( Angel, Buckley, and Finch 2001 ). In addition, the SES of immigrants upon arrival to the U.S. appears to be a determinant of the immigrant group's trajectory of health. For example, the gap in mortality between immigrants and the native born is smaller for Asians than for whites, blacks and Hispanics ( Singh and Miller 2004 ) and recent national data reveal that declines in mental health for subsequent generations were less marked for Asians ( Takeuchi et al. 2007 ) than for blacks ( Williams, Haile, et al. 2007 ) and Hispanics ( Alegria et al. 2007 ). Thus, although black, Latino and Asian first generation immigrants all have lower disorder rates than the general population of blacks and whites, by the third generation the disorder rates of Latino and black but not Asian immigrants are higher ( Alegria et al. 2007 ; Takeuchi et al. 2007 ; Williams, Haile, et al. 2007 ; Miranda et al. 2008 ). One of the factors contributing to the good health profile of immigrants is their selection on the basis of health. Recent sociological research has shown that differences in the SES of immigrant streams is the key determinant of variations in health selection among immigrants with immigrants to the U.S. from all regions of the world having higher levels of positive health selection than immigrants from Mexico ( Akresh and Frank 2008 ). That is, the surprisingly good health of immigrants from Mexico is not primarily due to the better health of Mexican immigrants relative to Mexicans who did not migrate. Future research is needed to clearly identify the relative contribution of various factors to the health status of immigrants and how these may vary across various immigrant populations.

Third, sociological research has began to characterize how risk factors and resources in immigrant populations such as the stressors and strains associated with migration and adaptation, inadequate health care in the country of origin and factors linked to larger social structures and context, such as institutional racism and interpersonal discrimination can affect the health of immigrants ( Angel and Angel 2006 ). For example, a study of adult migrant Mexican workers in California found that stressors linked to discrimination, legal status and problems speaking English were inversely related to self-reported measures of physical and mental health and partially accounted for the declines in these health indicators with increasing years in the U.S. ( Finch, Frank, and Vega 2004 ).

Finally, sociologists have also shown that a full understanding of the health effects of migration requires an assessment of the ways in which migration impacts the health of sending communities. For example, a study of infant health in two high migration sending states in Mexico found that infants born to fathers who had migrated to the U.S. had a lower risk of low birth weight and prematurity compared to infants born to fathers who had never migrated ( Frank 2005 ). This study also found that women with partners in the U.S. had lower levels of social support and higher levels of stress during pregnancy than women with nonimmigrant partners, but the benefits of the receipt of remittances and the practice of better health behaviors led to improved infant health outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of attending to the bi-directional effects of migration processes.

At the same time, the good health profile of immigrants highlights how much we still need to learn regarding the determinants of health and the needed policies to improve the health of all Americans and reduce inequities in health across population groups. Especially striking and intriguing are the data for Mexican immigrants. Despite having levels of poverty comparable to those of African Americans and among the lowest levels of access to health care of any racial/ethnic group in the U.S., Mexican immigrants nonetheless have levels of health that are often equivalent and sometimes superior to those of whites ( Williams et al 2010 ). These data emphasize that health is not primarily driven by medical care but by other social contextual factors. However, precisely what these social determinants of health are, and how they may operate in the absence of high levels of SES, and why they change over time is less clear. Accordingly, for both research and policy reasons, there is an urgent need to identify the relevant factors that shape the association between migration status and health for Mexicans and other immigrants. Moreover, we need to identify and implement the interventions, if any, that can avert or reverse the downward health trajectory of immigrants with increasing length of stay in the U.S.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

Sociological research on racial disparities in health has many important lessons for policies that seek to address social inequities in health. First, there are implications for how data on social inequalities in health are reported. For over 100 years, the U.S. public health system has routinely reported national health data by race. Instructively, although SES differences in health are typically larger than racial ones, health status differences by SES are seldom reported and only very rarely are data on health status presented by race and SES simultaneously. Moreover, striking differences are also evident by sex. Given the patterns of social inequalities and the need to raise awareness of the public and policy makers of the magnitude of these inequities and their social determinants, we strongly urge that health data should be routinely collected, analyzed, and presented simultaneously by race, SES and gender. This will highlight the fundamental contribution of SES to the health of the nation and to racial disparities in health. Failure to routinely present racial data by stratifying them by SES within racial groups can obscure the social factors that affect health and reinforce negative racial stereotypes. The inclusion of gender must be accompanied by research that seeks to identify how biological factors linked to sex and social factors linked to gender, relate to each other and combine with race and SES to create new identities at the convergence of multiple social statuses that predict differential access to societal resources.

Sociological research indicates that race and SES combine in complex ways to affect health. There has been some debate regarding the advisability of race-specific versus universal initiatives to improve outcomes for vulnerable social groups. Extant research that clearly documents residual effects of race, at every level of SES suggests that race-specific strategies are needed to improve outcomes for disadvantaged racial groups. The research reviewed here indicates that both the legacies of racism and its continued manifestations matter for health. For example, unless and until serious attention is given to addressing institutional racism such as residential segregation, reducing racial inequities in health will likely prove elusive. More research and policy attention should be given to identifying and implementing individual and especially institutional interventions that would be effective in reducing the levels and consequences of racism in society. For instance, state- or federal-level policies that expand the stock of safe, stable, low-income and mixed-income housing or funding for section 8 vouchers could increase access to high-opportunity neighborhoods, while more robust enforcement of housing and financial regulations could help curb predatory lending and housing discrimination practices in minority or underserved neighborhoods.

There are many good reasons for reducing societal racism and improving the racial climate of the U.S. The substantial health benefits of such interventions are an important benefit that is not widely recognized. Relatedly, some evidence suggests that many of the most promising efforts to improve health are likely to widen disparities because the most advantaged social groups are likely to extract the greatest benefit from them ( Mechanic 2002 ). Accordingly, policies are needed that improve the health of vulnerable social groups more rapidly than that of the rest of the population so that health gaps can be narrowed.

The evidence documenting that race is primarily a social rather than a biological category provides insight into the types of interventions that are needed to improve the health of disadvantaged racial populations. Effective interventions will be those that are targeted not at internal biological processes – but those that seek to improve the quality of life in the places where Americans spend most of their time – their homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods and places of worship ( Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission, 2009 ). For example, incentive programs for Famer's Markets and full-service grocery stores, along with more stringent regulations on fast food and liquor stores, could increase availability of nutritious, affordable foods in underserved areas. Other potential interventions include restructured land-use and zoning policies that reduce the concentration of environmental risks (e.g., proximity bus depots to schools or daycares); public transportation options that encourage physical activity and minimize pollution risks; the creation of public green spaces that promote walkability, exercise, and community cohesion; and educational initiatives aimed at equalizing access to K-12 education and higher education, improving teacher quality, lifting graduation rates, and reducing the achievement gap.

Historically, sociological research on racial disparities in health has directly contributed to action and debate in the policy arena. For example, informed by Robert Bullard's groundbreaking research on environmental racism ( Bullard 2000 ; Bullard & Johnson 2000 ), President Clinton signed an executive order which required federal agencies to ensure that their policies and programs did not disproportionally affect minorities or the poor ( Clinton 1994 ). More recently, an influential report co-authored by sociologist Thomas LaVeist ( LaVeist, Gaskin, and Richard.2009 ) is helping to transform the policy debate about racial disparities in health by emphasizing that these differences in health have substantial economic costs for society. This report estimated that the medical care and lost productivity costs for racial disparities in health amount to a $309 billion annual loss to the economy. These economic costs are a compelling additional policy justification for eliminating health inequities. Sociologist David Williams also recently served as the staff director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America – a national bi-partisan initiative focused on improving American's health and reducing socioeconomic and racial disparities in health. The recommendations of this Commission have shaped recent federal spending and budget priorities on nutrition and investments in early developmental support for children ( Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission, 2009 ).

Since health is embedded in policies far removed from traditional health policy, success will therefore depend on integrative and collaborative efforts across multiple sectors of society that seek to leverage resources to enhance health. It was earlier noted that black women experienced a large decline in life expectancy decline between 1950 and 2006. This success was likely due to improvements in the SES of African American women. A review of studies of the health effects of the civil rights movement found that black women experienced larger economic gains than black men during the 1960s and 1970s and that during this period of the narrowing of the income gap between blacks and whites, blacks, especially women, experienced larger improvements in health, relatively and absolutely, than whites ( Williams et al 2008 ).

The magnitude and persistence of racial inequities in health call on U.S. policy makers to seriously confront what Du Bois (1899) referred to as the “peculiar indifference” to the magnitude of human suffering that racial disparities in health reflect. Policy makers need to identify the real and perceived barriers to implementing comprehensive societal initiatives that are necessary to eliminating racial differences in health. More systematic and sustained attention should be given to how to frame such efforts in ways that resonate with dominant American ideals. Widely cherished norms of equal opportunity and the dignity of the individual could be creatively harnessed to build the needed political support to improve the health of all Americans, including those that currently live shorter and sicker lives than the rest of the population.

Supplementary Material

Bio-sketches.

* Preparation of this paper was supported in part by grant P01 AG020166 from the National Institute of Aging, T32-ES07069-29 from the National Institute of Environmental Health, and by the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health. We wish to thank Veronic Aghayan for assistance with preparing the manuscript.

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10.2 The Meaning of Race and Ethnicity

Learning objectives.

• Critique the biological concept of race.
• Discuss why race is a social construction.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a sense of ethnic identity.

To understand this problem further, we need to take a critical look at the very meaning of race and ethnicity in today’s society. These concepts may seem easy to define initially but are much more complex than their definitions suggest.

Let’s start first with race , which refers to a category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature. A key question about race is whether it is more of a biological category or a social category. Most people think of race in biological terms, and for more than 300 years, or ever since white Europeans began colonizing populations of color elsewhere in the world, race has indeed served as the “premier source of human identity” (Smedley, 1998, p. 690).

It is certainly easy to see that people in the United States and around the world differ physically in some obvious ways. The most noticeable difference is skin tone: some groups of people have very dark skin, while others have very light skin. Other differences also exist. Some people have very curly hair, while others have very straight hair. Some have thin lips, while others have thick lips. Some groups of people tend to be relatively tall, while others tend to be relatively short. Using such physical differences as their criteria, scientists at one point identified as many as nine races: African, American Indian or Native American, Asian, Australian Aborigine, European (more commonly called “white”), Indian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian (Smedley, 1998).

Although people certainly do differ in the many physical features that led to the development of such racial categories, anthropologists, sociologists, and many biologists question the value of these categories and thus the value of the biological concept of race (Smedley, 2007). For one thing, we often see more physical differences within a race than between races. For example, some people we call “white” (or European), such as those with Scandinavian backgrounds, have very light skins, while others, such as those from some Eastern European backgrounds, have much darker skins. In fact, some “whites” have darker skin than some “blacks,” or African Americans. Some whites have very straight hair, while others have very curly hair; some have blonde hair and blue eyes, while others have dark hair and brown eyes. Because of interracial reproduction going back to the days of slavery, African Americans also differ in the darkness of their skin and in other physical characteristics. In fact it is estimated that about 80% of African Americans have some white (i.e., European) ancestry; 50% of Mexican Americans have European or Native American ancestry; and 20% of whites have African or Native American ancestry. If clear racial differences ever existed hundreds or thousands of years ago (and many scientists doubt such differences ever existed), in today’s world these differences have become increasingly blurred.

Another reason to question the biological concept of race is that an individual or a group of individuals is often assigned to a race on arbitrary or even illogical grounds. A century ago, for example, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews who left their homelands for a better life in the United States were not regarded as white once they reached the United States but rather as a different, inferior (if unnamed) race (Painter, 2010). The belief in their inferiority helped justify the harsh treatment they suffered in their new country. Today, of course, we call people from all three backgrounds white or European.

In this context, consider someone in the United States who has a white parent and a black parent. What race is this person? American society usually calls this person black or African American, and the person may adopt the same identity (as does Barack Obama, who had a white mother and African father). But where is the logic for doing so? This person, as well as President Obama, is as much white as black in terms of parental ancestry. Or consider someone with one white parent and another parent who is the child of one black parent and one white parent. This person thus has three white grandparents and one black grandparent. Even though this person’s ancestry is thus 75% white and 25% black, she or he is likely to be considered black in the United States and may well adopt this racial identity. This practice reflects the traditional “one-drop rule” in the United States that defines someone as black if she or he has at least one drop of “black blood,” and that was used in the antebellum South to keep the slave population as large as possible (Wright, 1993). Yet in many Latin American nations, this person would be considered white. In Brazil, the term black is reserved for someone with no European (white) ancestry at all. If we followed this practice in the United States, about 80% of the people we call “black” would now be called “white.” With such arbitrary designations, race is more of a social category than a biological one.

President Barack Obama had an African father and a white mother. Although his ancestry is equally black and white, Obama considers himself an African American, as do most Americans. In several Latin American nations, however, Obama would be considered white because of his white ancestry.

Steve Jurvetson – Barack Obama on the Primary – CC BY 2.0.

A third reason to question the biological concept of race comes from the field of biology itself and more specifically from the studies of genetics and human evolution. Starting with genetics, people from different races are more than 99.9% the same in their DNA (Begley, 2008). To turn that around, less than 0.1% of all the DNA in our bodies accounts for the physical differences among people that we associate with racial differences. In terms of DNA, then, people with different racial backgrounds are much, much more similar than dissimilar.

Even if we acknowledge that people differ in the physical characteristics we associate with race, modern evolutionary evidence reminds us that we are all, really, of one human race. According to evolutionary theory, the human race began thousands and thousands of years ago in sub-Saharan Africa. As people migrated around the world over the millennia, natural selection took over. It favored dark skin for people living in hot, sunny climates (i.e., near the equator), because the heavy amounts of melanin that produce dark skin protect against severe sunburn, cancer, and other problems. By the same token, natural selection favored light skin for people who migrated farther from the equator to cooler, less sunny climates, because dark skins there would have interfered with the production of vitamin D (Stone & Lurquin, 2007). Evolutionary evidence thus reinforces the common humanity of people who differ in the rather superficial ways associated with their appearances: we are one human species composed of people who happen to look different.

Race as a Social Construction

The reasons for doubting the biological basis for racial categories suggest that race is more of a social category than a biological one. Another way to say this is that race is a social construction , a concept that has no objective reality but rather is what people decide it is (Berger & Luckmann, 1963). In this view race has no real existence other than what and how people think of it.

This understanding of race is reflected in the problems, outlined earlier, in placing people with multiracial backgrounds into any one racial category. We have already mentioned the example of President Obama. As another example, the famous (and now notorious) golfer Tiger Woods was typically called an African American by the news media when he burst onto the golfing scene in the late 1990s, but in fact his ancestry is one-half Asian (divided evenly between Chinese and Thai), one-quarter white, one-eighth Native American, and only one-eighth African American (Leland & Beals, 1997).

