ABSTRACT

Research methods and procedures are matter to which sociologists have always given a great deal of attention. Examination of our own research behavior would reveal a set of extra-scientific factors, also essentially external, that limits or otherwise influence the selection of research procedures. In consequence of the nominalistic bias, we tend to examine individuals and to come out with generalizations about numbers of individuals rather than about groups. Students of attitudes and opinions have been particularly addicted to this bias. In little of their research is there evidence of any organic conception of the public or public opinion. A statement of the probable frequency with which behavior of a certain kind occurs under the complex conditions of real life, though interesting and useful, is not a scientific statement no matter how valid and reliable the instruments were by means of which it was derived. Nor is a measure of a historic trend or a diagnostic inference.