Surveys
Direct analysis or surveys in sociology involve interview that go hand in hand. Surveys enable sociologists to get a wider scope of the results in terms of the sample size, and information can be collected from a lot of people. Moreover, technology enables to submit surveys to a lot of people through the internet by using e-mail, or the social media that in turn enables to save money and time as compared to the mailing out of the paper surveys. With the surveys, the researchers struggle in order to have the questions, which are most applicable and they have to do struggle for getting the survey responses (Sharm, 1996).
Interviews
Interviews are considered as micro-version of the surveys. The researcher can conduct the interview via telephone, in person or over the internet. Interviews allow researchers to get accurate information. The time required for the conduction of the interviews, and to find the willing respondents who are applicable to the sample, however, make this method less effective for most of the studies, but in case the research is on a limited population, then interviews can give desirable results (Browne, 2011). The sociologists can ask open-ended as well as close-ended questions in order to get information from people about the subject matter.
Furthermore, the interviews are philosophically justified, in a way that the researcher is not aware of the facts, so by interviewing with people they can collect their responses and help them to analyze the behavior of different individuals, philosophy in this regard is associated with humans via society and social world. In the case, the researcher is conducting face to face interview, he/she can note the expressions and the behavior of the respondent. In this regard, philosophy helps in analyzing the social behavior and the interpretation of the social institutions and society in terms of the ethical values instead of the empirical relations. It also helps in having an idea about the social contexts for the moral, legal, political, and the cultural questions in order to develop a new theoretical framework that makes the interview process easier for the researcher.
Research Methods Used in Cultural Anthropology
Further, there are many research methods in the cultural anthropology, the two important research methods that are used in cultural anthropology are:
- Direct Observation
- Surveys
The direct observation in cultural anthropology helps the anthropologists in obtaining and observing information from the informants of the group under study. In the direct observation, the researcher directly observes the respondent and his perception enables him to understand the respondent. Survey research in cultural anthropology comprises of the collection and the analysis of the information, which is gathered via a questionnaire and interviews. Survey research allows the researchers to study the population more deeply as compared to the direct observation. However, it also allows the researcher to collect the information on the population in an effectual manner as compared to other methods.
The philosophical justifications for the survey research can be analyzed from the philosophical research concepts of positivism and Interpretivism. The positivism is associated directly with the objectivism that plays its role in the collection of the general information as well as data from the large sample instead of emphasizing on the research details. So, the survey research is philosophically justified. Additionally, interpretivism is considered as the social constructionism. The interpretivism, however, provides significance to the values and beliefs in order to give appropriate justifications for the research problem.
Comparison and Contrast of Anthropological and Sociological Approaches
The cultural anthropologists and the sociologists use innovative research methods in order to get the required information. Some of the research methods that are used in both fields are similar. Some of the techniques are, however, different due to the difference in the focus of the study and philosophical justifications.
The researchers in sociology are concerned with the study of the social institutions (Anderson & Taylor, 2007). The two important methods that are employed by the sociologists are the surveys and interviews. Surveys allow study of the huge sample of population, and interviews allow getting the first hand information regarding the area of interest.
The researchers in anthropology are interested in determining the attitudes as well as the behaviors that are prevailing in the population (Peoples & Bailey, 2014). The most important research methods that are used in the anthropology are direct observation and surveys. Direction observation allows collecting the information directly just by observing, and surveys help in collecting in-depth information.
Both the approaches of sociologists, as well as anthropologists are concerned with understanding human behavior; both the approaches consider that surveys an important method for the collection of the information, so they are similar. They are, however, different, in a way that the anthropological approaches study the interaction among the people that are living in the society, and the cultural aspect, but the sociological approaches are concerned with determining the functions of the social institutions and how they are playing their role in managing the lives of people living in the society. The major focus of the anthropologists is on culture, but the major focus of the sociologists is on the society. Further, the social approaches consider the whole spectrum of the human interaction, social organization, and social structure by looking at the groups from small to the universal in scope. But, the anthropologists live with the groups; work in close collaboration with them for studying the holistic activity of the human interaction and human actions.
References
Anderson, M., Taylor, H. (2007). Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society, Nelson Education Limited, Canada
Browne, K. (2011). An Introduction to Sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge
Peoples, J., & Bailey, G. (2014). Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Nelson Education Limited, Canada
Sharma, R.K. (1996). Fundamentals of Sociology. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors Pvt. Limited, New Delhi