Historical examples of attempts to place people in racial categories further underscore the social constructionism of race. In the South during the time of slavery, the skin tone of slaves lightened over the years as babies were born from the union, often in the form of rape, of slave owners and other whites with slaves. As it became difficult to tell who was “black” and who was not, many court battles over people’s racial identity occurred. People who were accused of having black ancestry would go to court to prove they were white in order to avoid enslavement or other problems (Staples, 1998). Litigation over race continued long past the days of slavery. In a relatively recent example, Susie Guillory Phipps sued the Louisiana Bureau of Vital Records in the early 1980s to change her official race to white. Phipps was descended from a slave owner and a slave and thereafter had only white ancestors. Despite this fact, she was called “black” on her birth certificate because of a state law, echoing the “one-drop rule,” that designated people as black if their ancestry was at least 1/32 black (meaning one of their great-great-great grandparents was black). Phipps had always thought of herself as white and was surprised after seeing a copy of her birth certificate to discover she was officially black because she had one black ancestor about 150 years earlier. She lost her case, and the U.S. Supreme Court later refused to review it (Omi & Winant, 1994).

Although race is a social construction, it is also true, as noted in an earlier chapter, that things perceived as real are real in their consequences. Because people do perceive race as something real, it has real consequences. Even though so little of DNA accounts for the physical differences we associate with racial differences, that low amount leads us not only to classify people into different races but to treat them differently—and, more to the point, unequally—based on their classification. Yet modern evidence shows there is little, if any, scientific basis for the racial classification that is the source of so much inequality.

Because of the problems in the meaning of race , many social scientists prefer the term ethnicity in speaking of people of color and others with distinctive cultural heritages. In this context, ethnicity refers to the shared social, cultural, and historical experiences, stemming from common national or regional backgrounds, that make subgroups of a population different from one another. Similarly, an ethnic group is a subgroup of a population with a set of shared social, cultural, and historical experiences; with relatively distinctive beliefs, values, and behaviors; and with some sense of identity of belonging to the subgroup. So conceived, the terms ethnicity and ethnic group avoid the biological connotations of the terms race and racial group and the biological differences these terms imply. At the same time, the importance we attach to ethnicity illustrates that it, too, is in many ways a social construction, and our ethnic membership thus has important consequences for how we are treated.

The sense of identity many people gain from belonging to an ethnic group is important for reasons both good and bad. Because, as we learned in Chapter 6 “Groups and Organizations” , one of the most important functions of groups is the identity they give us, ethnic identities can give individuals a sense of belonging and a recognition of the importance of their cultural backgrounds. This sense of belonging is illustrated in Figure 10.1 “Responses to “How Close Do You Feel to Your Ethnic or Racial Group?”” , which depicts the answers of General Social Survey respondents to the question, “How close do you feel to your ethnic or racial group?” More than three-fourths said they feel close or very close. The term ethnic pride captures the sense of self-worth that many people derive from their ethnic backgrounds. More generally, if group membership is important for many ways in which members of the group are socialized, ethnicity certainly plays an important role in the socialization of millions of people in the United States and elsewhere in the world today.

Figure 10.1 Responses to “How Close Do You Feel to Your Ethnic or Racial Group?”

Source: Data from General Social Survey, 2004.

A downside of ethnicity and ethnic group membership is the conflict they create among people of different ethnic groups. History and current practice indicate that it is easy to become prejudiced against people with different ethnicities from our own. Much of the rest of this chapter looks at the prejudice and discrimination operating today in the United States against people whose ethnicity is not white and European. Around the world today, ethnic conflict continues to rear its ugly head. The 1990s and 2000s were filled with “ethnic cleansing” and pitched battles among ethnic groups in Eastern Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. Our ethnic heritages shape us in many ways and fill many of us with pride, but they also are the source of much conflict, prejudice, and even hatred, as the hate crime story that began this chapter so sadly reminds us.

Key Takeaways

• Sociologists think race is best considered a social construction rather than a biological category.
• “Ethnicity” and “ethnic” avoid the biological connotations of “race” and “racial.”

For Your Review

• List everyone you might know whose ancestry is biracial or multiracial. What do these individuals consider themselves to be?
• List two or three examples that indicate race is a social construction rather than a biological category.

Begley, S. (2008, February 29). Race and DNA. Newsweek . Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/lab-notes/2008/02/29/race-and-dna.html .

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1963). The social construction of reality . New York, NY: Doubleday.

Leland, J., & Beals, G. (1997, May 5). In living colors: Tiger Woods is the exception that rules. Newsweek 58–60.

Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Painter, N. I. (2010). The history of white people . New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Smedley, A. (1998). “Race” and the construction of human identity. American Anthropologist, 100 , 690–702.

Staples, B. (1998, November 13). The shifting meanings of “black” and “white,” The New York Times , p. WK14.

Stone, L., & Lurquin, P. F. (2007). Genes, culture, and human evolution: A synthesis . Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Wright, L. (1993, July 12). One drop of blood. The New Yorker, pp. 46–54.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Regions & Countries

Black americans have a clear vision for reducing racism but little hope it will happen, many say key u.s. institutions should be rebuilt to ensure fair treatment.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand the nuances among Black people on issues of racial inequality and social change in the United States. This in-depth survey explores differences among Black Americans in their views on the social status of the Black population in the U.S.; their assessments of racial inequality; their visions for institutional and social change; and their outlook on the chances that these improvements will be made. The analysis is the latest in the Center’s series of in-depth surveys of public opinion among Black Americans (read the first, “ Faith Among Black Americans ” and “ Race Is Central to Identity for Black Americans and Affects How They Connect With Each Other ”).

The online survey of 3,912 Black U.S. adults was conducted Oct. 4-17, 2021. Black U.S. adults include those who are single-race, non-Hispanic Black Americans; multiracial non-Hispanic Black Americans; and adults who indicate they are Black and Hispanic. The survey includes 1,025 Black adults on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP) and 2,887 Black adults on Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel. Respondents on both panels are recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

Recruiting panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. Black adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling). Here are the questions used for the survey of Black adults, along with its responses and methodology .

The terms “Black Americans,” “Black people” and “Black adults” are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adults who self-identify as Black, either alone or in combination with other races or Hispanic identity.

Throughout this report, “Black, non-Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as single-race Black and say they have no Hispanic background. “Black Hispanic” respondents are those who identify as Black and say they have Hispanic background. We use the terms “Black Hispanic” and “Hispanic Black” interchangeably. “Multiracial” respondents are those who indicate two or more racial backgrounds (one of which is Black) and say they are not Hispanic.

Respondents were asked a question about how important being Black was to how they think about themselves. In this report, we use the term “being Black” when referencing responses to this question.

In this report, “immigrant” refers to people who were not U.S. citizens at birth – in other words, those born outside the U.S., Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories to parents who were not U.S. citizens. We use the terms “immigrant,” “born abroad” and “foreign-born” interchangeably.

Throughout this report, “Democrats and Democratic leaners” and just “Democrats” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or who are independent or some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party. “Republicans and Republican leaners” and just “Republicans” both refer to respondents who identify politically with the Republican Party or are independent or some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

Respondents were asked a question about their voter registration status. In this report, respondents are considered registered to vote if they self-report being absolutely certain they are registered at their current address. Respondents are considered not registered to vote if they report not being registered or express uncertainty about their registration.

To create the upper-, middle- and lower-income tiers, respondents’ 2020 family incomes were adjusted for differences in purchasing power by geographic region and household size. Respondents were then placed into income tiers: “Middle income” is defined as two-thirds to double the median annual income for the entire survey sample. “Lower income” falls below that range, and “upper income” lies above it. For more information about how the income tiers were created, read the methodology .

More than a year after the murder of George Floyd and the national protests, debate and political promises that ensued, 65% of Black Americans say the increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives. 1 And 44% say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved, according to newly released findings from an October 2021 survey of Black Americans by Pew Research Center.

This is somewhat of a reversal in views from September 2020, when half of Black adults said the increased national focus on issues of race would lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality in the country and 56% expected changes that would make their lives better.

At the same time, many Black Americans are concerned about racial discrimination and its impact. Roughly eight-in-ten say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and most also say discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead (68%).  

Even so, Black Americans have a clear vision for how to achieve change when it comes to racial inequality. This includes support for significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment, particularly the criminal justice system; political engagement, primarily in the form of voting; support for Black businesses to advance Black communities; and reparations in the forms of educational, business and homeownership assistance. Yet alongside their assessments of inequality and ideas about progress exists pessimism about whether U.S. society and its institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

These findings emerge from an extensive Pew Research Center survey of 3,912 Black Americans conducted online Oct. 4-17, 2021. The survey explores how Black Americans assess their position in U.S. society and their ideas about social change. Overall, Black Americans are clear on what they think the problems are facing the country and how to remedy them. However, they are skeptical that meaningful changes will take place in their lifetime.

Black Americans see racism in our laws as a big problem and discrimination as a roadblock to progress

Black adults were asked in the survey to assess the current nature of racism in the United States and whether structural or individual sources of this racism are a bigger problem for Black people. About half of Black adults (52%) say racism in our laws is a bigger problem than racism by individual people, while four-in-ten (43%) say acts of racism committed by individual people is the bigger problem. Only 3% of Black adults say that Black people do not experience discrimination in the U.S. today.

In assessing the magnitude of problems that they face, the majority of Black Americans say racism (63%), police brutality (60%) and economic inequality (54%) are extremely or very big problems for Black people living in the U.S. Slightly smaller shares say the same about the affordability of health care (47%), limitations on voting (46%), and the quality of K-12 schools (40%).

Aside from their critiques of U.S. institutions, Black adults also feel the impact of racial inequality personally. Most Black adults say they occasionally or frequently experience unfair treatment because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and two-thirds (68%) cite racial discrimination as the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead today.

Black Americans’ views on reducing racial inequality

Black Americans are clear on the challenges they face because of racism. They are also clear on the solutions. These range from overhauls of policing practices and the criminal justice system to civic engagement and reparations to descendants of people enslaved in the United States.

Changing U.S. institutions such as policing, courts and prison systems

About nine-in-ten Black adults say multiple aspects of the criminal justice system need some kind of change (minor, major or a complete overhaul) to ensure fair treatment, with nearly all saying so about policing (95%), the courts and judicial process (95%), and the prison system (94%).

Roughly half of Black adults say policing (49%), the courts and judicial process (48%), and the prison system (54%) need to be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly. Smaller shares say the same about the political system (42%), the economic system (37%) and the health care system (34%), according to the October survey.

While Black Americans are in favor of significant changes to policing, most want spending on police departments in their communities to stay the same (39%) or increase (35%). A little more than one-in-five (23%) think spending on police departments in their area should be decreased.

Black adults who favor decreases in police spending are most likely to name medical, mental health and social services (40%) as the top priority for those reappropriated funds. Smaller shares say K-12 schools (25%), roads, water systems and other infrastructure (12%), and reducing taxes (13%) should be the top priority.

Voting and ‘buying Black’ viewed as important strategies for Black community advancement

Black Americans also have clear views on the types of political and civic engagement they believe will move Black communities forward. About six-in-ten Black adults say voting (63%) and supporting Black businesses or “buying Black” (58%) are extremely or very effective strategies for moving Black people toward equality in the U.S. Smaller though still significant shares say the same about volunteering with organizations dedicated to Black equality (48%), protesting (42%) and contacting elected officials (40%).

Black adults were also asked about the effectiveness of Black economic and political independence in moving them toward equality. About four-in-ten (39%) say Black ownership of all businesses in Black neighborhoods would be an extremely or very effective strategy for moving toward racial equality, while roughly three-in-ten (31%) say the same about establishing a national Black political party. And about a quarter of Black adults (27%) say having Black neighborhoods governed entirely by Black elected officials would be extremely or very effective in moving Black people toward equality.

Most Black Americans support repayment for slavery

Discussions about atonement for slavery predate the founding of the United States. As early as 1672 , Quaker abolitionists advocated for enslaved people to be paid for their labor once they were free. And in recent years, some U.S. cities and institutions have implemented reparations policies to do just that.

Most Black Americans say the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in the U.S. either a great deal (55%) or a fair amount (30%), according to the survey. And roughly three-quarters (77%) say descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid in some way.

Black adults who say descendants of the enslaved should be repaid support doing so in different ways. About eight-in-ten say repayment in the forms of educational scholarships (80%), financial assistance for starting or improving a business (77%), and financial assistance for buying or remodeling a home (76%) would be extremely or very helpful. A slightly smaller share (69%) say cash payments would be extremely or very helpful forms of repayment for the descendants of enslaved people.

Where the responsibility for repayment lies is also clear for Black Americans. Among those who say the descendants of enslaved people should be repaid, 81% say the U.S. federal government should have all or most of the responsibility for repayment. About three-quarters (76%) say businesses and banks that profited from slavery should bear all or most of the responsibility for repayment. And roughly six-in-ten say the same about colleges and universities that benefited from slavery (63%) and descendants of families who engaged in the slave trade (60%).

Black Americans are skeptical change will happen

Even though Black Americans’ visions for social change are clear, very few expect them to be implemented. Overall, 44% of Black adults say equality for Black people in the U.S. is a little or not at all likely. A little over a third (38%) say it is somewhat likely and only 13% say it is extremely or very likely.

They also do not think specific institutions will change. Two-thirds of Black adults say changes to the prison system (67%) and the courts and judicial process (65%) that would ensure fair treatment for Black people are a little or not at all likely in their lifetime. About six-in-ten (58%) say the same about policing. Only about one-in-ten say changes to policing (13%), the courts and judicial process (12%), and the prison system (11%) are extremely or very likely.

This pessimism is not only about the criminal justice system. The majority of Black adults say the political (63%), economic (62%) and health care (51%) systems are also unlikely to change in their lifetime.

Black Americans’ vision for social change includes reparations. However, much like their pessimism about institutional change, very few think they will see reparations in their lifetime. Among Black adults who say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should be repaid, 82% say reparations for slavery are unlikely to occur in their lifetime. About one-in-ten (11%) say repayment is somewhat likely, while only 7% say repayment is extremely or very likely to happen in their lifetime.

Black Democrats, Republicans differ on assessments of inequality and visions for social change

Party affiliation is one key point of difference among Black Americans in their assessments of racial inequality and their visions for social change. Black Republicans and Republican leaners are more likely than Black Democrats and Democratic leaners to focus on the acts of individuals. For example, when summarizing the nature of racism against Black people in the U.S., the majority of Black Republicans (59%) say racist acts committed by individual people is a bigger problem for Black people than racism in our laws. Black Democrats (41%) are less likely to hold this view.

