ABSTRACT
It is appropriate to conclude with a recapitulation of what I can only conceive of as the new rules of sociological measurement. Unlike other authors in this respect, my use of the phrase ‘methodological rules’ is not meant ironically. These rules are intended to constitute a programme for sociological research. They are not, of course, prescriptions to be followed blindly, without interpretation, which will somehow lead automatically to objective data. They are rules in the sense of all methodological rules described in Chapter 1, in that they are constraining as well as enabling, and they are the medium and outcome of the research that they recursively organize. Above all is the fact that, although they are reproduced as goals-to-be-striven-after, they are to be discovered in the routine logic-in-use of research practitioners.
