A Measure for Measures: A Manifesto for Empirical Sociology

by R Pawson

Overview

First Published in 2004. This challenging and pioneering work aims to provide a measure (a set of standards) for measures (empirical data) in sociological research. It argues that the critique of positivism has resulted in a methodological impasse. Criticism has pulled the rug from under positivist method but left nothing in its place. In a devastating and systematic critique the author rejects phenomenological and relativist objections to sociological measurement. A wholly new model for the empirical substantiation of sociological theory is developed based on an examination of scientific measurement techniques and a reading of realist philosophical principles. Unlike many books heralding a new direction in sociology, A MEASURE FOR MEASURES goes beyond meta-theory, providing detailed examples to show how the 'new realism' can provide a viable empirical method.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138161825
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Series:	International Library of Sociology (Paperback)
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ray Pawson is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements, 1. Substantiating sociology, PART ONE: DESPERATE MEASURES, 2. Against variable analysis: thirty years on, 3. Against scaling: meaning and measurement, PART TWO: A MEASURE OF REALISM, 4. Theory and observation: squaring the circularity problem, 5. On being ‘empirical’ without being ‘empiricist’, PART THREE: PRACTICAL MEASURES, 6. From variables to mechanisms (and back again), 7. Closure: actualism versus realism, 8. Explanatory networks: the conceptual domain of class, 9. Choosing class concepts: from indicator selection to theory adjudication, 10. Constructing class data: imposition and control in the interview, 11. The new rules of sociological measurement, Bibliography, Index