Social scientists are divided into camps of support for particular research techniques. These disputes relate to … See more

Typically a population is very large, making a census or a complete enumeration of all the values in that population infeasible. A sample thus forms a manageable subset of a population. In positivist research, statistics derived fro… See more

Social research is based on logic and empirical observations. Charles C. Ragin writes in his Constructing Social Research book that "Social research involved the interaction between ideas and evidence. Ideas help … See more

When social scientists speak of "good research" the guidelines refer to how the science is mentioned and understood. It does not refer to how what the results are but how they are figured. Glenn Firebaugh summarize… See more

The ethics of social research are shared with those of medical research. In the United States, these are formalized by the Belmont report as:
The principle of respect for persons holds that (a) indi… See more