Category Research Methods

Understand the tools of sociology—qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Explore how researchers study society and navigate ethical dilemmas in sociological research.

Four Ways of Knowing in Sociology: Positivism, Interpretivism, Critical Realism and Pragmatism

Illustration divided into four panels around a central compass and globe, showing four ways of seeing the social world: quantitative measurement, shared meaning and ideas, hidden structures beneath the surface, and practical tools for building solutions.

Sociology is not just about what we study, but how we think we can know anything about the social world. This explainer introduces four major epistemological approaches – positivism, interpretivism, critical realism and pragmatism – and shows how each one answers basic questions about reality, knowledge and methods. Aimed at undergraduate sociology students, it offers a clear map of the terrain and helps you understand why different writers disagree about what counts as good evidence or explanation.

Reflexive but Unrecognised: Misreading Critical Research in the Doctoral Review

Anguished Doctoral Student

Doctoral progress reviews are framed as supportive and developmental. Yet for candidates pursuing reflexive, critical, or non-linear research, they often become spaces of misrecognition—where methodological ambiguity is pathologised, and intellectual risk is penalised. This article interrogates how audit logics, shaped by structures like the REF, reframe scholarly inquiry as compliance. It argues for a higher education culture that values complexity, temporal nuance, and epistemic diversity over bureaucratic legibility.