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To provoke debate, the paper, after fifteen years, repeats and expands on an analysis of the use of empirical data and the role of quantification in articles published in some major British journals of sociology. The earlier paper argued that the training of undergraduates, and the influence and example of their teachers, tends to orient them, well before graduate education begins, towards particular kinds of research topic and, where empirical data are used, approaches employing no quantification or very simple techniques. It suggested this would be a self-reinforcing process unless there were far-reaching changes in undergraduate curricula which were unlikely to come about. It predicted that the divide between these aspects of British sociology and that practised in North America and many parts of Europe would widen further. British sociology has become somewhat more empirical over the past fifteen years, with the bulk of this expansion in the qualitative area. The more sophisticated quantitative approaches are not much more in evidence than before. This raises a number of questions which should be a matter of debate. It is worrying that the debate does not seem to be taking place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a research in British Departments of sociology. The aims of this paper are twofold. First, a set of quantitative indicators of research outputs and research inputs is constructed for all sixty-seven British sociology departments that were assessed in the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise so that individual departments can see how their own research profile compared with that of other departments during the assessment period. Secondly, this paper examines the statistical relationship between the research ratings awarded to departments of sociology and the various indicators of research inputs and research outputs that can be constructed from the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise database. Specifically, the aim is to discover the extent to which variations in the research rating between departments of sociology can be explained by these research input and research output indicators. This paper has shown that some interesting and potentially useful research indicators can be constructed at department level from the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise. In particular, it is possible for individual departments of sociology in Great Britain to compare their own research activity across a range of research output and research input indicators with the research activity of other departments.

Earlier work (Hope, 1974, 1975a) demonstrated 'no change' in social mobility between the Glass inquiry of 1949 and the Oxford inquiry of 1972. However the mobility investigated was that known as exchange mobility (other synonyms being pure, perfect, fluidity and circulation mobility), which is defined as departure of observed mobility from perfect mobility. When the man in the street speaks of mobility he usually means something much more specific, namely mobility up or down a vertical hierarchy. The present paper investigates the meaning of perfect mobility by disaggregating the model for it into discrete, additive components, and it shows how the vertical dimension may be represented in a mobility analysis by just one of the many degrees of freedom which are associated with exchange mobility. Implications for comparative analysis, and also for investigation of the relations between vertical and class mobility, are discussed. The theoretical developments of this paper stem from the apparently novel observation that the `additive model' of status inconsistency analysis is formally identical with the `perfect mobility' model of social mobility analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to Sara Delamont's paper in the February 2000 edition of Sociology which provides an account of the relationship between the sub-discipline, sociology of education, and parent discipline, sociology. Delamont argues that the hooligan is an anomalous beast for sociologists of education, who paradoxically revere him: while the sociology of education is an anomalous beast for the parent discipline, whose practitioners reject and fear it. Essentially, according to the author, the latter part of Delamont's argument amounts to the claim that the wider discipline of sociology has neglected sociology of education. The author notes that in this article, his response is concerned with Delamont's unsatisfactory characterization of British sociology of education. According to Delamont, sociology in Great Britain has two grand narratives, both male--one derived from the political arithmetic tradition is quantitative, empirical and focused on social mobility, and the other discursive and focused on anti-heroes: the portrayal of the rebellion or resistance of the hooligan. Delamont has attempted to characterize British ethnographic studies, which include some reference to anti-school/delinquent boys, and which have been conducted by male sociologists, as falling into the same category.

This paper reports on a postal survey of first year Sociology degree courses in the United Kingdom. The main feature of the results is their uniformity and traditionalism. Both polytechnics and universities work within considerable resource constraints in the first year, frequently teaching large numbers. Teaching relies heavily upon lectures and a highly planned course, with limited class/tutorial support. Although courses are constantly revised and few teachers appear satisfied, there is considerable consensus upon the contents of courses with a limited number of elements usually combined into one or more of a few recognizable types. The source of this constant revision yet limited range lies in the tension between the empirical aspiration to describe the social world and the complex issues raised by attempts to do so, the difficulty of which is often seen as frustrating to students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]