The Nexus of Theory and Research

Note: I don't know who all is following this, but lots of the next several posts are going to be those that are related to the prompts I am asking my students to journal.  '


We just ended the third week of classes and normally I'd feel pretty good about the pace of the semester, however, I was derailed by a fairly bad cold at the beginning of the week.  Next week should be better though, and hopefully I can get back on track for where I want to be with my classes then.

I'm also still fairly irked the the FBI has decided that keeping track of how many arrested individuals are male and how many are female is somehow not important after 86 years of record keeping...but whatever.

In research methods, we're discussing and thinking about the relationship between theory and research.  (Well, I am, anyway).  So, in applying that to my own projects right now, I'm seeing that talking about it in the abstract is not like doing it in the "real world" (which, likely, many of my students have already realized as well).

For "further along" project, I do not know what theory will best explain the results.  I am not well-versed on the types of theories that are prevalent in the sociology of religion, although thinking of the three major paradigms, I would imagine some type of either structural-functionalism or symbolic interactionism could be useful. Although, that may be premature; the research is almost strictly exploratory and descriptive.  It may be that I can use that to suggest future research of a more explanatory nature though.  Right now, the focus is developing what I call "theory-with-a-small-T." Are some denominations more actively religious than are others? Are families with children more or less religiously active than are families without children?  There may be other questions I decided to explore as well.  Perhaps from that, then, I can come up with my own "theory-with-a-capital-T," as in grounded theory, or the patterns are observed would follow what is predicted in an already developed theory.  For students, this is an example if inductive research.

For "new" project, I think this would best be classified as deductive research. Even though I started with a topic, my co-research and I immediately though of Goffman's theories of impression management and stigma (falling under the umbrella of the symbolic interactionist paradigm).  That has the benefits of providing readily available concepts to look for; however it can be somewhat restrictive. What if some things are discovered in the course of the research that don't fit neatly into that theory? Do we ignore them? Slightly revision the theory itself? Toss the theory away? All can and do happen in research. It just depends upon the best way to answer the research question.