Black Republicans (45%) are also more likely than Black Democrats (21%) to say that Black people who cannot get ahead in the U.S. are mostly responsible for their own condition. And while similar shares of Black Republicans (79%) and Democrats (80%) say they experience racial discrimination on a regular basis, Republicans (64%) are more likely than Democrats (36%) to say that most Black people who want to get ahead can make it if they are willing to work hard.

On the other hand, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to focus on the impact that racial inequality has on Black Americans. Seven-in-ten Black Democrats (73%) say racial discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead in the U.S, while about four-in-ten Black Republicans (44%) say the same. And Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say racism (67% vs. 46%) and police brutality (65% vs. 44%) are extremely big problems for Black people today.

Black Democrats are also more critical of U.S. institutions than Black Republicans are. For example, Black Democrats are more likely than Black Republicans to say the prison system (57% vs. 35%), policing (52% vs. 29%) and the courts and judicial process (50% vs. 35%) should be completely rebuilt for Black people to be treated fairly.

While the share of Black Democrats who want to see large-scale changes to the criminal justice system exceeds that of Black Republicans, they share similar views on police funding. Four-in-ten each of Black Democrats and Black Republicans say funding for police departments in their communities should remain the same, while around a third of each partisan coalition (36% and 37%, respectively) says funding should increase. Only about one-in-four Black Democrats (24%) and one-in-five Black Republicans (21%) say funding for police departments in their communities should decrease.

Among the survey’s other findings:

Black adults differ by age in their views on political strategies. Black adults ages 65 and older (77%) are most likely to say voting is an extremely or very effective strategy for moving Black people toward equality. They are significantly more likely than Black adults ages 18 to 29 (48%) and 30 to 49 (60%) to say this. Black adults 65 and older (48%) are also more likely than those ages 30 to 49 (38%) and 50 to 64 (42%) to say protesting is an extremely or very effective strategy. Roughly four-in-ten Black adults ages 18 to 29 say this (44%).

Gender plays a role in how Black adults view policing. Though majorities of Black women (65%) and men (56%) say police brutality is an extremely big problem for Black people living in the U.S. today, Black women are more likely than Black men to hold this view. When it comes to criminal justice, Black women (56%) and men (51%) are about equally likely to share the view that the prison system should be completely rebuilt to ensure fair treatment of Black people. However, Black women (52%) are slightly more likely than Black men (45%) to say this about policing. On the matter of police funding, Black women (39%) are slightly more likely than Black men (31%) to say police funding in their communities should be increased. On the other hand, Black men are more likely than Black women to prefer that funding stay the same (44% vs. 36%). Smaller shares of both Black men (23%) and women (22%) would like to see police funding decreased.

Income impacts Black adults’ views on reparations. Roughly eight-in-ten Black adults with lower (78%), middle (77%) and upper incomes (79%) say the descendants of people enslaved in the U.S. should receive reparations. Among those who support reparations, Black adults with upper and middle incomes (both 84%) are more likely than those with lower incomes (75%) to say educational scholarships would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment. However, of those who support reparations, Black adults with lower (72%) and middle incomes (68%) are more likely than those with higher incomes (57%) to say cash payments would be an extremely or very helpful form of repayment for slavery.

• Black adults in the September 2020 survey only include those who say their race is Black alone and are non-Hispanic. The same is true only for the questions of improvements to Black people’s lives and equality in the United States in the October 2021 survey. Throughout the rest of this report, Black adults include those who say their race is Black alone and non-Hispanic; those who say their race is Black and at least one other race and non-Hispanic; or Black and Hispanic, unless otherwise noted. ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

100+ Sociological Research Questions for You

Sociological questions often aim to address important matters. Some researchers find themselves at a loss on how to structure their sociological research questions. It isn’t unusual also to find people wondering why they should include sociology research questions in their paper. It is however important to note that your sociology questions serve the purpose of creating a base for your research.

Important Features of Sociology Questions

Sociology questions are not so different from research topics. This is because they have similarities in features and goals. Your Sociological questions must be concise In structure, but complex enough that it gives room for critical analysis to reach an answer. Also, it should be clear and straight to the point. Social science research questions should also be open for debate and opinions from different points of view.

100+ Sociology Research Questions Examples for You

• From the present political situation across the globe, are youths making a significant appearance in world leadership?
• Has self-medication saved more lives than it has caused more harm to the health of drug users?
• What are the speculations of the COVID-19 vaccine; should people embrace or steer clear of the vaccine?
• Are women up to the task of taking self-defense lessons, and should these lessons be made less complex for them?
• Feminism at its peak; can a woman be feminine and believe in feminism?
• What are the current and historical causes of xenophobic attacks in Southern Africa, and how can they be quelled?
• What does modesty mean; Do present fashion ideas portray modesty?
• Is social media culture a positive or negative influence on adolescents and teens?
• With the different measures actively put in place to prevent workplace harassment, why is the practice still a common occurrence?
• Why do people remain at their jobs, even when they have many reasons to leave?
• Should having kids outside marriage be labeled a crime?
• Is it proper for children’s cartoons to depict gay scenarios?
• To what extent does an abusive marriage affect the growth and thinking of children in the family?
• Are victims of child prostitution given the best attention to help them survive?
• What happens to witnesses of dangerous court cases after the trial ends?
• In what ways does cyberbullying affect the emotional, physical, and mental lives of its victims?
• Do the benefits of the global pandemic outweigh the casualties that have occurred?
• Are children from a wealthy background more prone to become bullies and abusers?
• Are there any positive sides to the persistent crime rates in the drug industry?
• Who are the mafia, and how do they thrive with little resistance?
• How effective is the age restriction in nightclubs in keeping out minors?
• How effective is the punishment for committing rape crimes to stop the crimes?
• Do the mythical Amazon women exist and are the stories about them true?
• How have nationalism and religious movements fuelled the rise of banditry and terrorism?
• To what extent does social media act as a unifying factor against unpopular opinion?
• Why do relationships begin to decline after the event of legal marriage?
• What is the best way to compensate wrongly convicted prisoners?
• The legality of prostitution; is its legality a major cause for its rising significance?
• Is the theory of equality practiced among different classes of people in society?
• What are the effects of the wrong sex education on growing children?
• Why is the LGBTQ community one of the most controversial and misunderstood communities today?
• What are the disparities between modern and traditional nationalism?
• What are the best ways to handle bullying and social discrimination in schools so that they don’t affect learning kids?
• Should teachers get better compensation for the roles they play?
• How does PTSD affect a person’s physical, social, and emotional life?
• What would be the repercussion if DNA testing is made compulsory upon the birth of a baby?
• How impartial and feasible is revenue allocation between the rural and urban sections of the state?
• Do people with disabilities appreciate pity, or would they rather be treated equally?
• In the 21st century, have the voting rights of people been respected to the maximum?
• How do victims of forceful child marriage cope with their reality?
• Is the practice of using bizarre means to seek attention on social media becoming a gradual norm?
• Is the method of physical punishment to discipline children more effective than other methods?
• Is online dating a proven means of finding love?
• How can language be a uniting factor, and in what ways has this proven to be effective?
• Should politics be actively included in the school curriculum?
• What rights do social media owners have to restrict activities on their platform, and how well have they utilized this right?
• Are there still practices of exchanging sex for grades or jobs even in highly professional environments?
• Is mass media harassment still a common occurrence?
• In line with the basic rights of children to education, should all schools be made public, and should private schools eradicate the principle of paying tuition fees?
• Are the superstitions of extraordinary humans with unique abilities built on past and current realities?
• Is the practice of the male proposing marriage to the female in a relationship a form of gender inequality?
• What are the deliberate measures that humankind could take to avoid global warming and its effects?
• Do you have to spend so much money to eat healthily?
• What is the importance of making school children dress in uniform attire
• What is the traditional meaning of taking tea in Chinese culture, and how does it rob off in their art?
• Have secret societies always had the aura of mysticism around them; how have they managed to stand the test of time?
• Should the attention of rape prevention be focused on dressing the girl child, or should males also be educated?
• How can we better adapt to the changing times of the pandemic?
• What are the mental side effects of arranged marriages on both parties concerned?
• What are the best possible ways to handle and curb bad parenting?
• In what ways can people of the world cohabit peacefully?
• Do people outgrow their phobias?
• Why are feminine men often discriminated against?
• Does the male gender have to battle gender discrimination as much as the female gender does?
• Do exercises have as many negative effects as they have positive effects?
• Should the issue of open sexuality be given much concern?
• Do people enjoy dieting for the act in itself?
• Are there hidden mysteries behind the big bang theory?
• Do constant users of antidepressants suffer any negative side effects?
• What are the differences between the parenting patterns of the wealthy and that of the opposite class?
• How many efforts are celebrities willing to put into achieving the perfect appearance?
• What are some of the most unique collections that exist in human history?
• In what ways can the judgemental attitude toward physically challenged people be changed for the better?
• How does the smuggling of contrabands still thrive?
• Is social interaction an effective tool for tackling trauma?
• Can you be an unintentional abuser?
• How does one adapt to speaking new languages without trying?
• Can vegetarians cope with non-vegetarians?
• Why do people practice religion?
• Do hospital bills deter people From having routine checkups?
• What does the concept of atheism connote?
• How can we encourage athletes who can no longer perform due to injuries?
• How do people battling severe anxiety carry out their daily activities?
• Should there be a legal age for marriage?
• Why do people still smoke irrespective of the health risk?
• How do Minors get away with fake IDs?
• Do interviews always have to be scary?
• What are the meanings behind some internet slang?
• Do babies understand each other when they blab?

Some Sociology Questions About Race

• Despite attempts to educate people on racism, the ideology and character traits of racism persist; why is this so?
• Can racism be eradicated when tribalism and ethnicity still thrive within people of the same race?
• The most common racist problems are the disparities between whites and blacks. Are other racial groups also affected by this problem?
• How best can mankind begin to correct a dysfunctional racial ideology already brewing among our young ones?
• Does addressing racism only count when the situation is extreme?
• Is the scenario of having a global setting where the racial features of a person are not discriminated against achievable?
• What are the historical misconceptions that are responsible for fuelling racism in present times?
• What are the effects of labeling some neighborhoods as “black neighborhoods” and some others as “white neighborhoods”?
• Are some sensitive feuds between citizens and law enforcers of different races justifiable, or the result of a silent racial battle?
• Which countries are tagged as the most racists, and what are the reasons for this conclusion?
• How does racism affect global development in general?

A sociology research question should give your research purpose and help you understand what problem you’re trying to address. For instance, sociological questions about race would channel your research on the aspect of racism that you aim to tackle.

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The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology

The sociology of race and ethnicity is a large and vibrant subfield within sociology in which researchers and theorists focus on the ways that social, political, and economic relations interact with race and ethnicity in a given society, region, or community. Topics and methods in this subfield are wide-ranging, and the development of the field dates back to the early 20th century.

W.E.B. Du Bois Pioneers the Subfield

The sociology of race and ethnicity began to take shape in the late 19th century. The American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois , who was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, is credited with pioneering the subfield within the United States with his famous and still widely taught books The Souls of Black Folk  and Black Reconstruction .

However, the subfield today differs greatly from its early stages. When early American sociologists focused on race and ethnicity, du Bois excepted, they tended to focus on the concepts of integration, acculturation , and assimilation , in keeping with the view of the U.S. as a "melting pot" into which difference should be absorbed. Concerns during the early 20th century were for teaching those who differed visually, culturally, or linguistically from the white Anglo-Saxon norms how to think, speak, and act in accordance with them. This approach to studying race and ethnicity framed those who were not white Anglo-Saxon as problems that needed to be solved and was directed primarily by sociologists who were white men from middle to upper-class families.

Different Theoretical Perspectives Developed

As more people of color and women became social scientists throughout the twentieth century, they created and developed theoretical perspectives that differed from the normative approach in sociology, and crafted research from different standpoints that shifted the analytic focus from particular populations to social relations and the social system.

Today, sociologists within the subfield of race and ethnicity focus on areas including racial and ethnic identities, social relations and interactions within and across racial and ethnic lines, racial and ethnic stratification and segregation, culture and worldview and how these relate to race, and power and inequality relative to majority and minority statuses in society.

But, before we learn more about this subfield, it's important to have a clear understanding of how sociologists define race and ethnicity.

How Sociologists Define Race and Ethnicity

Most readers have an understanding of what race is and means in U.S. society. Race refers to how we categorize people by skin color and phenotype—certain physical facial features that are shared to a certain degree by a given group. Common racial categories that most people would recognize in the U.S. include Black, white, Asian, Latino, and American Indian. But the tricky bit is that there is absolutely no biological determinant of race. Instead, sociologists recognize that our idea of race and racial categories are social constructs that are unstable and shifting, and that can be seen to have changed over time in relation to historical and political events. We also recognize race as defined in large part by context. "Black" means something different in the U.S. versus Brazil versus India, for example, and this difference in meaning manifests in real differences in social experience.

Ethnicity Based on Shared Common Culture

Ethnicity is likely a bit more difficult to explain for most people. Unlike race, which is primarily seen and understood on the basis of skin color and phenotype, ethnicity does not necessarily provide visual cues. Instead, it is based on a shared common culture, including elements like language, religion, art, music, and literature, and norms , customs, practices, and history. An ethnic group does not exist simply because of the common national or cultural origins of the group, however. They develop because of their unique historical and social experiences, which become the basis for the group’s ethnic identity. For example, prior to immigration to the U.S., Italians did not think of themselves as a distinct group with common interests and experiences. However, the process of immigration and the experiences they faced as a group in their new homeland, including discrimination, created a new ethnic identity.

Within a racial group, there can be several ethnic groups. For example, a white American might identify as part of a variety of ethnic groups including German American, Polish American, and Irish American, among others. Other examples of ethnic groups within the U.S. include and are not limited to Creole, Caribbean Americans, Mexican Americans, and Arab Americans.

Key Concepts and Theories of Race and Ethnicity

Early American sociologist W.E.B. du Bois offered one of the most important and lasting theoretical contributions to the sociology of race and ethnicity when he presented the concept of "double-consciousness" in  The Souls of Black Folk . This concept refers to the way in which people of color in predominantly white societies and spaces and ethnic minorities have the experience of seeing themselves through their own eyes, but also of seeing themselves as "other" through the eyes of the white majority. This results in a conflicting and often distressing experience of the process of identity formation.

Racial Formation Theory

Racial formation theory , developed by sociologists Howard Winant and Michael Omi, frames race as an unstable, ever-evolving social construct that is tied to historical and political events. They assert that differing " racial projects " that seek to define race and racial categories are engaged in constant competition to give the dominant meaning to race. Their theory illuminates how race has been and continues to be a politically contested social construct, upon which is granted access to rights, resources, and power.

