Just as social scientists are finding new methods, they are always trying to refine
older survey techniques to obtain the most accurate data. For example, surveys of sex-
ual behavior always find that people are somewhat self-conscious about revealing their
sexual behaviors to strangers talking to them on the phone—let alone someone sitting
across from them in a face-to-face survey interview. Researchers have developed a new
survey technology—telephone audio computer-assisted self-interviewing—that greatly
reduces the requirement of revealing your sexual behavior to a stranger. And some of
the results indicate that a significantly higher percentage of Americans report same-
sex sexual behavior than previously estimated (Villarroel et al., 2006).
Perhaps the most significant new technology is the proliferation of Internet chat
rooms and listservs that has created virtual online communities of people who are
drawn to particular issues and interests. If you want to study, for example, collectors
of Ming dynasty pottery or buffalo head nickels, you would find several chat groups
of such people online. Imagine how much time and energy you would save trying to
track them down! They’re all in one place, and they all are guaranteed to be exactly
what you are looking for. Or are they?
Here’s a good example. For the past few years, I have been doing research on White
supremacist and Aryan youth in the United States and several European countries. There
are many Internet chat rooms and portals through which one can enter the virtual world
of the extreme right wing. Online, I can enter a place where eight White supremacists,
neo-Nazis, and White power young people are discussing current events. I can listen
in, perhaps even participate and ask them some questions. (Professional ethics require
that whenever you are doing research you must disclose to them that you are doing
research.) I could get some amazing “data” that way. But how can I be sure it’s reliable?
After all, what if several of them aren’t really White supremacists at all, but a
couple of high school kids goofing around, a couple of graduate students in anthro-
pology or sociology doing their “field work,” or even a student in an introductory
sociology course doing research for a term paper for my class? Have you ever gone
online and pretended to be someone you weren’t? How many people do you know
who have done that?
Obviously, one cannot rely solely on the information gathered in such chat rooms.
(In my case, I decided I had to interview them in person.) But any new method can
be embraced only with caution and only when accompanied by research using more
traditional methodologies.
In fact, it is often the combination of different methods—secondary analysis of
already existing large-scale survey data coupled with in-depth interviews of a subsam-
ple—that are today providing the most exciting research findings in the social sciences.
You needn’t choose one method over another; all methods allow you to approach social
life in different ways. Combined in creative combinations, research methods can shed
enough light on a topic that many of its characteristics and dynamics can become clear.
CHAPTER REVIEW 135Chapter
Review1.Why do sociological methods matter? Sociological
methods are the scientific strategies used to collect data
on social happenings. The methodology one chooses has
an effect on the questions one asks and the answers one
gets from research. Sociologists follow the rules of the
scientific method; this means their arguments must be
backed up by data that are systematically collectedand analyzed. Research is also divided between quanti-
tative research, which is statistically based, and qualita-
tive research, which is used to understand the texture of
social life and is text based.2.How do sociologists do research? Sociological research
follows eight basic steps. First, choose an issue. Then