OrientationObservationIn-depth interviewsDocument analysis and semiologyConversation and discourse analysisSecondary Data
SurveysExperimentsEthicsResearch outcomes
Conclusion
8.2.5 The social survey as a non-positivist method Although the social survey is mainly associated with the quantitative approach it has also been used by critical social researchers and phenomenologists. It is not the survey itself but the use to which it is put in the quantitative approach that makes it quantitative.
Critical social researchers use the survey for collecting information but, rather than try to establish causal factors, they use it to provide an overview of social processes and structures in the same way that 'official statistics' are used as material for dialectical analysis (see Section 2.4.2).
Some phenomenologists, particularly interactionists, also make use of surveys, but as exploratory or initial material that needs to be analysed in more detail. Surveys that provide aggregate statistical material, they argue, hide social processes; phenomenologists seek to uncover what is going on 'behind the mask' of social surveys.
