2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Advertisements

REPORT THIS AD

ReviseSociology Menu

 Home  positivism  Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Karl Thompson — 1 Comment

Positivism and Interpretivism in Social

Research

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 1/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Positivism and Interpretivism are the two basic approaches to research methods in Sociology. Positivist
prefer scientific quantitative methods, while Interpretivists prefer humanistic qualitative methods. This
post provides a very brief overview of the two.

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 2/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Positivism
Positivists prefer quantitative methods such as social surveys, structured questionnaires and
o icial statistics because these have good reliability and representativeness.
Positivists see society as shaping the individual and believe that ‘social facts’ shape individual
action.
The positivist tradition stresses the importance of doing quantitative research such as large scale
surveys in order to get an overview of society as a whole and to uncover social trends, such as the
relationship between educational achievement and social class. This type of sociology is more
interested in trends and patterns rather than individuals.
Positivists also believe that sociology can and should use the same methods and approaches to
study the social world that “natural” sciences such as biology and physics use to investigate the
physical world. By adopting “scientific” techniques sociologists should be able, eventually, to
uncover the laws that govern societies just as scientists have discovered the laws that govern the
physical world.
In positivist research, sociologists tend to look for relationships, or ‘correlations’ between two or
more variables. This is known as the comparative method,
0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 3/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Interpretivism
An Interpretivist approach to social research would be much more qualitative, using methods
such as unstructured interviews or participant observation
Interpretivists, or anti-positivists argue that individuals are not just puppets who react to
external social forces as Positivists believe.
According to Interpretivists individuals are intricate and complex and di erent people experience
and understand the same ‘objective reality’ in very di erent ways and have their own, o en very
di erent, reasons for acting in the world, thus scientific methods are not appropriate.
Intepretivist research methods derive from ‘social action theory‘
Intereptivists actually criticise ‘scientific sociology’ (Positivism) because many of the statistics it
relies on are themselves socially constructed.
Interpretivists argue that in order to understand human action we need to achieve ‘Verstehen‘, or
empathetic understanding – we need to see the world through the eyes of the actors doing the
acting.

Positivism and Interpretivism Summary Grid 

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 4/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 5/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and
Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students
through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers
1 and 3.

Contents include:

74 pages of revision notes

15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
Five theory and methods essays
‘How to write methods in context essays’.

Related Posts 

Links to more detailed posts on Positivism and Social Action Theory are embedded in the text above.
Other posts you might like include:

Positivism in Social Research 

Max Weber’s Social Action Theory

The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, A Summary

Links to all of my research methods posts can be found at my main research methods page.

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 6/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Advertisements

REPORT THIS AD REPORT THIS AD

Categories: positivism, Social Theory (A2)

Tags: anti-positivism, interpretivism, positivism, qualitative, quantitative, research, Sociology

 Is Childhood Disappearing? Positivism, Sociology and Social Research 

1 thought on “Positivism and Interpretivism in Social

Research”

lahiru
January 3, 2017

It’s better to explain with example,but this explanation is very good.thnks…

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 7/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Leave a Reply
Enter your comment here...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

 Search …

Revision Mind Maps and Revision Notes for Sale

 All My A Level Sociology Revision Resources

 Crime and deviance revision notes

 Families and Households Revision Bundle

 Sociology of Education Revision Bundle

 Theory and methods revision bundle

Top Posts & Pages

Education
Families and Households
Crime and Deviance
Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research
Research Methods in Sociology - An Introduction
The Functionalist Perspective on the Family
Exams, Essays and Short Answer Questions
The Marxist Perspective on Education
Merton's Strain Theory of Deviance
The Functionalist Perspective on Education
0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 8/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

Social

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,607 other subscribers.

Email Address

Follow

Blog Stats

9,939,848 hits

Categories

 A level sociology exam practice (62)

 A-levels (47)

 ageing population (3)

 Agencies of development (7)

 Aid, trade and debt (9)

 Alternatives (2)

 America (4)

 Beliefs in Society (21)

0
 Big data (9)   
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 9/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

 blogging (1)

 Book summaries (68)

 Careers and alternative careers (9)

 Childhood (14)

 Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism (1)

 Consumerism (2)

 Contemporary Sociology (4)

 content analysis (3)

 Countries (9)

 Crime and Deviance (88)

 Culture and Identity (15)

 Demography (10)

 digital education (4)

 Digital nomads (1)

 Digital sociology (1)

 education (134)

 Education Policy (17)

 Emotions (1)

 Environmental problems and sustainable development (3)

 Essay plans (24)

 Ethnicity (15)

 Exams and revision advice (99)

 experiments (7)

 Families and Households (89)

 Family diversity (13)

 Feminism (25)

 Functionalism (18)

 Fundamentalism (3)

 Gender (5) 0
  
 Global
SearchDevelopment
products… (82)
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 10/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

 Globalisation (41)

 Health (5)

 Health (1)

 In-school factors (2)

 India (3)

 Indicators of development (10)

 Industrialisation and urbanisation (4)

 inequality (3)

 Key Sociology Concepts (3)

 Longitudinal studies (1)

 Marriage, Divorce and Cohabitation (11)

 Marxism (28)

 Media (22)

 methods in context (8)

 migration (1)

 Millennials and Youngers (1)

 Moral Panic (2)

 Neoliberalism and The New Right (16)

 New Age (2)

 New Right (4)

 news values (1)

 participant observation (3)

 positivism (3)

 Postmodernism and Late Modernsim (31)

 Pot Luck (50)

 private documents (2)

 Race and Ethnicity (11)

 Religion (51)

 religious organisations (10) 0

  
 research methods (82)
Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 11/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

 Revision (5)

 right and le realism (6)

 secularization (5)

 Sex and gender (45)

 Social Action Theory (Interpretivism and Interactionism) (11)

 social change (1)

 Social class, wealth and income inequalities (35)

 Social media (5)

 social mobility (1)

 Social Policies (15)

 Social Theory (A2) (71)

 Sociological concepts (39)

 Sociology and science (2)

 Sociology in the News (27)

 Sociology on TV (17)

 Sociology soundtrack (3)

 South Korea (1)

 state crime (1)

 Statistics (16)

 subcultures (1)

 Suicide (1)

 surveys (3)

 teaching and learning theory (13)

 technology (6)

 Theories of development (23)

 Transnational corporations (12)

 USA (2)

 War and conflict (8)

 Work (8) 0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 12/13
2/8/2019 Positivism and Interpretivism in Social Research – ReviseSociology

© ReviseSociology 2019
Built with Storefront & WooCommerce.

0
  
 Search products…
https://revisesociology.com/2015/05/18/positivism-interpretivism-sociology/ 13/13