Full transcript of “Definition and History of Social Research | Social Research as a Science”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Hello, you're welcome. You're welcome onto my channel today and it gives me great joy to observe you are viewing this video. I am professorena a lecturer in the university. On this channel, I do a number of stuff for all the stuffs I do research is central. Meanwhile, if you have not subscribed to this channel, kindly go ahead and click subscribe on your screen right now. Tap subscribe on your screen right now so you might be alerted every time I drop new video. The video today is on definition and history of social research. Uh I will also talk about social research as a science in this video. So I take them together. I'll tell about what social research is and what what can we say the general
0:47 history of research uh so that we can travel from the past to the present so that we can know where we might head in research. I want to talk about how scientific social research is is. Um social research is very important uh in understanding human behavior you know in society. We don't want to begin to use common sense to solve human problem or to understand human problem. Then that will make us be very random individuals who just talk with evidence. Evidence is very important to for us to be able to make informed decisions and understand human behavior and be able to project and predict human behavior. So what then is social research? Social research can be just be regarded as a systematic systematic empirical investigation into
1:34 or about human behavior or about phenomena in society. So you know can we say is is a systematic process of gathering data or systematic process of studying social problems or occupational problems or wherever you have many people or what we say social because many people are involved where you have two or more people group or a group of people or groups of people relating among themselves is social and that once we have the relationship ship. Once you have people relating in a social envir in an environment in group then we talk about social. So when you conduct research in a part concerning a group of
2:20 people to understand their problems or their human behaviors or the patterns and trends then we're talking about social research. So social research will have to do with systematic empirical investigation into social problems or human behaviors or societal phenomena. So once you follow systematic process not just common sense then you're talking about about social research and this systematic process that's a very key word that is you follow methodical approach you deploy methodology that follow laid down procedure then that's what make it science you know sometimes about science people talk about laboratory chemistry physics
3:08 biology bney we call Those ones natural sciences sometime we call them mature sciences. It's not the laboratory that makes science science. What makes science science is the methodical approach, systematic approach that follows laid down procedure. That's what makes science. So and in social research we use methodology. Uh I have videos on this channel on view my video my playlist on social research. I have playlist on sociology. I have playlist on research. I have video on playlist on relationship. I have videos on my playlist of migration. So view my playlist on on social on research. You have so many videos on research. I have
3:55 videos on you know quitive method, quitive method, sampling experiment so many videos that you can view. So view the playlist and exploit systematic one after the other. So science what makes social research a science is the fact that it follows methodical approach standardized methodology. I have a video methodology on this channel. View it and you we g data systematically. We analyze data systematically. We interpret data method systematically. We write reports systematically. And these once we follow these paradigms, establish paradigms, establish perspectives within the scientific realm, social science realm.
4:42 Then we talk about social research as a science is a systematic. So I have you know and I want you to know this very well. I have a video on sociology science or something you know and this we have more insight into that. If you can view my video on socialology science prof is also in the social sciences employment and human relations or employment relations and human resources management is also in management and social sciences. So you you can understand the scientific nature of of social sciences and employment relations and human resources management or others discipline in social sciences. We follow the same path but we study human beings. So researches that are conducted into human beings in groups or human beings
5:29 as individual agency is you know these researches are considered social research because it's for the human beings. So and why do we do social why do we conduct social research? We conduct social research so that we can discover. You want to discover those scientists want to discover verify and refine knowledge. That's what we call it research. It's possible that research has been done before. It can be about labor turnover, motivation, can be about deviant behavior, strike and sitting, a lot of other problems, poverty, health issues epidemiology. So you may want to do the research again to find out new areas, new patterns, new
6:16 trends. That's what research. You are searching and you are researching. You are searching again to discover, to verify, to revine knowledge through systematic data collection, systematic data analysis, systematic data interpretation because data don't speak for themselves. You have to inter interpret data and when you you know and social research focuses on group on social groups as they relate and this is where is very important in the place of work because people work that's why you have you have people who relate whether in context of work or even in families or nonwork environment. So and social
7:01 research looks at patterns of events, trends of event or or or patterns of problems or pattern of challenges and trends over time so that we can make informed decisions and social research also we use primary data and secondary data. Primary data can be regarded as data that you collect that you collected yourself for that purpose. You want to understand rape in the place of war or sexual gender based violence in the place of work for example you can g data to understand you can design questionnaire you can conduct in-depth interview meanwhile I have many videos on data collection on this channel view that those videos I have video on in-depth interview I have videos on key format interview observation case study
7:47 live history archival method I have video on questionnaire so view all those videos in line with this video and they will assist you. So you you you look at you conduct primary collect primary data. These are one you design particularly for your work. You can also use secondary data data that have been gathered before but you want to use them maybe they are similar to what you might need in your work. For example, you can use Central Bank data, Bank of England data, Bank of America data, World Health Organization data, UNICEF data, you know, and Bureau of Statistics data. They are already collected. So you can use them to assist your own work. So that those are the kind of data we we regard as secondary data because they
8:33 are secondary because you did not collect them yourself. So and you can also in social dist use quantitative method and qualitative method. Quantitative method talk about using questionnaire because you want to quantify. You want to get percentages, you want to get mean, you want to get variance, standard deviation, multiple regression, logistic regression, correlation. These are levels of analysis. Then you can also do qualitative method. You can collect textual data that you don't want to quantify and you can use the two we call it triangulation or mixed method approach. I have video on triangulation on this channel. I have video on mixed method approach on this channel design. So view you will find them very useful.
