Encyclopedia of Sociology

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN SOCIOLOGY

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CECILIA L. RIDGEWAY

COMPLEMENTARITY

See Mate Selection Theories.

COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
IN SOCIOLOGY

Most sociologists, both professionals and students,
now have their own computer with direct access to
a printer for writing and to the Internet for elec-
tronic mail (e-mail). Beyond the basic tasks of
writing and e-mailing are a variety of other com-
puter-supported research applications, both quan-
titative and qualitative. This article describes how
sociologists and other social scientists use these
applications and what resources are available.

The data and modeling requirements of social
research have united sociologists with computers
for over a hundred years. It was the 1890 U. S.
census that inspired Herman Hollerith, a census
researcher, to construct the first automated data
processing machinery. Hollerith’s punchcard sys-
tem, while not a true computer by today’s defini-
tions, provided the foundation for contemporary
computer-based data management.

In 1948 the U. S. Bureau of the Census, antici-
pating the voluminous tabulating requirements of
the 1950 census, contracted for the building of
Univac I, the first commercially produced elec-
tronic computer. The need to count, sort, and
analyze the 1950 census data on this milestone
computer led to the development of the first high-
speed magnetic tape storage system, the first sort-
merge software package, and the first statistical
package, a set of matrix algebra programs.

Only a decade later many social scientists were

exploring ways to use computers in their research.

In the early 1960s, the first book devoted entirely

to computer applications in social science research

(Borko 1962) was published. Not only were social

scientists writing about how to apply computers,

they were designing and developing new software.

Some of the most popular statistical software pack-

ages, e.g., SPSS (Nie, Bent, and Hull 1975), were

developed by social scientists.

During the 1980s, universities and colleges

began to acquire microcomputers, accepting the

premise that all researchers needed their own

desktop computing equipment. The American

Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) survey in

1985 (Morton and Price 1986) reported that 50

percent of sociologists had a computer for exclu-

sive use. A survey of academic departments sup-

ported by the American Sociological Association

(Koppel, Dowdall, and Shostak 1985) found that

slightly less than half of the sociology faculty re-

ported to have immediate access to microcomput-

ers. To put these findings into a more complete

perspective, of the approximately 9,000 sociolo-

gists in 1985, about 4,500 had their own comput-

ers and about 5,200 reported routine computer

use. Now, it is hard to find a sociologist’s office

without at least one computer. And in many coun-

tries most students in sociology have a computer

for writing papers and accessing online resources.

Sociology and the Web. The Internet may be

one of the largest and probably the most rapidly

growing peaceful social movements in history. It is

not just a technology, or a family of technologies,

but a rapidly evolving socio-cultural phenomena

often called ‘‘cyberspace’’ or ‘‘cyberculture.’’ No

matter how this phenomena is defined, it is chang-

ing the way sociologists conduct their work.

By the mid-1990s sociology, like most other

academic disciplines, had come to depend upon e-

mail. In addition, a rapidly growing number had

begun to use the World Wide Web (WWW), com-

monly called the Web (Babbie 1996). Bainbridge

(1995) claimed that the Web is ‘‘a significant medi-

um of communication for sociologists, and ex-

trapolation of present trends suggests it may swift-

ly become the essential fabric of sociology’s existence.’’

In January 1999, the author searched Web sites

with the Alta Vista search engine for the word