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Volume 53 (2002 - 200･･･
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Volume 53, Issue 4
Displaying 1-16 of 16 articles from this issue
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Methodological and Ethical IssuesAtsushi SAKURAI2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 452-470
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSWhile social research has long taken root in modern society, many problems and difficult issues in social research remain unresolved. One of such unresolved issues is the conflict between the positivistic approach and the social constructionist approach. Another is the unequal relationship and ethical issues between the researcher and the respondent. While positivists take as real respondents' answers, social constructionists, on the other hand, assert that such answers are but fiction created in the course of an interview. This difference in stance leads to a difference in their research techniques. The researcher-respondent relationship is not only complicated by issues such as ethnicity, class and gender, which are structured in modern society, but is constituted inequitably in the interview process because where the researcher and the respondent place their goals and interests are different. It is an ethical imperative to strive for equity. Various methods are proposed to reduce hierarchical structures. Finally, the researcher has to be reflexive in social research.View full abstractDownload PDF (2184K) -
Shinsuke OTANI2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 471-484
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSMost Japanese local governments have conducted a variety of public opinion polls that are used to formulate General Planning Policies. Unfortunately, Japanese sociologists often rely on academic social surveys and pay little attention to these public opinion polls. I think it is very important to examine whether these polls accurately reflect citizen's opinions, because collecting and analyzing accurate data is fundamental to producing properly informed social policies.
From this point of view, I conducted a research on public opinion polls which were carried out by forty-four local governments in the Osaka Prefecture. In this research, I interviewed the staff responsible for each local government's poll. Besides these interviews, I collected all of the questionnaires of every opinion poll and assessed their quality. Through this study I discovered some serious inadequacies. Most of the staff responsible for the polls did not have a comprehensive knowledge of appropriate research methods. This lack of knowledge was evident in the results of questionnaire analyses, which indicated that only 34% of the questionnaires used methods that would accurately measure public opinion.
In order to conduct accurate opinion polls in the future, I would like to strongly emphasize that it is necessary for more sociologists to become actively involved in questionnaire design. This can be achieved by having sociologists educate the many people who are in charge of conducting opinion polls, and working with them to design questionnaires.View full abstractDownload PDF (1383K) -
Toru KIKKAWA2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 485-498
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSBrowsing through studies based on survey data analyses, we notice that approaches are divided into two different types : the so called verification of mathematical models and numerical monographs. The former aims to verify formalized hypothesis by empirical analyses. On the other hand, the latter tries to accumulate numerical evidence. Although most of the researchers themselves do not indicate their own directions, the difference can be traced to that of deductive formalization and inductive description of sociological theory.
Kenji Kosaka (2000) made the first contribution to clarify the former approach in the course of theorizing mathematical sociology. In this paper, I emphasize the importance of the other approach, namely describing monographs with numerical evidence.
After reviewing the methodological arguments, the differences are demonstrated by comparing empirical analyses of status identification in Japan conducted by Kosaka (2000) and Kikkawa (1999).
Then empirical studies of justice in contemporary Japan, on which researchers' numerous efforts have been unfruitful as yet, are examined. This shows the irrelevance of their methodological heterogeneity, as well as the strategic relevance of numerical monographs in sociological social psychology, especially when mathematical methods are found to produce deadlocked results.View full abstractDownload PDF (1541K) -
Motoji MATSUDA2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 499-515
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn recent years, the number of studies using, among others, ethnographic or life history techniques has increased dramatically in social research. In terms of methodology, in contrast to the rise of such studies, qualitative research-of which fieldwork research is representative-has been consistently left to occupy a marginal role. In addition, the movement of ideas that emerged in the mid-1980s and which showed steep skepticism towards ethnography was influential in a way that fundamentally refuted the potentialities of fieldwork-based ethnography. In view of these developments, we are compelled to ask if fieldwork research has a future.
When considering this question, the controversy on social research involving Nitagai and Nakano in the 1970s has lost none of its significance today. This controversy between Nitagai-who attempted to redefine research as a “partnership” between the researcher and the researched-and Nakano-who placed emphasis on the heterogeneity of the relationship between the two sides-has raised two important questions that have transcended time. The first one deals with perception of the self and individuality, and the second questions the possibility of a mutual understanding and exchange between two subjects holding differing viewpoints. The former forms part of the ontological debate on cooperation (solidarity) and the latter the epistemological debate on the perception of the researched from the researcher's logos and sensitivity.