9:18 You can combine the two. So and you do conduct social research method to explore to describe to explain so that you can project human human behavior to solve the problem or you want to predict social life. We have not reached the level of prediction of human behavior in so in in social sciences. We are at the level of projection. So we can project uh because prediction is basically exact and difficult to be able to predict human action because now beings are rational beings. They have emotions. So there will be a little bit of problem to predict but we can project to a certain extent. So but prediction is in the natural sciences. We also call them mature sciences. So there what are then
10:05 the characteristics of social research is scientific in approach because it follows systematic laid down procedure systematic pro methodology. It involves interaction between ideas and evidence. You have ideas there's a problem then you have you want to gather evidence about it. So it involves interactions between ideas and evidence. Then it chooses specialized tools. I've told you about questionnaire. I've told you about qualitative method. These are tools of data collection. We have quantitative method approach. We have qualitative approach. These are specialized approaches. So we call them we we use this specialized tools. So and this makes so standardized and systemat systematic. And if we want to focus on
10:50 accuracy, you want to g accurate data because it's scientific. You want to objectivity to avoid bias. That's how you collect data. You don't want to use common sense. You want your approach to be reliable. That is other researchers can follow your steps to get the same result. I have a video on reliability in this on this channel. And validity. Validity means you also want your research to be able to measure what is set out to measure your objectives. You want to measure it in a very, you know, in a very determined way that is able to achieve the purpose. So view the video on objectivity. view the video on reliability also and it's also to understand social regularities and irre irregularities. You want to understand
11:36 the patterns are there regularities are there irregularities in this problem and you want to solve the problems you want to understand it and you can also it can also be used to improve practical um practical situations. You can solve problems where you talk about applied research. For example, you want to understand why there's labor labor high labor turnover in an organization. Why there is rape prevalence of rape where there's prevalence of gender based violence where there's preence of poverty where there's prevalence of disease malaria or HIV AIDS in a particular society. So you want to be able to study this problem so you can solve the problem practically. This is applied intervention. But you can also you can also have a social that is just
12:22 pure and theoretical. You can want to design a new methodology. You may want to formulate a new theory or you want to design a granded theory. You want to you want to propound a grand theory. So it's not all social research that you want to solve you want to use to solve problems. Sometime you may just want to be to contribute to knowledge. So it can be purely purely theoretical can be pure can be pure I can be applied. So let's look at history of social research. So I've been able to demarcate this history into five. Number one, I talk about pre 1820 era in social research. I this is what we call prehistory. Generally this is the period we call the gentleman scientists. Gentlemen scientist. These are scientists who never they didn't go
13:08 to the field to collect data. We also call them armshare scientist. They sit on an armshare like I'm sitting here and they just start talking providing solutions to problem. This is also a period we talk about the philosopher king. You know philosophers just see people like Aristotle, August, I mean people like Aristotle, Squina, St. Augustine, Plato, you know, and all Pythagoras and all the rest of them all those scientists you know who did not go to the field because gentlemen scientists just sit on in their room in their garden just start talking and providing solution. But that's the way science emerge. We also call them amisha amisha scientists but you also have the period of 1820 to 1900 that's 19th century to 20th century you have the
13:55 rise the rise of statistical studies at this point people begin to talk about science I mean bringing statistics into it they want to understand poverty they want to understand health problems so the rise of statistical analysis statistical studies you know emerged in the 1820 to 1900 you know period you know but what you see is the advancement in methodology advancement in measurements advancement in attempt to be more accurate that's what you see in this periodization in history so so you have to bear in mind that progression that to be exact then you have the period of 1890s to 1930s this is the period of development we talk about the rise of social sciences at this point in
14:41 time you talk about formal methodology formal analysis methodology. We say from pre pre 1820 we call preera to 1820 1900 18 1890 to 1930. Now you see more advancement in social science methodology formalization of methodology. It moved beyond people just doing their science to become formal. This is a period of paradigms paradigm. View my video on Thomas K. the history of scientific revolution you know the the the you know the issue of paradigm in ter of the structure of scientific revolution you know was talking Thomas was talking about paradigm how science evolve and emerge we're talking about falsification at those
15:27 period to test theories to see how valid they can be falsification I have a video on that fifation so view that video on falsification view that video on the structure of scientific revolution you know uh I want to talk aboutology as a science because social research is a science because it follows methodical systematic I mention many videos for you I mention many videos when you review those videos so that you can have high level knowledge then you have the period of 1830s to I mean 1930s to 1980 we talk 1980s we talk about the positive science the period of positive science we talk about the shift to more statist statistical rigor rigorous statistics talk about ANOVA you talk advanced statistics, you know, beyond just formal
16:13 formal methodology to advanced statistical measurement. Talk about control, talk about experiments, talk about, you know, advanced statistics, multiple regression, logistic regression, correlation. This this period gave rise to advanced statistics in in in fact is the period of statistical error in social research. Then we have now the contemporary social research era or modern and postmodern social research era. This is the area we incorporate advanced technology periods of mixed method approach. We now move beyond me statistics to triangulating using advanced statistics and qualitative method you know ethnographic approaches. That's a research I just mentioned ethnography. View my videos on
17:00 on on research design, survey, ethnography and exploratory and the rest of them like that. View them. So we are in the era of contemporary social research period, modern social research period modern social research period. This is the era of incorporation of advanced statistics, advanced technology. We're talking about artificial intelligence. We're talking about new software arrow. We're talking about programming, you know, arrow and some other new softwarees and advanced statistics programming to do research in a way that we have more capacity to be more exact and be nearly predictive. So, and the area of mix and
17:46 triangulation. Wow. Till I see you in my next video, click subscribe and bye for now.
