Understanding of Social Science Explanations - Coursework Example

19 March Why does a critical understanding of social science explanations require anawareness of the methodological choices made by the researcher? The methodological choices made by the researchers in the field of social science are fundamental to the researchers’ understanding of the social science explanations. The methodology adopted in a research plays a big role in making the research reliable. The level of effort a researcher takes to convert the results into finding depends, to a large extent, upon the methodological approach employed to derive the results. While the quantitative methods sap the researchers’ tendency to play with the results, a researcher assumes great authority in the qualitative methodological designs to draw inferences from the data as per his/her individualistic understanding of the results and the interrelationships of variables. UNESCO with the ethical mandate that it carries asserts that “the social sciences should be put to use to improve human well-being, with a view in particular to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and responding to other global challenges, such as the social impacts of climate change” (“World Social Science Report” iv). This paper discusses the importance of awareness of the methodological choices made by the researchers in lending them a critical understanding of the social science explanations, with the help of discussion of examples of cold war and climate change from the social science. There are two fundamental types of paradigm that are used in the research of social science; positivist paradigm and antipositivist paradigm. The positivist paradigm emphasizes understanding human behavior through reason and observation. It asserts that true knowledge comes from the experience of senses, and observation and experimentation are the means to attain it. The positivist paradigm needs to be understood within the framework of assumptions of science that include parsimony, determinism, generality and empiricism. The positivist paradigm has been used in the educational research frequently in the past. In the area of social sciences, knowledge is acquired through the positivist paradigm in much the same way as in any other area of science, i.e. though quantitative methodology. However, it has been criticized because it does not account for the humans’ subjective states. The positivist paradigm considers human behavior to be controlled, passive and influenced by factors in the external environment. This means dehumanization of humans as their freedom, intention and individualism has been overlooked. Critics of the positivist paradigm suggest replacement of objectivity with subjectivity in scientific research. This laid the basis for anti-positivist inquiry which is also known as the naturalistic inquiry. There are three schools of though in the research in the area of social science that mark anti-positivism; symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and phenomenology (Dash, 2005). Symbolic interactionism emphasizes the interpretation of interactions among humans. This approach is primarily based on the concept that humans tend to interpret and define one another’s behavior rather than just reacting to actions. Use of language helps mediate the interaction among humans in the social world. “Symbolic interactionists, therefore, claim that by only concentrating attention on individuals’ capacity to create symbolic all y meaningful objects in the world, human interaction and resulting patterns of social organizations can be understood” (Dash, 2005). Ethnomethodology deals with everyday-life. Ethnomethodologists believe that theoretical concerns are the outcomes of process of construction of common sense reality in the face-to-face interaction which takes place in everyday life. The main interest of ethnomethodologists is the interpretation used by people to make sense of specific events or social settings. The theoretical view-point of phenomenology is based on the assumption that human behavior is governed by one’s experience with the phenomena which takes place through direct interaction. Any type of external reality is sidelined. Humans tend to develop new experiences with the help of inferences drawn from various phenomena. In order for the researcher to identify and interpret the thoughts that led others to display certain behaviors, it is imperative that the researcher has an empathic understanding. Symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and phenomenology emphasize the interaction between humans and daily-life phenomena and require a qualitative approach to the social inquiry rather than quantitative. The statistical procedures adopted for research have a great impact on the extent of information that can be retrieved from them. For example, the significance test helps the researcher compare the likelihood of correctness of the null and the research hypothesis. Significance tests are of huge importance in a range of areas of research particularly in the social sciences. The significance tests can sometimes lead the process of research to an altogether new way depending upon the findings of the research. Two of the most important examples of social science that require the researchers to have a critical understanding of the methodological approaches in order to understand the phenomena involved are the cold War and the climate change. They are discussed as follows: “The end of the Cold War presents a rich research agenda for historians, political scientists, sociologists, and scholars in many other disciplines” (Suri 90). For the social scientists who are engaged in the study of international relations, the end of cold war declares the commencement of the development of a “post-methodology”. This development has been made a substantial task by the failure of the conventional theories’ prediction to estimate the end of the cold war. “When the political scientist asks what post methodology is for him/her or whether there should be a methodology at all, we face the harsh reality that very few, if any, International Relations theorists who aimed to forecast the future course of world events were able to predict the end of the Cold War or accounted for the changes associated with it” (Herrberg). Explanation of the role of heresthetics in the end of the cold war is limited. The involvement of individual cases to a broader theory of heresthetics is subjectively known (Evangelista 32). There is lack of consensus upon the theory on methodology in the international relations’ literature from the post-cold war period. This has caused the post-cold war literature to limit itself to an entirely descriptive approach. Despite the fact that gaps in the international relations that prevailed during the cold war era have been considerably filled by such approaches, the need of theory and methodology cannot be overemphasized as a theory derives its concrete meaning from the methodology. On the other hand, if theory is employed without methodology, observations thus produced lack analytical power. Climate change has become one of the most important problems of the contemporary age. A lot of research has gone into the exploration of factors responsible for the change of climate and the extent to which, the change of climate is actually a threat to the sustenance of life of Earth. However, most of the research on climate change has been done by the natural scientists and the contribution of social scientists is limited. According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, there is greater need of the involvement of social scientists in the research pertinent to climate change. “Speaking as a natural scientist, I think 90% of research [on global change] will have to be done by the social scientists” (Schellnhuber cited in Peterson). Schellnhuber considers the social scientists more appropriate than physicists for conducting research on climate change because of the greater tendency of the physicists to project a vivid description of the climate threats and assure the concerned authorities of the usefulness of technological solutions in this regard. Social scientists are better positioned to make a massive social and economic transformation happen in the shortest time. While there is no doubt that increased involvement of the social scientists in the study of climate change will be beneficial, Schellnhuber’s argument emphasizes upon a general negligence of the social scientists when he says, “the social science community [hasnt] grasped the scope of the challenge” (Schellnhuber cited in Peterson), because of the focus of a vast majority of the social scientists upon local communities. However, importance of consideration of the local communities to explain the behavior of a wider population cannot be overemphasized. Concluding, the methods a researcher employs including observation and interpretation in the research in any area of social science need to signify the fact that people tend to develop their own concepts of social reality consciously or unconsciously. Social science is a very complex area of research as there are myriad of factors that control a certain phenomenon or behavior. Even with the extreme level of care taken by the social scientists, there remains a certain level of lack of surety about the determination of all controlling factors. In order to acquire true knowledge through research in the field of social science, it is imperative that the researchers capture the quality of people’s definitions, meanings, concepts and interpretations. Social research is influenced by people’s individualistic understanding and interpretation of the phenomena in the world. This is what inculcates subjectivity in the inferences drawn by the researcher. For optimal results, it is advisable for the researchers to base their methodology on the anti-positivist paradigm as it understands the complexity and subjectivity involved in the quantification of information retrieved from the participants in the social research. References: Dash, N. K. (2005). Module: Selection of the Research Paradigm and Methodology. Retrieved from http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/researchmethods/Modules/Selection_of_methodology/index.php. Evangelista, Matthew. “Norms, Heresthetics, and the End of the Cold War.” Journal of Cold War Studies. Vol. 3. No. 1. pp. 5-35. 2001. Herrberg, Antje. “The Post-Cold War Order and the Search for New Research Methodologies for the Political Scientist.” n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. . Peterson, Garry. “Should climate change research be 90 percent social science?” Resilience Science. 28 Apr. 2009. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. . Suri, Jeremi. “Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?” Journal of Cold War Studies. Vol. 4. No. 4. pp. 60-92. 2002. “World Social Science Report.” 2010. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. . Read More