This paper investigates the potentialities of a perception and understanding based on the perception of reality in fieldwork research.View full abstractDownload PDF (1846K) -
Kenji SATÔ2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 516-536
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThrough analyzing four versions of Yasuda Saburô's Handbook for Social Research, this article discusses the historical transformation in our consciousness concerning sociological method. The changes seen in these four editions of a standard reference book for use in school reveal a steady devaluing of sensitivity toward written texts. Yet “society, ” the site of sociological surveys, is itself a textual space, interwoven with descriptions and prescriptions. Yasuda's original vision clearly included researching on researches. I read the following three characteristics as unrealized potential of the handbooks. First, the handbooks reveal Yasuda's hope that the reader would share his own experience of finding surprise in little discoveries of practical knowledge. Second, the first handbook set up a multilayered process of social research that incorporated feedback rather than a simple assembly line-type of workflow for data processing. Third, at least at the initial stage, Yasuda clearly recognized the importance of other research techniques not encompassed by the handbook, such as the reading and analysis of family registers. In this sense the handbook was not intended to be viewed as complete and comprehensive. The practice itself of compiling handbooks conceived as common texts to be shared among researchers, more than the specific information that they contain, demonstrates Yasuda's “method” for collecting and handling social data within the textual space of society.View full abstractDownload PDF (2813K) -
Kazushi TAMANO2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 537-551
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the many difficulties social survey faces today in Japan. The response rate in social surveys has been decreasing for the last two decades. The reason why they fall is because a lot of subjects refuse to respond, or are absent from home at the time the survey is conducted, particularly in urban areas. But it is not because they are indifferent to social surveys. Rather, people became interested for what purpose, by what method the survey is carried out, and for whom it generates useful knowledge. Unconditional respect for social research conducted by universities has already disappeared in Japanese civil society. It is time for sociologists in Japan to show that social surveys and sociology as a science are useful to the people.View full abstractDownload PDF (1672K) -
Kazuo YAMAGUCHI2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 552-565
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSAs an extension based on the panel discussion in a symposium of the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Japan Sociological Society, I focus on the following five issues that I consider are relevant to the difficulty of social research. They are : (1) the concept of “the difficulty of social research;” (2) the necessity of panel surveys and its relation to the objective of social research; (3) the handling of imperfect data; (4) getting cooperation from survey subjects; and (5) informed consent and the protection of subjects' human rights.View full abstractDownload PDF (1643K) -
Taisuke MIYAUCHI2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 566-578
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSOne of the central arguments about fieldwork is the problem of the relation between the investigator and the subject. Not constrained to the sphere of ethics, this problem extends even to that of the methodological and the epistemological.
This paper presents “citizens' research” as a way to find socially meaningful practice from fieldwork, which is essentially polysemous. “Citizens' research” is also necessary in volunteer activities. Citizens' research is not a simplified version of professional research but in itself possesses original features and meanings. From ordinary people's perspective, it selects and combines various types of methodology with the objective to identify problems and find concrete solutions, whereas professional research is based on strict methodology and aims to contribute to a specific discipline. This paper also discusses what kind of social institution and mechanism should be created to make citizens' research become a socially powerful tool.View full abstractDownload PDF (1332K) -
Tomiaki YAMADA2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 579-593
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: April 23, 2010
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSI identify the difficulties encountered in the process of social research interview as produced through the ongoing interaction between the interviewer and the respondent; the unexpected outcomes from this interaction could sometimes interfere in the smooth accomplishment of the interview itself. From the standpoint of positivism, which is often taken for granted, as the basis for the sociological fieldwork, these difficulties are supposed to be eradicated by means of, e.g., the good rapport, appropriate ordering of questions and the good manner on the part of the interviewer. However, in terms of the dialogical social constructionism, these apparent difficulties are not nuisances but necessary resources for clarifying the interactional details.
Through the critical reading of one of the leading fieldworker's self-referential work, it will be made clear that it is impossible to separate the interviewer and the respondent. Indeed, the ongoing communication between the two constructs the process of the social research dialogically. This leads to the birth of the dialogical social constructionist approach in social research. This approach sensitizes the problem of power constituted through the interaction between the interviewer and the respondent. This power can be more clearly analyzed in terms of the model story, according to which both parties are enticed to mold their narrative against the fluctuating social interaction. And it is the model story which will accomplish power effects over the interaction between the interviewer and the respondent, so that it becomes important to pay attention to the emergence of a unique outcome which often betrays the model story.View full abstractDownload PDF (1529K) -
Kazumi NAITO2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 594-604
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSIn the 1990s, “violence against women” came to the fore of attention and society's attempts to deal with the phenomenon were still in the stage of infancy. What criticisms did researchers and others in the profession who dealt with violence against women face? And how did they, who participated by conducting research on the issue of violence as human rights abuse, respond to those criticisms? I revisit the answers to the above questions by reflecting on my own experience and response to the issue, and by reviewing subsequent research efforts in related disciplines. In particular, the sense that I share with victims a common interest and awareness toward the issue undermines, or even hides the power relationship between victims and people in the professions. There is a danger that this exposes victims to even more severe exploitations. Attention is brought to the following four preconditions for research on “violence against women.” They are, namely, a relationship in which mutual trust exists between researcher and victim, respect for power and independence of victims, questioning of social structures that lead to an unequal researcher-victim power relationship, and the effort to create an environment in which victims can speak out without fear.View full abstractDownload PDF (1055K) -
[in Japanese]2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 605-606
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (194K) -
[in Japanese]2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 606-608
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (321K) -
[in Japanese]2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 608-609
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (207K) -
[in Japanese]2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 610-611
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (204K) -
[in Japanese]2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 611-613
Published: March 31, 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
JOURNAL FREE ACCESSDownload PDF (296K) -
2003 Volume 53 Issue 4 Pages 614
Published: 2003
Released on J-STAGE: October 19, 2009
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