Empirical Questions in Sociology

• Sociology is an empirical discipline using observation and data when discussing the social world.
• Sociology refrains from making judgments about what should be.
• Disagreements in everyday conversations often stem from differing values but are empirical in nature.
• Other times, we argue of empirical nature but disagree about values.

Empirical Questions

• Claims about moral status versus claims about social phenomenons are empirical questions.
• Example: Determining if sex workers in Vietnam are victims or workers necessitates an empirical question

Study of Female Vietnamese Sex Workers

• Research lasted 2 years.
• Hoang assessed 4 sex work bars, comparing economic trajectories, working conditions, and strategies used by sex workers in each context.
• Research involved local elites, "Viet Kieu" (Vietnamese men living abroad), white expats (Westerners in Vietnam), and western tourists

Sociological Data Collection

• To examine the social world, sociological researchers have to adopt an open-mind in their study.
• Durkheim suggests sociologists abandon preconceptions.
• While eliminating individual moral and political judgments may be impossible, social research requires bracketing these judgments.

Limitations

• Sociological data are collected during everyday life however such data is constrained by social positions.
• An individual's experience is not a reliable data source.
• The broad social world cannot be seen from an individual standpoint.

Making observations

• Sociologists make observations with systematic data collection from the social world.
• Sociology, as a discipline, is characterized by methodological pluralism.

Systematic Observation Step 1: Research Question

• Research Question: The question that a research project sets out to answer
• The researcher does not know the answer to the research question in advance
• (Hoang, 2015) Research questions about how sex workers end up in certain bars, intimate relationships, structure, management, why some go to bars for Westerners, and others to Vietnamese men bars.

Research Scope: Level of Analysis

• Macro-level: Social Institutions (The state, the economy, the education system, the media, the medical system - Higher Education)
• Meso-level: Individual organizations (schools, businesses, non-profit organizations, hospitals...The University of Manitoba)
• Micro-level: Small group interactions (i.e. between family members, friends, romantic partners, co-workers...The classroom)

Max Weber: Science as a Vocation

• Analyzing political structures/party positions differs from taking a practical political stance.
• Stating facts, figuring out math or logical relations, or the structure of cultural values differs from the value of culture and its individual contents.