ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what methodology means and offers some advice on understanding the methodological and on applying their lessons to other sociological reading. In the fields of logic, education, and statistics, methodology has special, technical meanings. All of its sociological uses, however, conform to the dictionary definition of the "science of method." Methodology, then, is not everlasting, revealed truth. It is a living body of ideas that changes with time. Literary critics, historians, and even some sociologists picture social research as a mechanical process of turning people into numbers. As the abstract study of empirical research procedures, methodology is presumably even more guilty of this dehumanization. The criteria and principles play a key part in assessing the work of empirical investigators and methodologists alike. Good criteria lead to useful criticism and better research. In addition, another experienced researcher sat alongside him as an observer-interviewer.
