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This article presents information on the periodical, Sociological Methodology. Sociological Methodology is a journal that seeks to publish excellent contributions to each and every one of the many and diverse research methodologies that sociologists use in their research,or that they would want to use, if they knew of these methods or how to adapt them to sociological analysis. Many think of sociological methodology as a synonym for statistics or quantitative research methods. These Pavlovian responses are unfortunate. The editors of Sociological Methodology have consistently sought outstanding papers on all sociologically useful methods, including those that are generally perceived to be non-statistical and non-quantitative. Sociological Methodology is a refereed journal. The editor picks referees to render opinions on papers,makes editorial decisions based substantially (but not entirely) on referee reports, protects reviewers' identities from wounded authors,and does his best to protect authors from unfair, incompetent, or simply mistaken reviews. The editor also does his best to protect authors from his own errors by attending carefully to the comments of reviewers and by honoring any reasoned request for reconsideration and re-review. The system works on a web of redundant checks and balances,overseen by the editor.

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 paper discusses Pinch and Clark's recent article on the strategies of market pitchers for managing local economic reasoning. We suggest that their research is illustrative of the lack of seriousness and relevance to social issues of a small proportion of sociological studies. In developing this argument, the paper considers the methodology, ethical issues and substantive content of the article. We conclude by noting that, whilst the study of the work of market pitchers is clearly an important research topic, such study should have regard to local social and economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the goals and methods of theoretical sociology. The chief goal of theoretical work is a theory in two parts-postulates and predictions-the key challenge being to minimize the number of postulates and maximize the number and variety of predictions. The paper discusses the distinctive character of the sentences in each part of the theory and, in light of that bipartite structure, the two main activities of theoretical analysis: (i) speculative thinking, whereby the theorist identifies the starting ideas for the postulates: and (ii) formal reasoning, whereby the theorist constructs the postulates and derives predictions from them. To illustrate the features of a theory and the tasks of theoretical analysis, the paper briefly sketches the theory of the distributive-justice force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first e-special issue for the journal Sociology and its chosen focus is the article ‘The coming crisis of empirical sociology’ by Savage and Burrows (2007). This article challenged sociologists with a variety of questions about the role, relevance and methodological opportunities for sociological research in the 21st century. On publication it stoked the already charged debates on a public sociology (Burawoy, 2004), the role of publicly funded research (ESRC, 2009) and relevance of sociological research in an age of burgeoning social media (Brewer and Hunter, 2006). This e-special provides a reprise of these debates and explores relevant papers in Sociology, as well as alerting readers to recurring themes and new directions on the topic of methods and social research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Event history data constitute a valuable source to analyze life courses, although the reliance of such data on autobiographical memory raises many concerns over their reliability. In this paper, we use Swedish survey data to investigate bias in retrospective reports of employment biographies, applying a novel model-based latent Markov method. A descriptive comparison of the biographies as reconstructed by the same respondents at two interviews carried out about 10 years apart reveals that careers appear simpler and less heterogeneous and have fewer elements and episodes when reported at a point long after their occurrence, with a particularly high underreport of unemployment. Using matching techniques, the dissimilarity between the two reconstructions turns out to be unaffected by respondents' sociodemographic characteristics but particularly affected by the occurrence of unemployment spells and career complexity. Using latent Markov models, we assume correlated errors across occasions to determine the measurement error and to obtain a more reliable estimate of the (true) latent state occupied at a particular time point. The results confirm that (correlated) measurement errors lead to simplification and conventionalism. Career complexity makes recall particularly problematic at longer recall distances, whereas unemployment underreporting also happens very close to the interview. However, only a small fraction of respondents make consistent errors over time, while the great majority makes no errors at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the status of generalisation in interpretive sociology. The case made is that generalisation is inevitable, desirable and possible. It is held that interpretivism must employ a special kind of generalisation, characterised here as moderatum. However, an acknowledgement that such generalisations can be made must bring us to specify the limits of generalisation in interpretive research. These limits are the limits of interpretivism itself and the paper concludes that this implies the adoption of methodological pluralism in order to realise the full potential of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent attempts to develop symbolic interactionist methodologies have sought to treat the interview as an object of sociological enquiry as well as a research instrument. But their accounts in terms of interactional rules and presentation of selves are primarily concerned with reactions to interviews, and the display of the interview setting in talk is treated as a resource rather than as a topic for investigation. Since such a reliance on the availability of phenomena is also a feature of the `natural attitude', lay and sociological usages of the interview share striking similarities. More specifically, both employ the documentary method of interpretation and, in order to claim a correspondence between theft accounts and some external reality, use remedies to counter misunderstandings. On the basis of tapes of selection interviews, the paper examines the competences and policies routinely adopted to provide for the contexting of talk as interview talk. Given that talk serves to display its setting (this is its reflexive character), talk becomes interview talk as members' managed accomplishment of a knowable context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical methodologies assume 'resolution into simple elements' as a necessary preliminary stage of scholarly investigation. They explicitly, or more often implicitly accept, therefore, that the conclusions reached reflect not only the phenomena analysed, but also the applied system of analytical subdivision. The paper explores and compares the main systems of analysis in current sociology: institutional, class and communal. It suggests a taxonomy of analytical systems and a cross-classification which is introduced to throw light on their conceptual properties at the societal as well as the individual level. It proceeds by discussing the issues of: (A) The societal roots of selection of analytical schemes in sociology; (B) The advantages and blind spots of the specific analytical systems; and (C) Attempts at the integration and reduction of analytical systems in contemporary sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]