ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the social research process. It considers the impact of the researcher, and the place of theory and research findings in the research process. Once socio-economic development was accounted for, the relationship between a nation’s seafood consumption and homicide was no longer statistically significant; socio-economic development, however, retained a strong negative relationship with both seafood consumption and homicide. People’s epistemological position will affect what they consider to be knowledge or evidence of things in the social world. Irrespective of whether theory guides the research, sociologists need to know what other researchers have already found out about the topic and the methods they have used to carry out this research. The chapter provides an overview of research design and how sociologists go about finding the people they want to research. Finally, the chapter examines the standard structure of journal articles and some of the techniques of analysis employed by sociologists.
