Interpretive Sociology

In every field of study, researchers come up with a variety of approaches in order to attain information and share it, based on how they perceive it to be best achieved. In the discipline of sociology, there are three major ways to conduct research about the social world: positivist, interpretive and critical sociology. These three research orientations differ in a few ways, and a sociologist may prefer to use one over another, but not one method could empirically be considered better than the other, because they are each unique in the requirements, restraints and ways they collect and use the data. Although dissimilar, each of these research perspectives is important to be aware of, since they all ultimately have the same goal: to learn more

Sociologists who prefer this way of study argue that the focus of sociological experimentation should be on the interpretation of human actions in order to understand why people create different meanings in their lives. Instead of focusing on the raw scientific facts and data, as with positivist sociology, interpretive sociology focuses on human actions and interaction. Scientists in this field conduct experiments by means of face-to-face contact with their subjects, creating relationships in a natural setting rather than observing their subjects in a laboratory. Interpretivists want not just observe what they do quantitatively, but they want to know why they do the things that they do. They believe that humanity makes reality subjective, and we as a society thrive on the fact that every action, thought and feeling has

They do have restrictions, however not one method is better for collecting information than the others. They each just have different means and aims of study, positivist, being neutral scientific data, interpretive, being the meanings humanity attaches to their actions, and critical sociology, being more political, with the desire to make the world a better place. A sociologist who is more politically driven may prefer critical sociology, while one who is nonpolitical, or wants to focus more on scientific data may prefer positivism. All three methods are unique in the ways that the sociologist collects and applies the information they discover, but each approach is useful, depending on one’s goal as a