Theory of Systematic Racism

The theory of systemic racism , developed by sociologist Joe Feagin, is an important and widely used theory of race and racism that has gained particular traction since the rise of the BlackLivesMatter movement . Feagin's theory, rooted in historical documentation, asserts that racism was built into the very foundation of U.S. society and that it now exists within every aspect of society. Connecting economic wealth and impoverishment, politics and disenfranchisement, racism within institutions like schools and media, to racist assumptions and ideas, Feagin's theory is a roadmap for understanding the origins of racism in the U.S., how it operates today, and what anti-racist activists can do to combat it.

Concept of Intersectionality

Initially articulated by legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the concept of intersectionality would become a cornerstone of the theory of sociologist Patricia Hill Collins , and an important theoretical concept of all sociological approaches to race and ethnicity within the academy today. The concept refers to the necessity of considering the different social categories and forces that race interacts with as people experience the world, including but not limited to gender, economic class, sexuality, culture, ethnicity, and ability.

Research Topics in Race and Ethnicity

Sociologists of race and ethnicity study just about anything one could imagine, but some core topics within the subfield include the following.

Racial Identity, Racism, and Criminal Justice

• How race and ethnicity shape the process of identity formation for individuals and communities, like for example the complicated process of creating a racial identity as a mixed-race person .
• How racism manifests in everyday life and shapes one's life trajectory. For example, how racial biases affect student-teacher interaction from elementary school to university and graduate school , and how skin color affects perceived intelligence .
• The relationship between race and the police and the criminal justice system, including how race and racism affect policing tactics and arrest rates, sentencing, incarceration rates, and life after parole. In 2014, many sociologists came together to create The Ferguson Syllabus , which is a reading list and teaching tool for understanding the long history and contemporary aspects of these issues.

Residential Segregation and "Whiteness"

• The long history and contemporary problem of residential segregation , and how this affects everything from family wealth, economic well-being, education, access to healthy food, and health.
• Since the 1980s,  whiteness has been an important topic of study within the sociology of race and ethnicity. Up until that point, it was largely neglected academically because it was simply seen as the norm against which difference was measured. Thanks largely to scholar Peggy McIntosh, who helped people understand the concept of white privilege , what it means to be white, who can be considered white, and how whiteness fits within the social structure is a vibrant topic of study.

The sociology of race and ethnicity is a vibrant subfield that hosts a wealth and diversity of research and theory. The American Sociological Association even has a webpage devoted to it .

Updated  by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

• Introduction to Sociology
• How W.E.B. Du Bois Made His Mark on Sociology
• Biography of Patricia Hill Collins, Esteemed Sociologist
• Famous Sociologists
• How to Tell If You've Been Unintentionally Racist
• The History of Sociology Is Rooted in Ancient Times
• Understanding Segregation Today
• Definition of Aggregate and Social Aggregate
• Biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Activist and Scholar
• How Intervening Variables Work in Sociology
• All About Marxist Sociology
• Ethnicity Definition in Sociology
• How Sociology Can Prepare You for a Career in Business
• What Is Racial Formation Theory?
• Understanding the Difference Between Race and Ethnicity
• Macro- and Microsociology

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Top 70 Racism Topics For Research Paper That Really Stand Out

The year 2020 has seen the United States of America experience violence in various racism claims. When George Floyd was killed in May this year, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other US states went awash with protests. Never before in recent American history have such demonstrations occurred. That is why finding racism topics for your research paper is essential. Here is a list of professionally handpicked racism topics for your motivation.

Causes of Racism Argumentative Topics For Research Paper

• Is the ego the leading cause of racism in the United States?
• Is racism the result of people’s direct experience with other backgrounds?
• Are associations and the mind forms silent fuels for discrimination?
• Is the reticular activating system a stimulus for discrimination?
• Should we attribute racism to the ignorance in the world?
• Are supremacy attitudes among the whites the cause?
• Do we have an appropriate education curriculum addressing racism?

How To Deal With Racism Research Topics

• How to stand up for yourself in a racial attack
• The role of confidence and self-assurance when dealing with racism
• Why you should point out the racial words or behavior instead of generalization
• Citizens should know their rights to combat racism
• Understanding the differences between racist actions and racist people
• The importance of learning other cultures and languages
• Recognizing the impacts of racism

Topics on Racism History

• Historical policies of systematic discrimination
• The contribution of the Holocaust to racism
• Racism and North American slavery and the colonization
• The exploitation of the minorities during colonization and its impact on racism today
• The role of naming schools after confederates and racism
• Racism comments from Albert Einstein’s diaries
• Why the Georgia county drove out every black resident in 1912

Research Topics About Racism Laws

• A critical analysis of The Race Relations Act 1976
• The United Nations’ international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination in 1965
• The role of international and domestic law in combating racism
• Racial distinctions in the law
• The Equality Act of 2010 and its impact on racism
• Laws that guard against racially offensive material on the internet
• Does the law provide for harsh racial speeches at a public rally?

It’s not a simple task to write a paper for a high grade. Sometimes every student need a professional help with research paper writing. Therefore, don’t be afraid to hire a writer to complete your assignment. So, are you ready to get best grades with little effort? Just write a message “Please, write a custom research paper for me” and get time to relax. Contact us today and get a 100% original paper. 

Racism Research Paper Topics on the Economic Aspects

• How racism suppresses the economic mobility of people with different races
• The role of creating more jobs in combating racial claims
• Recipients of the healthcare assistance programs in countries
• How racism has crept into the US economy
• Racial discrimination against property rights and reconstruction
• Why the lack of the feeling of belonging stirs economic recession
• Employment rates for minorities in America.

Interesting Topics About Racism

• When was the first racial attack, and why?
• Why is racism still persistent in the 21st century?
• Reasons why discrimination is both unethical and immoral
• Should we regard racism as people with a mental disorder?
• Is religion one of the key players in racism?
• Why is the term ‘third world’ a racist declaration?
• What is the relationship between racism and homophobia?

Research Topics About Race and Racism

• Why the white supremacy battle is terrible for the world
• Does the color of your skin matter in any circumstance?
• Why is Western civilization causing a lack of appeal for the black race?
• The role of different languages and their races in racism
• Is the American Dream a cause for discrimination?
• A critical approach to the subject of race and racism
• Differences between race and racism and the confusion surrounding these two terms

Racism Argumentative Topics For Research Paper

• Is race a factor in the race crimes experienced in the US?
• Should we call Malcolm X a racist?
• Do racial movements contribute to combating racism?
• Is the work of Charles Darwin filled with racial ideas?
• Should police brutality be seen in the line of racism?
• Should the United States put sanctions against racial protests?
• Do violent racial protests justify the problem at hand?

Sociology Racism Topics

• The impact of racism on the process of identity formation
• How racism shapes one’s trajectory in life
• The effect of racism on student-teacher relationships
• How policing tactics contribute to racial discrimination
• Residential segregation and its place in racism
• The sociology of race and social ethnicity in America
• Understanding the concept of ‘white privilege’ in racism

Good Research Topics Dealing With Racism

• A study of the different types of racism
• What are the causes of racial prejudices?
• The role of political campaigns in alleviating or fueling up racism
• The origins and history of the Black Lives Matter movement
• Compare and contrast discrimination in the US and other European countries
• Can a person indeed be an anti-racist in the current society?
• How can we use social media to sensitize people on the effects of racism?

Racism remains a contemporary issue, and thus your lecturer can give you an assignment on this subject at any time. Students need to arm themselves with the latest racism-related topics for top grades. If all these don’t seem to work, seeking professional college paper help would be the best solution. Get your paper done by experts, fast and easy today!

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2.1 Approaches to Sociological Research

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Define and describe the scientific method.
• Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research.
• Describe the function and importance of an interpretive framework.
• Describe the differences in accuracy, reliability and validity in a research study.

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behavior is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behavior as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered social patterns in the workplace that have transformed industries, in families that have enlightened family members, and in education that have aided structural changes in classrooms.

Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once the question is formed, the sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a scientific approach or an interpretive framework. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried and true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, and field research. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that these interactions can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behavior.

However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behavior. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results.

The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the social world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of six prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scientific scholarship.

Sociological research does not reduce knowledge to right or wrong facts. Results of studies tend to provide people with insights they did not have before—explanations of human behaviors and social practices and access to knowledge of other cultures, rituals and beliefs, or trends and attitudes.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes or results. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists often look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might also study environmental influences and patterns of behavior that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on negative behaviors or challenging situations, social researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighborhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but also to interpret and analyze data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in—but not attached to—the results. They work outside of their own political or social agendas. This does not mean researchers do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in collecting and analyzing data in research studies.

With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963). Typically, the scientific method has 6 steps which are described below.

Step 1: Ask a Question or Find a Research Topic

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, select a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geographic location and time frame. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. Sociologists strive to frame questions that examine well-defined patterns and relationships.

In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?”

Step 2: Review the Literature/Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library, a thorough online search, and a survey of academic journals will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted, identify gaps in understanding of the topic, and position their own research to build on prior knowledge. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to borrow previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized.

To study crime, a researcher might also sort through existing data from the court system, police database, prison information, interviews with criminals, guards, wardens, etc. It’s important to examine this information in addition to existing research to determine how these resources might be used to fill holes in existing knowledge. Reviewing existing sources educates researchers and helps refine and improve a research study design.

Step 3: Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an explanation for a phenomenon based on a conjecture about the relationship between the phenomenon and one or more causal factors. In sociology, the hypothesis will often predict how one form of human behavior influences another. For example, a hypothesis might be in the form of an “if, then statement.” Let’s relate this to our topic of crime: If unemployment increases, then the crime rate will increase.

In scientific research, we formulate hypotheses to include an independent variables (IV) , which are the cause of the change, and a dependent variable (DV) , which is the effect , or thing that is changed. In the example above, unemployment is the independent variable and the crime rate is the dependent variable.

In a sociological study, the researcher would establish one form of human behavior as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)?

Taking an example from Table 12.1, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Note, however, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. A sociologist might predict that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying related two topics or variables is not enough. Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis.

Step 4: Design and Conduct a Study

Researchers design studies to maximize reliability , which refers to how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced. Reliability increases the likelihood that what happens to one person will happen to all people in a group or what will happen in one situation will happen in another. Cooking is a science. When you follow a recipe and measure ingredients with a cooking tool, such as a measuring cup, the same results is obtained as long as the cook follows the same recipe and uses the same type of tool. The measuring cup introduces accuracy into the process. If a person uses a less accurate tool, such as their hand, to measure ingredients rather than a cup, the same result may not be replicated. Accurate tools and methods increase reliability.

Researchers also strive for validity , which refers to how well the study measures what it was designed to measure. To produce reliable and valid results, sociologists develop an operational definition , that is, they define each concept, or variable, in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept. By operationalizing the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. Moreover, researchers can determine whether the experiment or method validly represent the phenomenon they intended to study.

A study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, might define “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” However, one researcher might define a “good” grade as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” For the results to be replicated and gain acceptance within the broader scientific community, researchers would have to use a standard operational definition. These definitions set limits and establish cut-off points that ensure consistency and replicability in a study.

We will explore research methods in greater detail in the next section of this chapter.

Step 5: Draw Conclusions

After constructing the research design, sociologists collect, tabulate or categorize, and analyze data to formulate conclusions. If the analysis supports the hypothesis, researchers can discuss the implications of the results for the theory or policy solution that they were addressing. If the analysis does not support the hypothesis, researchers may consider repeating the experiment or think of ways to improve their procedure.

However, even when results contradict a sociologist’s prediction of a study’s outcome, these results still contribute to sociological understanding. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns. In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding rewarding careers. While many assume that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results may substantiate or contradict it.

Sociologists carefully keep in mind how operational definitions and research designs impact the results as they draw conclusions. Consider the concept of “increase of crime,” which might be defined as the percent increase in crime from last week to this week, as in the study of Swedish crime discussed above. Yet the data used to evaluate “increase of crime” might be limited by many factors: who commits the crime, where the crimes are committed, or what type of crime is committed. If the data is gathered for “crimes committed in Houston, Texas in zip code 77021,” then it may not be generalizable to crimes committed in rural areas outside of major cities like Houston. If data is collected about vandalism, it may not be generalizable to assault.

Step 6: Report Results

Researchers report their results at conferences and in academic journals. These results are then subjected to the scrutiny of other sociologists in the field. Before the conclusions of a study become widely accepted, the studies are often repeated in the same or different environments. In this way, sociological theories and knowledge develops as the relationships between social phenomenon are established in broader contexts and different circumstances.

Interpretive Framework

While many sociologists rely on empirical data and the scientific method as a research approach, others operate from an interpretive framework . While systematic, this approach doesn’t follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to find generalizable results. Instead, an interpretive framework, sometimes referred to as an interpretive perspective , seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, which leads to in-depth knowledge or understanding about the human experience.

Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. Rather than formulating a hypothesis and method for testing it, an interpretive researcher will develop approaches to explore the topic at hand that may involve a significant amount of direct observation or interaction with subjects including storytelling. This type of researcher learns through the process and sometimes adjusts the research methods or processes midway to optimize findings as they evolve.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociology focuses on deconstruction of existing sociological research and theory. Informed by the work of Karl Marx, scholars known collectively as the Frankfurt School proposed that social science, as much as any academic pursuit, is embedded in the system of power constituted by the set of class, caste, race, gender, and other relationships that exist in the society. Consequently, it cannot be treated as purely objective. Critical sociologists view theories, methods, and the conclusions as serving one of two purposes: they can either legitimate and rationalize systems of social power and oppression or liberate humans from inequality and restriction on human freedom. Deconstruction can involve data collection, but the analysis of this data is not empirical or positivist.

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Chapter 2. Sociological Research

Learning objectives.

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research

• Define and describe the scientific method
• Explain how the scientific method is used in sociological research
• Understand the difference between positivist and interpretive approaches to the scientific method in sociology
• Define what reliability and validity mean in a research study

2.2. Research Methods

• Differentiate between four kinds of research methods: surveys, experiments, field research, and secondary data and textual analysis
• Understand why different topics are better suited to different research approaches

2.3. Ethical Concerns

• Understand why ethical standards exist
• Demonstrate awareness of the Canadian Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics
• Define value neutrality
• Outline some of the issues of value neutrality in sociology

Introduction to Sociological Research

In the university cafeteria, you set your lunch tray down at a table, grab a chair, join a group of your classmates, and hear the start of two discussions. One person says, “It’s weird how Justin Bieber has 48 million followers on Twitter.” Another says, “Disney World is packed year round.” Those two seemingly benign statements are claims, or opinions, based on everyday observation of human behaviour. Perhaps the speakers had firsthand experience, talked to experts, conducted online research, or saw news segments on TV. In response, two conversations erupt. “I don’t see why anyone would want to go to Disney World and stand in those long lines.” “Are you kidding?! Going to Disney World is one of my favourite childhood memories.” “It’s the opposite for me with Justin Bieber. Seeing people camp out outside his hotel just to get a glimpse of him; it doesn’t make sense.” “Well, you’re not a teenage girl.” “Going to a theme park is way different than trying to see a teenage heart throb.” “But both are things people do for the same reason: they’re looking for a good time.” “If you call getting crushed by a crowd of strangers fun.”

