3. The Role of Theory in Research

Students often make the mistake of thinking of “theory” as something grand and complex. This may be because sociological theory classes present them with all-encompassing theories by the field’s intellectual titans, who put forward comprehensive accounts of how societies operate and evolve. But this view of theory can be counterproductive. It may be more useful to think of theory as simply a way of identifying and explaining patterns in what you observe. A lot of the work of theorizing boils down to applying simple logic—drawing inferences (conclusions) based on whatever data you have.

In this chapter, we’ll examine some of the mental abstractions you’ll need to employ to think like a researcher—among them, units of analysis, concepts, variables, and hypotheses. More broadly, we’ll explore the connections between social theories and social scientific research methods. We’ll also consider how our analytic and theoretical perspectives might shape, or be shaped by, our methodological choices. In short, we’ll answer the question of what theory has to do with research methods.

When we talk about theories in this chapter, we will discuss social scientists’ broad understandings of knowledge (paradigms), but we will also consider the smaller-scale theories that will typically be most helpful to you, the researcher, as you try to answer questions about the social world. It may be helpful to visualize the ways that both theory and data are nested, like Russian matryoshka dolls, with larger and smaller—more expansive and more restricted—phenomena operating at the same time.^[1] When we talk about levels of analysis later in this chapter, for example, we will be looking all the way down from phenomena at the micro level (such as individuals) all the way up to phenomena at a macro level (such as countries).

Conducting good research requires retraining your brain to think like a researcher. Skilled researchers know how to conduct observations in a methodical and systematic way, but they also can think in abstract terms about the importance of that data. They know how to identify hidden concepts and patterns within their data, and how to weave those patterns into theories that can be applied broadly. They move back and forth between conducting observations and generating theories based on those observations. In this chapter, we’ll give you a taste of how that’s done.

Opening chapter image credit: Lukas, via Pexels. Adapted by Bizhan Khodabandeh.