Introduction and further reading

Martin Bulmer

pp. 53-64

in: Martin Bulmer (ed), Sociological research methods, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984

Abstract

The social survey dominates empirical social research in Western industrial societies. A very large proportion of social research is carried out using these methods, and the majority of textbooks on research methods devote most attention to aspects of research design, sampling, data collection and analysis for social surveys. The social survey in its modern form is largely a British invention being first developed in the classical poverty surveys by Charles Booth on London ([1889-1902]; also Simey and Simey [1960], Pfautz [1967] ) and Seebohm Rowntree in York ([1902]; also Briggs [1961]). Sampling techniques were first employed by A. L. Bowley in a study carried out in 1912 in a study of social conditions in four English towns, enormously increasing the usefulness of surveys because they enabled inferences to be made about a population, within calculable margins of error, from a sample of only a very small fraction of that population (Bowley [1915]). Developments during the present century have carried on this tradition which is particularly closely linked to social policy and social administration in all its aspects (Abrams [1951]; Moser and Kalton [1971] Ch. 1).

Cited authors

Booth Charles