As your classmates at the lunch table discuss what they know or believe, the two topics converge. The conversation becomes a debate. Someone compares Beliebers to Beatles fans. Someone else compares Disney World to a cruise. Students take sides, agreeing or disagreeing, as the conversation veers to topics such as crowd control, mob mentality, political protests, and group dynamics. If you contributed your expanding knowledge of sociological research to this conversation, you might make statements like these: “Justin Bieber’s fans long for an escape from the boredom of real teenage life. Beliebers join together claiming they want romance, except what they really want is a safe place to explore the confusion of teenage sexual feelings.” And this: “Mickey Mouse is a larger-than-life cartoon celebrity. Disney World is a place where families go to see what it would be like to live inside a cartoon.” You finish lunch, clear away your tray, and hurry to your next class. But you are thinking of Justin Bieber and Disney World. You have a new perspective on human behaviour and a list of questions that you want answered. That is the purpose of sociological research—to investigate and provide insights into how human societies function.

Although claims and opinions are part of sociology, sociologists use empirical evidence (that is, evidence corroborated by direct experience and/or observation) combined with the scientific method or an interpretive framework to deliver sound sociological research. They also rely on a theoretical foundation that provides an interpretive perspective through which they can make sense of scientific results. A truly scientific sociological study of the social situations up for discussion in the cafeteria would involve these prescribed steps: defining a specific question, gathering information and resources through observation, forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis in a reproducible manner, analyzing and drawing conclusions from the data, publishing the results, and anticipating further development when future researchers respond to and retest findings.

An appropriate starting point in this case might be the question “What do fans of Justin Bieber seek that drives them to follow his Twitter comments so faithfully?” As you begin to think like a sociologist, you may notice that you have tapped into your observation skills. You might assume that your observations and insights are valuable and accurate. But the results of casual observation are limited by the fact that there is no standardization—who is to say one person’s observation of an event is any more accurate than another’s? To mediate these concerns, sociologists rely on systematic research processes.

When sociologists apply the sociological perspective and begin to ask questions, no topic is off limits. Every aspect of human behaviour is a source of possible investigation. Sociologists question the world that humans have created and live in. They notice patterns of behaviour as people move through that world. Using sociological methods and systematic research within the framework of the scientific method and a scholarly interpretive perspective, sociologists have discovered workplace patterns that have transformed industries, family patterns that have enlightened parents, and education patterns that have aided structural changes in classrooms. The students at that university cafeteria discussion put forth a few loosely stated opinions.

If the human behaviours around those claims were tested systematically, a student could write a report and offer the findings to fellow sociologists and the world in general. The new perspective could help people understand themselves and their neighbours and help people make better decisions about their lives. It might seem strange to use scientific practices to study social trends, but, as we shall see, it’s extremely helpful to rely on systematic approaches that research methods provide. Sociologists often begin the research process by asking a question about how or why things happen in this world. It might be a unique question about a new trend or an old question about a common aspect of life. Once a question is formed, a sociologist proceeds through an in-depth process to answer it. In deciding how to design that process, the researcher may adopt a positivist approach or an interpretive approach. The following sections describe these approaches to knowledge.

The Scientific Method

Sociologists make use of tried-and-true methods of research, such as experiments, surveys, field research, and textual analysis. But humans and their social interactions are so diverse that they can seem impossible to chart or explain. It might seem that science is about discoveries and chemical reactions or about proving ideas right or wrong rather than about exploring the nuances of human behaviour. However, this is exactly why scientific models work for studying human behaviour. A scientific process of research establishes parameters that help make sure results are objective and accurate. Scientific methods provide limitations and boundaries that focus a study and organize its results. This is the case for both positivist or quantitative methodologies and interpretive or qualitative methodologies. The scientific method involves developing and testing theories about the world based on empirical evidence. It is defined by its commitment to systematic observation of the empirical world and strives to be objective, critical, skeptical, and logical. It involves a series of prescribed steps that have been established over centuries of scholarship.

But just because sociological studies use scientific methods does not make the results less human. Sociological topics are not reduced to right or wrong facts. In this field, results of studies tend to provide people with access to knowledge they did not have before—knowledge of other cultures, knowledge of rituals and beliefs, knowledge of trends and attitudes. No matter what research approach is used, researchers want to maximize the study’s reliability (how likely research results are to be replicated if the study is reproduced). Reliability increases the likelihood that what is true of one person will be true of all people in a group. Researchers also strive for validity (how well the study measures what it was designed to measure).

Returning to the Disney World topic, reliability of a study would reflect how well the resulting experience represents the average experience of theme park-goers. Validity would ensure that the study’s design accurately examined what it was designed to study, so an exploration of adults’ interactions with costumed mascots should address that issue and not veer into other age groups’ interactions with them or into adult interactions with staff or other guests.

In general, sociologists tackle questions about the role of social characteristics in outcomes. For example, how do different communities fare in terms of psychological well-being, community cohesiveness, range of vocation, wealth, crime rates, and so on? Are communities functioning smoothly? Sociologists look between the cracks to discover obstacles to meeting basic human needs. They might study environmental influences and patterns of behaviour that lead to crime, substance abuse, divorce, poverty, unplanned pregnancies, or illness. And, because sociological studies are not all focused on problematic behaviours or challenging situations, researchers might study vacation trends, healthy eating habits, neighbourhood organizations, higher education patterns, games, parks, and exercise habits.

Sociologists can use the scientific method not only to collect but to interpret and analyze the data. They deliberately apply scientific logic and objectivity. They are interested in but not attached to the results. Their research work is independent of their own political or social beliefs. This does not mean researchers are not critical. Nor does it mean they do not have their own personalities, complete with preferences and opinions. But sociologists deliberately use the scientific method to maintain as much objectivity, focus, and consistency as possible in a particular study. With its systematic approach, the scientific method has proven useful in shaping sociological studies. The scientific method provides a systematic, organized series of steps that help ensure objectivity and consistency in exploring a social problem. They provide the means for accuracy, reliability, and validity. In the end, the scientific method provides a shared basis for discussion and analysis (Merton 1963). Typically, the scientific method starts with these steps—1) ask a question, 2) research existing sources, 3) formulate a hypothesis—described below.

Ask a Question

The first step of the scientific method is to ask a question, describe a problem, and identify the specific area of interest. The topic should be narrow enough to study within a geography and timeframe. “Are societies capable of sustained happiness?” would be too vague. The question should also be broad enough to have universal merit. “What do personal hygiene habits reveal about the values of students at XYZ High School?” would be too narrow. That said, happiness and hygiene are worthy topics to study.

Sociologists do not rule out any topic, but would strive to frame these questions in better research terms. That is why sociologists are careful to define their terms. In a hygiene study, for instance, hygiene could be defined as “personal habits to maintain physical appearance (as opposed to health),” and a researcher might ask, “How do differing personal hygiene habits reflect the cultural value placed on appearance?” When forming these basic research questions, sociologists develop an operational definition ; that is, they define the concept in terms of the physical or concrete steps it takes to objectively measure it. The concept is translated into an observable variable , a measure that has different values. The operational definition identifies an observable condition of the concept.

By operationalizing a variable of the concept, all researchers can collect data in a systematic or replicable manner. The operational definition must be valid in the sense that it is an appropriate and meaningful measure of the concept being studied. It must also be reliable, meaning that results will be close to uniform when tested on more than one person. For example, “good drivers” might be defined in many ways: those who use their turn signals, those who don’t speed, or those who courteously allow others to merge. But these driving behaviours could be interpreted differently by different researchers and could be difficult to measure. Alternatively, “a driver who has never received a traffic violation” is a specific description that will lead researchers to obtain the same information, so it is an effective operational definition.

Research Existing Sources

The next step researchers undertake is to conduct background research through a literature review , which is a review of any existing similar or related studies. A visit to the library and a thorough online search will uncover existing research about the topic of study. This step helps researchers gain a broad understanding of work previously conducted on the topic at hand and enables them to position their own research to build on prior knowledge. It allows them to sharpen the focus of their research question and avoid duplicating previous research. Researchers—including student researchers—are responsible for correctly citing existing sources they use in a study or that inform their work. While it is fine to build on previously published material (as long as it enhances a unique viewpoint), it must be referenced properly and never plagiarized. To study hygiene and its value in a particular society, a researcher might sort through existing research and unearth studies about childrearing, vanity, obsessive-compulsive behaviours, and cultural attitudes toward beauty. It’s important to sift through this information and determine what is relevant. Using existing sources educates a researcher and helps refine and improve a study’s design.

Formulate a Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an assumption about how two or more variables are related; it makes a conjectural statement about the relationship between those variables. It is an “educated guess” because it is not random but based on theory, observations, patterns of experience, or the existing literature. The hypothesis formulates this guess in the form of a testable proposition. However, how the hypothesis is handled differs between the positivist and interpretive approaches. Positivist methodologies are often referred to as hypothetico-deductive methodologies . A hypothesis is derived from a theoretical proposition. On the basis of the hypothesis a prediction or generalization is logically deduced. In positivist sociology, the hypothesis predicts how one form of human behaviour influences another.

Successful prediction will determine the adequacy of the hypothesis and thereby test the theoretical proposition. Typically positivist approaches operationalize variables as quantitative data ; that is, by translating a social phenomenon like “health” into a quantifiable or numerically measurable variable like “number of visits to the hospital.” This permits sociologists to formulate their predictions using mathematical language like regression formulas, to present research findings in graphs and tables, and to perform mathematical or statistical techniques to demonstrate the validity of relationships.

Variables are examined to see if there is a correlation between them. When a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable there is a correlation. This does not necessarily indicate that changes in one variable causes a change in another variable, however, just that they are associated. A key distinction here is between independent and dependent variables. In research, independent variables are the cause of the change. The dependent variable is the effect , or thing that is changed. For example, in a basic study, the researcher would establish one form of human behaviour as the independent variable and observe the influence it has on a dependent variable. How does gender (the independent variable) affect rate of income (the dependent variable)? How does one’s religion (the independent variable) affect family size (the dependent variable)? How is social class (the dependent variable) affected by level of education (the independent variable)? For it to become possible to speak about causation, three criteria must be satisfied:

• There must be a relationship or correlation between the independent and dependent variables.
• The independent variable must be prior to the dependent variable.
• There must be no other intervening variable responsible for the causal relationship.

 Table 2.1. Examples of Dependent and Independent Variables Typically, the independent variable causes the dependent variable to change in some way.

At this point, a researcher’s operational definitions help measure the variables. In a study asking how tutoring improves grades, for instance, one researcher might define “good” grades as a C or better, while another uses a B+ as a starting point for “good.” Another operational definition might describe “tutoring” as “one-on-one assistance by an expert in the field, hired by an educational institution.” Those definitions set limits and establish cut-off points, ensuring consistency and replicability in a study. As the chart shows, an independent variable is the one that causes a dependent variable to change. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that teaching children proper hygiene (the independent variable) will boost their sense of self-esteem (the dependent variable). Or rephrased, a child’s sense of self-esteem depends, in part, on the quality and availability of hygienic resources.

Of course, this hypothesis can also work the other way around. Perhaps a sociologist believes that increasing a child’s sense of self-esteem (the independent variable) will automatically increase or improve habits of hygiene (now the dependent variable). Identifying the independent and dependent variables is very important. As the hygiene example shows, simply identifying two topics, or variables, is not enough: Their prospective relationship must be part of the hypothesis. Just because a sociologist forms an educated prediction of a study’s outcome doesn’t mean data contradicting the hypothesis are not welcome. Sociologists analyze general patterns in response to a study, but they are equally interested in exceptions to patterns.

In a study of education, a researcher might predict that high school dropouts have a hard time finding a rewarding career. While it has become at least a cultural assumption that the higher the education, the higher the salary and degree of career happiness, there are certainly exceptions. People with little education have had stunning careers, and people with advanced degrees have had trouble finding work. A sociologist prepares a hypothesis knowing that results will vary.

While many sociologists rely on the positivist hypothetico-deductive method in their research, others operate from an interpretive approach . While systematic, this approach does not follow the hypothesis-testing model that seeks to make generalizable predictions from quantitative variables. Instead, an interpretive framework seeks to understand social worlds from the point of view of participants, leading to in-depth knowledge. It focuses on qualitative data, or the meanings that guide people’s behaviour. Rather than relying on quantitative instruments like questionnaires or experiments, which can be artificial, the interpretive approach attempts to find ways to get closer to the informants’ lived experience and perceptions. Interpretive research is generally more descriptive or narrative in its findings. It can begin from a deductive approach, by deriving a hypothesis from theory and then seeking to confirm it through methodologies like in-depth interviews.

However, it is ideally suited to an inductive approach in which the hypothesis emerges only after a substantial period of direct observation or interaction with subjects. This type of approach is exploratory in that the researcher also learns as he or she proceeds, sometimes adjusting the research methods or processes midway to respond to new insights and findings as they evolve. Once the preliminary work is done, it’s time for the next research steps: designing and conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. These research methods are discussed below.

Sociologists examine the world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it. They use research methods to design a study—perhaps a positivist, quantitative method for conducting research and obtaining data, or perhaps an ethnographic study utilizing an interpretive framework. Planning the research design is a key step in any sociological study. When entering a particular social environment, a researcher must be careful. There are times to remain anonymous and times to be overt. There are times to conduct interviews and times to simply observe. Some participants need to be thoroughly informed; others should not know they are being observed. A researcher would not stroll into a crime-ridden neighbourhood at midnight, calling out, “Any gang members around?” And if a researcher walked into a coffee shop and told the employees they would be observed as part of a study on work efficiency, the self-conscious, intimidated baristas might not behave naturally.

In the 1920s, leaders of a Chicago factory called Hawthorne Works commissioned a study to determine whether or not changing certain aspects of working conditions could increase or decrease worker productivity. Sociologists were surprised when the productivity of a test group increased when the lighting of their workspace was improved. They were even more surprised when productivity improved when the lighting of the workspace was dimmed. In fact almost every change of independent variable—lighting, breaks, work hours—resulted in an improvement of productivity. But when the study was over, productivity dropped again.

Why did this happen? In 1953, Henry A. Landsberger analyzed the study results to answer this question. He realized that employees’ productivity increased because sociologists were paying attention to them. The sociologists’ presence influenced the study results. Worker behaviours were altered not by the lighting but by the study itself. From this, sociologists learned the importance of carefully planning their roles as part of their research design (Franke and Kaul 1978). Landsberger called the workers’ response the Hawthorne effect —people changing their behaviour because they know they are being watched as part of a study.

The Hawthorne effect is unavoidable in some research. In many cases, sociologists have to make the purpose of the study known for ethical reasons. Subjects must be aware that they are being observed, and a certain amount of artificiality may result (Sonnenfeld 1985). Making sociologists’ presence invisible is not always realistic for other reasons. That option is not available to a researcher studying prison behaviours, early education, or the Ku Klux Klan. Researchers cannot just stroll into prisons, kindergarten classrooms, or Ku Klux Klan meetings and unobtrusively observe behaviours. In situations like these, other methods are needed. All studies shape the research design, while research design simultaneously shapes the study. Researchers choose methods that best suit their study topic and that fit with their overall goal for the research.

In planning a study’s design, sociologists generally choose from four widely used methods of social investigation: survey, experiment, field research, and textual or secondary data analysis (or use of existing sources). Every research method comes with plusses and minuses, and the topic of study strongly influences which method or methods are put to use.

As a research method, a survey collects data from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire. The survey is one of the most widely used positivist research methods. The standard survey format allows individuals a level of anonymity in which they can express personal ideas.

At some point or another, everyone responds to some type of survey. The Statistics Canada census is an excellent example of a large-scale survey intended to gather sociological data. Customers also fill out questionnaires at stores or promotional events, responding to questions such as “How did you hear about the event?” and “Were the staff helpful?” You’ve probably picked up the phone and heard a caller ask you to participate in a political poll or similar type of survey: “Do you eat hot dogs? If yes, how many per month?” Not all surveys would be considered sociological research. Marketing polls help companies refine marketing goals and strategies; they are generally not conducted as part of a scientific study, meaning they are not designed to test a hypothesis or to contribute knowledge to the field of sociology. The results are not published in a refereed scholarly journal, where design, methodology, results, and analyses are vetted.

Often, polls on TV do not reflect a general population, but are merely answers from a specific show’s audience. Polls conducted by programs such as American Idol or Canadian Idol represent the opinions of fans but are not particularly scientific. A good contrast to these are the BBM Ratings, which determine the popularity of radio and television programming in Canada through scientific market research. Sociologists conduct surveys under controlled conditions for specific purposes. Surveys gather different types of information from people. While surveys are not great at capturing the ways people really behave in social situations, they are a great method for discovering how people feel and think—or at least how they say they feel and think. Surveys can track attitudes and opinions, political preferences, reported individual behaviours (such as sleeping, driving, or texting habits), or factual information such as employment status, income, and education levels. A survey targets a specific population , people who are the focus of a study, such as university athletes, international students, or teenagers living with type 1 (juvenile-onset) diabetes.

Most researchers choose to survey a small sector of the population, or a sample : that is, a manageable number of subjects who represent a larger population. The success of a study depends on how well a population is represented by the sample. In a random sample , every person in a population has the same chance of being chosen for the study. According to the laws of probability, random samples represent the population as a whole. For instance, an Ipsos Reid poll, if conducted as a nationwide random sampling, should be able to provide an accurate estimate of public opinion whether it contacts 2,000 or 10,000 people. However the validity of surveys can be threatened when part of the population is inadvertently excluded from the sample (e.g., telephone surveys that rely on land lines exclude people that use only cell phones) or when there is a low response rate. After selecting subjects, the researcher develops a specific plan to ask questions and record responses.

It is important to inform subjects of the nature and purpose of the study upfront. If they agree to participate, researchers thank subjects and offer them a chance to see the results of the study if they are interested. The researcher presents the subjects with an instrument (a means of gathering the information). A common instrument is a structured questionnaire, in which subjects answer a series of set questions. For some topics, the researcher might ask yes-or-no or multiple-choice questions, allowing subjects to choose possible responses to each question.

This kind of quantitative data —research collected in numerical form that can be counted—is easy to tabulate. Just count up the number of “yes” and “no” answers or tabulate the scales of “strongly agree,” “agree,” disagree,” etc. responses and chart them into percentages. This is also their chief drawback however: their artificiality. In real life, there are rarely any unambiguously yes-or-no answers. Questionnaires can also ask more complex questions with more complex answers—beyond “yes,” “no,” “agree,” “strongly agree,” or an option next to a checkbox. In those cases, the answers are subjective, varying from person to person. How do you plan to use your university education? Why do you follow Justin Bieber around the country and attend every concert? Those types of questions require short essay responses, and participants willing to take the time to write those answers will convey personal information about religious beliefs, political views, and morals.

Some topics that reflect internal thought are impossible to observe directly and are difficult to discuss honestly in a public forum. People are more likely to share honest answers if they can respond to questions anonymously. This type of information is qualitative data —results that are subjective and often based on what is seen in a natural setting. Qualitative information is harder to organize and tabulate. The researcher will end up with a wide range of responses, some of which may be surprising. The benefit of written opinions, though, is the wealth of material that they provide.

An interview is a one-on-one conversation between the researcher and the subject, and is a way of conducting surveys on a topic. Interviews are similar to the short answer questions on surveys in that the researcher asks subjects a series of questions. However, participants are free to respond as they wish, without being limited by predetermined choices. In the back-and-forth conversation of an interview, a researcher can ask for clarification, spend more time on a subtopic, or ask additional questions. In an interview, a subject will ideally feel free to open up and answer questions that are often complex. There are no right or wrong answers. The subject might not even know how to answer the questions honestly. Questions such as “How did society’s view of alcohol consumption influence your decision whether or not to take your first sip of alcohol?” or “Did you feel that the divorce of your parents would put a social stigma on your family?” involve so many factors that the answers are difficult to categorize. A researcher needs to avoid steering or prompting the subject to respond in a specific way; otherwise, the results will prove to be unreliable. And, obviously, a sociological interview is not an interrogation. The researcher will benefit from gaining a subject’s trust, from empathizing or commiserating with a subject, and from listening without judgment.

Experiments

You’ve probably tested personal social theories. “If I study at night and review in the morning, I’ll improve my retention skills.” Or, “If I stop drinking soda, I’ll feel better.” Cause and effect. If this, then that. When you test the theory, your results either prove or disprove your hypothesis. One way researchers test social theories is by conducting an experiment , meaning they investigate relationships to test a hypothesis—a scientific approach. There are two main types of experiments: lab-based experiments and natural or field experiments.

In a lab setting, the research can be controlled so that perhaps more data can be recorded in a certain amount of time. In a natural or field-based experiment, the generation of data cannot be controlled but the information might be considered more accurate since it was collected without interference or intervention by the researcher. As a research method, either type of sociological experiment is useful for testing if-then statements: if a particular thing happens, then another particular thing will result.

To set up a lab-based experiment, sociologists create artificial situations that allow them to manipulate variables. Classically, the sociologist selects a set of people with similar characteristics, such as age, class, race, or education. Those people are divided into two groups. One is the experimental group and the other is the control group . The experimental group is exposed to the independent variable(s) and the control group is not. This is similar to pharmaceutical drug trials in which the experimental group is given the test drug and the control group is given a placebo or sugar pill. To test the benefits of tutoring, for example, the sociologist might expose the experimental group of students to tutoring while the control group does not receive tutoring. Then both groups would be tested for differences in performance to see if tutoring had an effect on the experimental group of students. As you can imagine, in a case like this, the researcher would not want to jeopardize the accomplishments of either group of students, so the setting would be somewhat artificial. The test would not be for a grade reflected on their permanent record, for example.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is perhaps one of the most famous sociological experiments ever conducted. In 1971, 24 healthy, middle-class male university students were selected to take part in a simulated jail environment to examine the effects of social setting and social roles on individual psychology and behaviour. They were randomly divided into 12 guards and 12 prisoners. The prisoner subjects were arrested at home and transported blindfolded to the simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building on the campus of Stanford University. Within a day of arriving the prisoners and the guards began to display signs of trauma and sadism respectively. After some prisoners revolted by blockading themselves in their cells, the guards resorted to using increasingly humiliating and degrading tactics to control the prisoners through psychological manipulation. The experiment had to be abandoned after only six days because the abuse had grown out of hand (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo 1973). While the insights into the social dynamics of authoritarianism it generated were fascinating, the Stanford Prison Experiment also serves as an example of the ethical issues that emerge when experimenting on human subjects.

Making Connections: Sociological Research

An experiment in action: mincome.

A real-life example will help illustrate the experimental process in sociology. Between 1974 and 1979 an experiment was conducted in the small town of Dauphin, Manitoba (the “garden capital of Manitoba”). Each family received a modest monthly guaranteed income—a “mincome”—equivalent to a maximum of 60 percent of the “low-income cut-off figure” (a Statistics Canada measure of poverty, which varies with family size). The income was 50 cents per dollar less for families who had incomes from other sources. Families earning over a certain income level did not receive mincome. Families that were already collecting welfare or unemployment insurance were also excluded. The test families in Dauphin were compared with control groups in other rural Manitoba communities on a range of indicators such as number of hours worked per week, school performance, high school dropout rates, and hospital visits (Forget 2011). A guaranteed annual income was seen at the time as a less costly, less bureaucratic public alternative for addressing poverty than the existing employment insurance and welfare programs. Today it is an active proposal being considered in Switzerland (Lowrey 2013).

Intuitively, it seems logical that lack of income is the cause of poverty and poverty-related issues. One of the main concerns, however, was whether a guaranteed income would create a disincentive to work. The concept appears to challenge the principles of the Protestant work ethic (see the discussion of Max Weber in Chapter 1). The study did find very small decreases in hours worked per week: about 1 percent for men, 3 percent for wives, and 5 percent for unmarried women. Forget (2011) argues this was because the income provided an opportunity for people to spend more time with family and school, especially for young mothers and teenage girls. There were also significant social benefits from the experiment, including better test scores in school, lower high school dropout rates, fewer visits to hospital, fewer accidents and injuries, and fewer mental health issues.

Ironically, due to lack of guaranteed funding (and lack of political interest by the late 1970s), the data and results of the study were not analyzed or published until 2011. The data were archived and sat gathering dust in boxes. The mincome experiment demonstrated the benefits that even a modest guaranteed annual income supplement could have on health and social outcomes in communities. People seem to live healthier lives and get a better education when they do not need to worry about poverty. In her summary of the research, Forget notes that the impact of the income supplement was surprisingly large given that at any one time only about a third of the families were receiving the income and, for some families, the income amount would have been very small. The income benefit was largest for low-income working families but the research showed that the entire community profited. The improvement in overall health outcomes for the community suggest that a guaranteed income would also result in savings for the public health system.

Field Research

The work of sociology rarely happens in limited, confined spaces. Sociologists seldom study subjects in their own offices or laboratories. Rather, sociologists go out into the world. They meet subjects where they live, work, and play. Field research refers to gathering primary data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey. It is a research method suited to an interpretive approach rather than to positivist approaches. To conduct field research, the sociologist must be willing to step into new environments and observe, participate, or experience those worlds. In fieldwork, the sociologists, rather than the subjects, are the ones out of their element. The researcher interacts with or observes a person or people, gathering data along the way. The key point in field research is that it takes place in the subject’s natural environment, whether it’s a coffee shop or tribal village, a homeless shelter or a care home, a hospital, airport, mall, or beach resort.

While field research often begins in a specific setting , the study’s purpose is to observe specific behaviours in that setting. Fieldwork is optimal for observing how people behave. It is less useful, however, for developing causal explanations of why they behave that way. From the small size of the groups studied in fieldwork, it is difficult to make predictions or generalizations to a larger population. Similarly, there are difficulties in gaining an objective distance from research subjects. It is difficult to know whether another researcher would see the same things or record the same data. We will look at three types of field research: participant observation, ethnography, and the case study.

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

When is sharing not such a good idea.

Choosing a research methodology depends on a number of factors, including the purpose of the research and the audience for whom the research is intended. If we consider the type of research that might go into producing a government policy document on the effectiveness of safe injection sites for reducing the public health risks of intravenous drug use, we would expect public administrators to want “hard” (i.e., quantitative) evidence of high reliability to help them make a policy decision. The most reliable data would come from an experimental or quasi-experimental research model in which a control group can be compared with an experimental group using quantitative measures.

This approach has been used by researchers studying InSite in Vancouver (Marshall et al. 2011; Wood et al. 2006). InSite is a supervised safe-injection site where heroin addicts and other intravenous drug users can go to inject drugs in a safe, clean environment. Clean needles are provided and health care professionals are on hand to intervene in the case of overdose or other medical emergency. It is a controversial program both because heroin use is against the law (the facility operates through a federal ministerial exemption) and because the heroin users are not obliged to quit using or seek therapy. To assess the effectiveness of the program, researchers compared the risky usage of drugs in populations before and after the opening of the facility and geographically near and distant to the facility. The results from the studies have shown that InSite has reduced both deaths from overdose and risky behaviours, such as the sharing of needles, without increasing the levels of crime associated with drug use and addiction.

On the other hand, if the research question is more exploratory (for example, trying to discern the reasons why individuals in the crack smoking subculture engage in the risky activity of sharing pipes), the more nuanced approach of fieldwork is more appropriate. The research would need to focus on the subcultural context, rituals, and meaning of sharing pipes, and why these phenomena override known health concerns. Graduate student Andrew Ivsins at the University of Victoria studied the practice of sharing pipes among 13 habitual users of crack cocaine in Victoria, B.C. (Ivsins 2010). He met crack smokers in their typical setting downtown and used an unstructured interview method to try to draw out the informal norms that lead to sharing pipes. One factor he discovered was the bond that formed between friends or intimate partners when they shared a pipe. He also discovered that there was an elaborate subcultural etiquette of pipe use that revolved around the benefit of getting the crack resin smokers left behind. Both of these motives tended to outweigh the recognized health risks of sharing pipes (such as hepatitis) in the decision making of the users. This type of research was valuable in illuminating the unknown subcultural norms of crack use that could still come into play in a harm reduction strategy such as distributing safe crack kits to addicts.

Participant Observation

In 2000, a comic writer named Rodney Rothman wanted an insider’s view of white-collar work. He slipped into the sterile, high-rise offices of a New York “dot com” agency. Every day for two weeks, he pretended to work there. His main purpose was simply to see if anyone would notice him or challenge his presence. No one did. The receptionist greeted him. The employees smiled and said good morning. Rothman was accepted as part of the team. He even went so far as to claim a desk, inform the receptionist of his whereabouts, and attend a meeting. He published an article about his experience in The New Yorker called “My Fake Job” (2000). Later, he was discredited for allegedly fabricating some details of the story and The New Yorker issued an apology. However, Rothman’s entertaining article still offered fascinating descriptions of the inside workings of a “dot com” company and exemplified the lengths to which a sociologist will go to uncover material.

Rothman had conducted a form of study called participant observation , in which researchers join people and participate in a group’s routine activities for the purpose of observing them within that context. This method lets researchers study a naturally occurring social activity without imposing artificial or intrusive research devices, like fixed questionnaire questions, onto the situation. A researcher might go to great lengths to get a firsthand look into a trend, institution, or behaviour. Researchers temporarily put themselves into “native” roles and record their observations. A researcher might work as a waitress in a diner, or live as a homeless person for several weeks, or ride along with police officers as they patrol their regular beat. Often, these researchers try to blend in seamlessly with the population they study, and they may not disclose their true identity or purpose if they feel it would compromise the results of their research.

At the beginning of a field study, researchers might have a question: “What really goes on in the kitchen of the most popular diner on campus?” or “What is it like to be homeless?” Participant observation is a useful method if the researcher wants to explore a certain environment from the inside. Field researchers simply want to observe and learn. In such a setting, the researcher will be alert and open minded to whatever happens, recording all observations accurately. Soon, as patterns emerge, questions will become more specific, observations will lead to hypotheses, and hypotheses will guide the researcher in shaping data into results. In a study of small-town America conducted by sociological researchers John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, the team altered their purpose as they gathered data. They initially planned to focus their study on the role of religion in American towns. As they gathered observations, they realized that the effect of industrialization and urbanization was the more relevant topic of this social group. The Lynds did not change their methods, but they revised their purpose. This shaped the structure of Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture , their published results (Lynd and Lynd 1959).

The Lynds were upfront about their mission. The townspeople of Muncie, Indiana, knew why the researchers were in their midst. But some sociologists prefer not to alert people to their presence. The main advantage of covert participant observation is that it allows the researcher access to authentic, natural behaviours of a group’s members. The challenge, however, is gaining access to a setting without disrupting the pattern of others’ behaviour. Becoming an inside member of a group, organization, or subculture takes time and effort. Researchers must pretend to be something they are not. The process could involve role playing, making contacts, networking, or applying for a job. Once inside a group, some researchers spend months or even years pretending to be one of the people they are observing. However, as observers, they cannot get too involved. They must keep their purpose in mind and apply the sociological perspective. That way, they illuminate social patterns that are often unrecognized. Because information gathered during participant observation is mostly qualitative, rather than quantitative, the end results are often descriptive or interpretive. The researcher might present findings in an article or book, describing what he or she witnessed and experienced.

This type of research is what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich conducted for her book Nickel and Dimed . One day over lunch with her editor, as the story goes, Ehrenreich mentioned an idea. How can people exist on minimum-wage work? How do low-income workers get by? she wondered. Someone should do a study. To her surprise, her editor responded, Why don’t you do it? That is how Ehrenreich found herself joining the ranks of the low-wage service sector. For several months, she left her comfortable home and lived and worked among people who lacked, for the most part, higher education and marketable job skills. Undercover, she applied for and worked minimum wage jobs as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a retail chain employee. During her participant observation, she used only her income from those jobs to pay for food, clothing, transportation, and shelter. She discovered the obvious: that it’s almost impossible to get by on minimum wage work. She also experienced and observed attitudes many middle- and upper-class people never think about. She witnessed firsthand the treatment of service work employees. She saw the extreme measures people take to make ends meet and to survive. She described fellow employees who held two or three jobs, worked seven days a week, lived in cars, could not pay to treat chronic health conditions, got randomly fired, submitted to drug tests, and moved in and out of homeless shelters. She brought aspects of that life to light, describing difficult working conditions and the poor treatment that low-wage workers suffer.

Ethnography

Ethnography is the extended observation of the social perspective and cultural values of an entire social setting. Researchers seek to immerse themselves in the life of a bounded group, by living and working among them. Often ethnography involves participant observation, but the focus is the systematic observation of an entire community.

The heart of an ethnographic study focuses on how subjects view their own social standing and how they understand themselves in relation to a community. An ethnographic study might observe, for example, a small Newfoundland fishing town, an Inuit community, a village in Thailand, a Buddhist monastery, a private boarding school, or Disney World. These places all have borders. People live, work, study, or vacation within those borders. People are there for a certain reason and therefore behave in certain ways and respect certain cultural norms. An ethnographer would commit to spending a determined amount of time studying every aspect of the chosen place, taking in as much as possible, and keeping careful notes on his or her observations.

A sociologist studying a tribe in the Amazon might learn the language, watch the way villagers go about their daily lives, ask individuals about the meaning of different aspects of activity, study the group’s cosmology and then write a paper about it. To observe a spiritual retreat centre, an ethnographer might sign up for a retreat and attend as a guest for an extended stay, observe and record how people experience spirituality in this setting, and collate the material into results.

The Feminist Perspective: Institutional Ethnography

Dorothy Smith elaborated on traditional ethnography to develop what she calls institutional ethnography (2005). In modern society the practices of everyday life in any particular local setting are often organized at a level that goes beyond what an ethnographer might observe directly. Everyday life is structured by “extralocal,” institutional forms; that is, by the practices of institutions that act upon people from a distance. It might be possible to conduct ethnographic research on the experience of domestic abuse by living in a women’s shelter and directly observing and interviewing victims to see how they form an understanding of their situation. However, to the degree that the women are seeking redress through the criminal justice system a crucial element of the situation would be missing. In order to activate a response from the police or the courts, a set of standard legal procedures must be followed, a “case file” must be opened, legally actionable evidence must be established, forms filled out, etc. All of this allows criminal justice agencies to organize and coordinate the response.

The urgent and immediate experience of the domestic abuse victims needs to be translated into a format that enables distant authorities to take action. Often this is a frustrating and mysterious process in which the immediate needs of individuals are neglected so that needs of institutional processes are met. Therefore to research the situation of domestic abuse victims, an ethnography needs to somehow operate at two levels: the close examination of the local experience of particular women and the simultaneous examination of the extralocal, institutional world through which their world is organized. In order to accomplish this, institutional ethnography focuses on the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through “textually mediated” practices: the use of written documents, standardized bureaucratic categories, and formalized relationships (Smith 1990).

Institutional paperwork translates the specific details of locally lived experience into a standardized format that enables institutions to apply the institution’s understandings, regulations, and operations in different local contexts. The study of these textual practices reveal otherwise inaccessible processes that formal organizations depend on: their formality, their organized character, and their ongoing methods of coordination, etc. An institutional ethnography often begins by following the paper trail that emerges when people interact with institutions: how does a person formulate a narrative about what has happened to him or her in a way that the institution will recognize? How is it translated into the abstract categories on a form or screen that enable an institutional response to be initiated? What is preserved in the translation to paperwork and what is lost? Where do the forms go next? What series of “processing interchanges” take place between different departments or agencies through the circulation of paperwork? How is the paperwork modified and made actionable through this process (e.g., an incident report, warrant request, motion for continuance)?

Smith’s insight is that the shift from the locally lived experience of individuals to the extralocal world of institutions is nothing short of a radical metaphysical shift in worldview. In institutional worlds, meanings are detached from directly lived processes and reconstituted in an organizational time, space, and consciousness that is fundamentally different from their original reference point. For example, the crisis that has led to a loss of employment becomes a set of anonymous criteria that determines one’s eligibility for Employment Insurance.

The unique life of a disabled child becomes a checklist that determines the content of an “individual education program” in the school system, which in turn determines whether funding will be provided for special aid assistants or therapeutic programs. Institutions put together a picture of what has occurred that is not at all the same as what was lived. The ubiquitous but obscure mechanism by which this is accomplished is textually mediated communication . The goal of institutional ethnography therefore is to making “documents or texts visible as constituents of social relations” (Smith 1990). Institutional ethnography is very useful as a critical research strategy. It is an analysis that gives grassroots organizations, or those excluded from the circles of institutional power, a detailed knowledge of how the administrative apparatuses actually work. This type of research enables more effective actions and strategies for change to be pursued.

The Case Study

Sometimes a researcher wants to study one specific person or event. A case study is an in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual. To conduct a case study, a researcher examines existing sources like documents and archival records, conducts interviews, engages in direct observation, and even participant observation, if possible. Researchers might use this method to study a single case of, for example, a foster child, drug lord, cancer patient, criminal, or rape victim. However, a major criticism of the case study as a method is that a developed study of a single case, while offering depth on a topic, does not provide enough evidence to form a generalized conclusion. In other words, it is difficult to make universal claims based on just one person, since one person does not verify a pattern. This is why most sociologists do not use case studies as a primary research method.

However, case studies are useful when the single case is unique. In these instances, a single case study can add tremendous knowledge to a certain discipline. For example, a feral child, also called “wild child,” is one who grows up isolated from human beings. Feral children grow up without social contact and language, elements crucial to a “civilized” child’s development. These children mimic the behaviours and movements of animals, and often invent their own language. There are only about 100 cases of “feral children” in the world. As you may imagine, a feral child is a subject of great interest to researchers. Feral children provide unique information about child development because they have grown up outside of the parameters of “normal” child development. And since there are very few feral children, the case study is the most appropriate method for researchers to use in studying the subject. At age three, a Ukrainian girl named Oxana Malaya suffered severe parental neglect. She lived in a shed with dogs, eating raw meat and scraps. Five years later, a neighbour called authorities and reported seeing a girl who ran on all fours, barking. Officials brought Oxana into society, where she was cared for and taught some human behaviours, but she never became fully socialized. She has been designated as unable to support herself and now lives in a mental institution (Grice 2006). Case studies like this offer a way for sociologists to collect data that may not be collectable by any other method.

Secondary Data or Textual Analysis

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data or textual analysis . Secondary data do not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are drawn from the already-completed work of other researchers. Sociologists might study texts written by historians, economists, teachers, or early sociologists. They might search through periodicals, newspapers, or magazines from any period in history. Using available information not only saves time and money, but it can add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author’s original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behaviour and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the Internet, or Facebook.

One methodology that sociologists employ with secondary data is content analysis. Content analysis is a quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content (i.e., a variable) that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. For example, Gilens (1996) wanted to find out why survey research shows that the American public substantially exaggerates the percentage of African Americans among the poor. He examined whether media representations influence public perceptions and did a content analysis of photographs of poor people in American news magazines. He coded and then systematically recorded incidences of three variables: (1) Race: white, black, indeterminate; (2) Employed: working, not working; and (3) Age. Gilens discovered that not only were African Americans markedly overrepresented in news magazine photographs of poverty, but that the photos also tended to underrepresent “sympathetic” subgroups of the poor—the elderly and working poor—while overrepresenting less sympathetic groups—unemployed, working age adults. Gilens concluded that by providing a distorted representation of poverty, U.S. news magazines “reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks as mired in poverty and contribute to the belief that poverty is primarily a ‘black problem’” (1996).

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments and global groups, like Statistics Canada or the World Health Organization, publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic that measures inequality of incomes might be useful for studying who benefited and who lost as a result of the 2008 recession; a demographic profile of different immigrant groups might be compared with data on unemployment to examine the reasons why immigration settlement programs are more effective for some communities than for others. One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is nonreactive (or unobtrusive) research, meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process. Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher needs to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. In some cases there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy, for example, to count how many drunk drivers are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it’s possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their GED later.

Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not include the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the salaries paid to professors at universities is often published. But the separate figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they have been teaching. In his research, sociologist Richard Sennett uses secondary data to shed light on current trends. In The Craftsman (2008), he studied the human desire to perform quality work, from carpentry to computer programming. He studied the line between craftsmanship and skilled manual labour. He also studied changes in attitudes toward craftsmanship that occurred not only during and after the Industrial Revolution, but also in ancient times. Obviously, he could not have firsthand knowledge of periods of ancient history; he had to rely on secondary data for part of his study. When conducting secondary data or textual analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd gathered research for their book Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture in the 1920s. Attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study’s purpose was to reveal the truth about small American communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s attitudes and values.

Sociologists conduct studies to shed light on human behaviours. Knowledge is a powerful tool that can be used toward positive change. And while a sociologist’s goal is often simply to uncover knowledge rather than to spur action, many people use sociological studies to help improve people’s lives. In that sense, conducting a sociological study comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility. Like any researchers, sociologists must consider their ethical obligation to avoid harming subjects or groups while conducting their research. The Canadian Sociological Association, or CSA, is the major professional organization of sociologists in Canada. The CSA is a great resource for students of sociology as well.

The CSA maintains a code of ethics —formal guidelines for conducting sociological research—consisting of principles and ethical standards to be used in the discipline. It also describes procedures for filing, investigating, and resolving complaints of unethical conduct. These are in line with the Tri-Council Policy Statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (2010) , which applies to any research with human subjects funded by one of the three federal research agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Practising sociologists and sociology students have a lot to consider. Some of the guidelines state that researchers must try to be skillful and fair-minded in their work, especially as it relates to their human subjects. Researchers must obtain participants’ informed consent, and inform subjects of the responsibilities and risks of research before they agree to participate. During a study, sociologists must ensure the safety of participants and immediately stop work if a subject becomes potentially endangered on any level. Researchers are required to protect the privacy of research participants whenever possible. Even if pressured by authorities, such as police or courts, researchers are not ethically allowed to release confidential information. Researchers must make results available to other sociologists, must make public all sources of financial support, and must not accept funding from any organization that might cause a conflict of interest or seek to influence the research results for its own purposes. The CSA’s ethical considerations shape not only the study but also the publication of results.

Pioneer German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) identified another crucial ethical concern. Weber understood that personal values could distort the framework for disclosing study results. While he accepted that some aspects of research design might be influenced by personal values, he declared it was entirely inappropriate to allow personal values to shape the interpretation of the responses. Sociologists, he stated, must establish value neutrality , a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment, during the course of a study and in publishing results (1949). Sociologists are obligated to disclose research findings without omitting or distorting significant data. Value neutrality does not mean having no opinions. It means striving to overcome personal biases, particularly subconscious biases, when analyzing data. It means avoiding skewing data in order to match a predetermined outcome that aligns with a particular agenda, such as a political or moral point of view. Investigators are ethically obligated to report results, even when they contradict personal views, predicted outcomes, or widely accepted beliefs. Is value neutrality possible?

Many sociologists believe it is impossible to set aside personal values and retain complete objectivity. Individuals inevitably see the world from a partial perspective. Their interests are central to the types of topics they choose, the types of questions they ask, the way they frame their research and the research methodologies they select to pursue it. Moreover, facts, however objective, do not exist in a void. As we noted in Chapter 1, Jürgen Habermas (1972) argues that sociological research has built-in interests quite apart from the personal biases of individual researchers. Positivist sociology has an interest in pursuing types of knowledge that are useful for controlling and administering social life. Interpretive sociology has an interest in pursuing types of knowledge that promote greater mutual understanding and the possibility of consensus among members of society. Critical sociology has an interest in types of knowledge that enable emancipation from power relations and forms of domination in society. In Habermas’ view, sociological knowledge is not disinterested knowledge. This does not discredit the results of sociological research but allows readers to take into account the perspective of the research when judging the validity and applicability of its outcomes.

case study in-depth analysis of a single event, situation, or individual

code of ethics a set of guidelines that the Canadian Sociological Association has established to foster ethical research and professionally responsible scholarship in sociology

content analysis a quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output

control group an experimental group that is not exposed to the independent variable

correlation when a change in one variable coincides with a change in another variable, but does not necessarily indicate causation

d ependent variable variable changed by another variable

empirical evidence evidence corroborated by direct experience and/or observation

ethnography observing a complete social setting and all that it entails

experiment the testing of a hypothesis under controlled conditions

field research gathering data from a natural environment without doing a lab experiment or a survey

Hawthorne effect when study subjects behave in a certain manner due to their awareness of being observed by a researcher

hypothesis an educated guess with predicted outcomes about the relationship between two or more variables hypothetico-deductive methodologies methodologies based on deducing a prediction from a hypothesis and testing the  validity of the hypothesis by whether it correctly predicts observations

independent variable  variable that causes change in a dependent variable

inductive approach methodologies that derive a general statement from a series of empirical observations

institutional ethnography the study of the way everyday life is coordinated through institutional, textually mediated practices

interpretive approach a sociological research approach that seeks in-depth understanding of a topic or subject through observation or interaction

interview  a one-on-one conversation between a researcher and a subject

literature review a scholarly research step that entails identifying and studying all existing studies on a topic to create a basis for new research

nonreactive  unobtrusive research that does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people’s behaviours

operational definitions specific explanations of abstract concepts that a researcher plans to study

participant observation immersion by a researcher in a group or social setting in order to make observations from an “insider” perspective

population a defined group serving as the subject of a study

positivist approach a research approach based on the natural science model of knowledge utilizing a hypothetico-deductive formulation of the research question and quantitative data

primary data data collected directly from firsthand experience

qualitative data  information based on interpretations of meaning

quantitative data information from research collected in numerical form that can be counted

random sample a study’s participants being randomly selected to serve as a representation of a larger population reliability a measure of a study’s consistency that considers how likely results are to be replicated if a study is reproduced research design a detailed, systematic method for conducting research and obtaining data

sample small, manageable number of subjects that represent the population

scientific method a systematic research method that involves asking a question, researching existing sources, forming a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, and drawing conclusions

secondary data analysis using data collected by others but applying new interpretations

surveys data collections from subjects who respond to a series of questions about behaviours and opinions, often in the form of a questionnaire

textually mediated communication institutional forms of communication that rely on written documents, texts, and paperwork

validity the degree to which a sociological measure accurately reflects the topic of study

value neutrality a practice of remaining impartial, without bias or judgment during the course of a study and in publishing results

variable a characteristic or measure of a social phenomenon that can take different values

Section Summary

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research Using the scientific method, a researcher conducts a study in five phases: asking a question, researching existing sources, formulating a hypothesis, conducting a study, and drawing conclusions. The scientific method is useful in that it provides a clear method of organizing a study. Some sociologists conduct scientific research through a positivist framework utilizing a hypothetico-deductive formulation of the research question. Other sociologists conduct scientific research by employing an interpretive framework that is often inductive in nature. Scientific sociological studies often observe relationships between variables. Researchers study how one variable changes another. Prior to conducting a study, researchers are careful to apply operational definitions to their terms and to establish dependent and independent variables.

2.2. Research Methods Sociological research is a fairly complex process. As you can see, a lot goes into even a simple research design. There are many steps and much to consider when collecting data on human behaviour, as well as in interpreting and analyzing data in order to form conclusive results. Sociologists use scientific methods for good reason. The scientific method provides a system of organization that helps researchers plan and conduct the study while ensuring that data and results are reliable, valid, and objective. The many methods available to researchers—including experiments, surveys, field studies, and secondary data analysis—all come with advantages and disadvantages. The strength of a study can depend on the choice and implementation of the appropriate method of gathering research. Depending on the topic, a study might use a single method or a combination of methods. It is important to plan a research design before undertaking a study. The information gathered may in itself be surprising, and the study design should provide a solid framework in which to analyze predicted and unpredicted data.

Table 2.2. Main Sociological Research Methods. Sociological research methods have advantages and disadvantages.

2.3. Ethical Concerns Sociologists and sociology students must take ethical responsibility for any study they conduct. They must first and foremost guarantee the safety of their participants. Whenever possible, they must ensure that participants have been fully informed before consenting to be part of a study. The CSA (Canadian Sociological Association) maintains ethical guidelines that sociologists must take into account as they conduct research. The guidelines address conducting studies, properly using existing sources, accepting funding, and publishing results. Sociologists must try to maintain value neutrality. They must gather and analyze data objectively, setting aside their personal preferences, beliefs, and opinions. They must report findings accurately, even if they contradict personal convictions.

Section Quiz

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research 1. A measurement is considered ______­ if it actually measures what it is intended to measure, according to the topic of the study.

• sociological
• quantitative

2. Sociological studies test relationships in which change in one ______ causes change in another.

• test subject
• operational definition

3. In a study, a group of 10-year-old boys are fed doughnuts every morning for a week and then weighed to see how much weight they gained. Which factor is the dependent variable?

• the doughnuts
• the duration of a week
• the weight gained

4. Which statement provides the best operational definition of “childhood obesity”?

• children who eat unhealthy foods and spend too much time watching television and playing video games
• a distressing trend that can lead to health issues including type 2 diabetes and heart disease
• body weight at least 20 percent higher than a healthy weight for a child of that height
• the tendency of children today to weigh more than children of earlier generations

2.2. Research Methods 5. Which materials are considered secondary data?

• photos and letters given to you by another person
• books and articles written by other authors about their studies
• information that you have gathered and now have included in your results
• responses from participants whom you both surveyed and interviewed

6. What method did Andrew Ivsins use to study crack users in Victoria?

• field research
• content analysis

7. Why is choosing a random sample an effective way to select participants?

• Participants do not know they are part of a study
• The researcher has no control over who is in the study
• It is larger than an ordinary sample
• Everyone has the same chance of being part of the study

8. What research method did John S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd mainly use in their Middletown study?

• secondary data
• participant observation

9. Which research approach is best suited to the positivist approach?

• questionnaire
• ethnography
• secondary data analysis

10. The main difference between ethnography and other types of participant observation is:

• ethnography isn’t based on hypothesis testing
• ethnography subjects are unaware they’re being studied
• ethnographic studies always involve minority ethnic groups
• there is no difference

11. Which best describes the results of a case study?

• it produces more reliable results than other methods because of its depth
• its results are not generally applicable
• it relies solely on secondary data analysis
• all of the above

12. Using secondary data is considered an unobtrusive or ________ research method.

• nonreactive
• nonparticipatory
• nonrestrictive
• nonconfrontive

2.3. Ethical Concerns 13. Which statement illustrates value neutrality?

• Obesity in children is obviously a result of parental neglect and, therefore, schools should take a greater role to prevent it.
• In 2003, states like Arkansas adopted laws requiring elementary schools to remove soft drink vending machines from schools.
• Merely restricting children’s access to junk food at school is not enough to prevent obesity.
• Physical activity and healthy eating are a fundamental part of a child’s education.

14. Which person or organization defined the concept of value neutrality?

• Institutional Review Board (IRB)
• Peter Rossi
• Canadian Sociological Association (CSA)

15. To study the effects of fast food on lifestyle, health, and culture, from which group would a researcher ethically be unable to accept funding?

• a fast-food restaurant
• a nonprofit health organization
• a private hospital
• a governmental agency like Health and Social Services

Short Answer

• Write down the first three steps of the scientific method. Think of a broad topic that you are interested in and which would make a good sociological study—for example, ethnic diversity in a college, homecoming rituals, athletic scholarships, or teen driving. Now, take that topic through the first steps of the process. For each step, write a few sentences or a paragraph: 1) Ask a question about the topic. 2) Do some research and write down the titles of some articles or books you’d want to read about the topic. 3) Formulate a hypothesis.

2.2.Research Methods

• What type of data do surveys gather? For what topics would surveys be the best research method? What drawbacks might you expect to encounter when using a survey? To explore further, ask a research question and write a hypothesis. Then create a survey of about six questions relevant to the topic. Provide a rationale for each question. Now define your population and create a plan for recruiting a random sample and administering the survey.
• Imagine you are about to do field research in a specific place for a set time. Instead of thinking about the topic of study itself, consider how you, as the researcher, will have to prepare for the study. What personal, social, and physical sacrifices will you have to make? How will you manage your personal effects? What organizational equipment and systems will you need to collect the data?
• Create a brief research design about a topic in which you are passionately interested. Now write a letter to a philanthropic or grant organization requesting funding for your study. How can you describe the project in a convincing yet realistic and objective way? Explain how the results of your study will be a relevant contribution to the body of sociological work already in existence.
• Why do you think the CSA crafted such a detailed set of ethical principles? What type of study could put human participants at risk? Think of some examples of studies that might be harmful. Do you think that, in the name of sociology, some researchers might be tempted to cross boundaries that threaten human rights? Why?
• Would you willingly participate in a sociological study that could potentially put your health and safety at risk, but had the potential to help thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people? For example, would you participate in a study of a new drug that could cure diabetes or cancer, even if it meant great inconvenience and physical discomfort for you or possible permanent damage?

Further Research

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research For a historical perspective on the scientific method in sociology, read “The Elements of Scientific Method in Sociology” by F. Stuart Chapin (1914) in the American Journal of Sociology : http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Method-in-Sociology

2.2. Research Methods For information on current real-world sociology experiments, visit: http://openstaxcollege.org/l/Sociology-Experiments

2.3. Ethical Concerns Founded in 1966, the CSA is a nonprofit organization located in Montreal, Quebec, with a membership of 900 researchers, faculty members, students, and practitioners of sociology. Its mission is to promote “research, publication and teaching in Sociology in Canada.” Learn more about this organization at http://www.csa-scs.ca/ .

2.1. Approaches to Sociological Research Merton, Robert. 1968 [1949]. Social Theory and Social Structure . New York: Free Press.

2.2. Research Methods Forget, Evelyn. 2011. “The Town with no Poverty: Using Health Administration Data to Revisit Outcomes of a Canadian Guaranteed Annual Income Field Experiement.” Canadian Public Policy . 37(3): 282-305.

Franke, Richard and James Kaul. 1978. “The Hawthorne Experiments: First Statistical Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 43(5):632–643.

Gilens, Martin. 1996. “Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American News Media.” The Public Opinion Quarterly 60(4):515–541. Grice, Elizabeth. 2006. “Cry of an Enfant Sauvage.” The Telegraph . Retrieved July 20, 2011 ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3653890/Cry-of-an-enfant-sauvage.html ).

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., and Zimbardo, P. G. 1973. “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology  1:69–97.

Ivsins, A.K. 2010. “’Got a pipe?’ The social dimensions and functions of crack pipe sharing among crack users in Victoria, BC.” MA thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria. Retrieved February 14, 2014 ( http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/bitstream/handle/1828/3044/Full%20thesis%20Ivsins_CPS.2010_FINAL.pdf?sequence=1 )

Lowrey, Annie. 2013. “Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive.” The  New York Times Magazine. Retrieved February 17, 2014 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2 ).

Lynd, Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd. 1959. Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture . San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Javanovich.

Lynd, Staughton. 2005. “Making Middleton.” Indiana Magazine of History 101(3):226–238.

Marshall, B.D.L., M.J. Milloy,  E. Wood, J.S.G.  Montaner,  and T. Kerr. 2011. “Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America’s first medically supervised safer injecting facility: A retrospective population-based study.” Lancet  377(9775):1429–1437.

Rothman, Rodney. 2000. “My Fake Job.” The New Yorker , November 27, 120.

Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Retrieved July 18, 2011 ( http://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/General.aspx?pageid=40 ).

Smith, Dorothy. 1990. “Textually Mediated Social Organization” Pp. 209–234 in Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. London: Routledge.

Smith, Dorothy. 2005. Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People. Toronto: Altamira Press.

Sonnenfeld, Jeffery A. 1985. “Shedding Light on the Hawthorne Studies.” Journal of Occupational Behavior 6:125.

Wood, E., M.W. Tyndall, J.S. Montaner, and T. Kerr. 2006. “Summary of findings from the evaluation of a pilot medically supervised safer injecting facility.” Canadian Medical Association Journal  175(11):1399–1404.

2.3. Ethical Concerns Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 2010.  Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans . Retrieved February 15, 2014 ( http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/pdf/eng/tcps2/TCPS_2_FINAL_Web.pdf ).

Canadian Sociological Association. 2012. Statement of Professional Ethics . Retrieved February 15, 2014 ( http://www.csa-scs.ca/files/www/csa/documents/codeofethics/2012Ethics.pdf ).

Habermas, Jürgen. 1972. Knowledge and Human Interests. Boston: Beacon Press

Weber, Max. 1949. Methodology of the Social Sciences . Translated by H. Shils and E. Finch. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Solutions to Section Quiz

1. C | 2. C | 3. D | 4. C | 5. B | 6. C | 7. D | 8. C | 9. A | 10. A | 11. B | 12. A | 13. B | 14. D | 15. A

Image Attributions

Figure 2.3.  Didn’t they abolish the mandatory census? Then what’s this? by  Khosrow Ebrahimpour ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/xosrow/5685345306/in/photolist-9EoT5W-ow4tdu-oeGG4m-oeMEcK-oy2jM2-ovJC8w-oePSRQ-9J2V24-of1Hnu-of243u-of2K2B-of2FHn-owiBSA-owtQN3-of1Ktd-oitLSC-oeVJte-oep8KX-ovEz8w-oeohhF-oew5Xb-oewdWN-owavju-oeMEnV-oweLcN-ovEPGG-ovAQUX-oeo2eL-oeo3Fd-oeoqxh-oxCKnv-ovEzA5-oewFHa-ovHRSz-ow8QtY-oeQY6Y-oeZReR-oeQmHw-oeKXid-oeQLKa-oy6fNT-ow4sVT-oeQMQq-oeQPPr-oeQYbL-ow8hS1-ow4n8v-owiPKS-oeQF41-oeiH5z ) used under CC BY 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Figure 2.4. Dauphin Canadian Northern Railway Station by Bobak Ha’Eri ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2009-0520-TrainStation-Dauphin.jpg ) used under CC BY 3.0 license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en )

Figure 2.5.  Punk Band by Patrick ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/lordkhan/181561343/in/photostream/ ) used under CC BY 2.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Figure 2.6.  Crack Cocaine Smokers in Vancouver Alleyway ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crack_Cocaine_Smokers_in_Vancouver_Alleyway.jpg ) is in the public domain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain )

Figure 2.8.  Muncie, Indiana High School: 1917 by Don O’Brien ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/dok1/3694125269/ ) used under CC BY 2.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ )

Introduction to Sociology - 1st Canadian Edition Copyright © 2014 by William Little and Ron McGivern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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