In this paper we discussed the possibilities and challenges of internet surveys or online surveys in the social sciences. In particular, we focused our examination on the following points: What is the advantage of online surveys? Is the presence of online surveys increasing? What are the challenges of online surveys? What kind of acceptability conditions exist when using online survey data in academic research? As a result, although the number of online surveys being implemented has itself been increasing markedly, on the other hand it became clear that there are not yet necessarily many articles based on online survey data in academic research. One conceivable reason is concern related to sample representativeness. Looking at the articles printed in prestigious sociological journals that use online survey data, almost all were found to include supplemental accounts that justify the use of online surveys.

However, this is not to say that online surveys are completely ill-suited to academic purposes. Depending on the objectives of the research and survey, it is also conceivable that adopting an online survey may be optimal. It is likely that the possibilities of using online surveys can be cultivated by: carefully examining the theoretical significance and methodological validity of an approach that, 1） thoroughly evaluates the overall process of gathering data from online surveys with a total survey error framework and, 2）focusses on a populations that has been limited in line with the research objective.

One of the recent developments in quantitative survey methods is the use of panel（longitudinal）survey data. This method allows researchers to accurately capture individual changes; however, the survey costs, including labor, time, and management costs, are too high for the survey to be conducted easily. As a measure to reduce these costs, in this paper, we discuss the use of a longitudinal survey using registered monitors owned by survey companies, calling it an “internet longitudinal survey.”

Monitors that voluntarily respond to recruitment by survey companies are nonprobability samples; thus there is no guarantee that they are representative of the entire population. Since the youth, such as university students, are likely to make large coverage and nonresponse errors in probability sampling, it is recommended that internet monitors which enable capturing individual changes with lesser errors are used to supplement the survey data. However, it is known that youth monitors are more likely to drop out during a panel survey than monitors of other age groups. Therefore, when conducting an internet longitudinal survey using youth monitors, these attritions need to be dealt with.

This paper introduces an internet longitudinal survey for university student monitors to test the educational credentials hypothesis in job opportunities. In order to deal with the attrition problem, we constructed a weight variable from the predictive analysis of the continuous response rate in the second wave and tested the hypothesis using the weighted data. The results show that the hypothesis is robust, both with and without weight correction.

Organizing two experimental surveys, this article inspects causes of bias that Web surveys occasionally indicate. The first experiment compares mail respondents and Web respondents, all who are extracted from a single sampling frame, the electoral roll, and randomly assigned to either of the two response modes. The second one discriminates Web respondents from two different sampling frames: opt-in volunteer panels and those randomly extracted from residential register. The first experiment examines the effects of undercoverage and low response rate of Web surveys, while the second one seeks out measuring self-selection bias. The results are simple and straightforward; the influence of coverage and nonresponse errors is minimal and practically ignorable, whereas self-selection bias is conspicuous. Opt-in Web panels show a unique attitudinal tendency at most question items, even after controlling demographic factors and major Web activity variables.

The prevalence and development of information and communication technology are reshaping our society itself and creating a new discipline called digital social research（computational social science）. This study aims to understand the impact that digital social research will have on traditional sociological methods and theories. It specifies the following three theoretical and methodological issues in sociology on which digital social surveys can have a particular impact:（1） elucidating the structure and relational mechanisms of social networks,（2）explicating causal mechanisms of social phenomena, and（3）exploring the semantic world. After an overview of the potential of digital social surveys to contribute to these three issues, I will discuss the topic more concretely based on related research cases. and thereby attempt to cover research cases in Japan extensively.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to understand the realities of people's cultural activities through an examination of the sociology of Antoine Hennion, which has recently attracted attention in the field of cultural sociology. Hennion proposes unique cultural sociology focused on the “amateur.” The usual approach of cultural sociology, represented by Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker, tends to attribute people's preferences for cultural activities to social contexts. In contrast, Hennion's approach takes amateurs more seriously by getting as close as possible to the amateur's specific activities. This paper starts by discussing the main concepts of Heninon's sociology and emphasizes the differences from the usual approach of Bourdieu and Becker. Then, referring to Hennion's ethnography of music lovers, it considers in detail how he describes the amateur's activities. From these discussions, we show that Hennion gives the amateur the same reflexive abilities as sociologists while requiring sociologists to participate in cultural activities from the same standpoint as amateurs. However, he does not describe how he became an amateur. Therefore, to confirm the validity of Hennon's approach, we apply his approach to a case study of Bunraku（Japanese puppet theater）using autoethnography. In conclusion, we point out the implications and limitations of Hennion's approach and suggest prospects for future research.

Currently, the purpose of caring services is to enhance patients' quality of life. To sustain patients' lives, practitioners must proceed with services based on knowledge about how patients conduct their daily lives. Using conversation analysis, this study investigated how practitioners solicited information about patients' behavior from them as an account of their bodily conditions. In my data from home visit medical massage sessions, when massage therapists noticed a new problem in a patient's body, the patient accounted for it by a particular recent event. Here, massage therapists' professional diagnostic perspective is limited, so they solicit further accounts from the patient. This practice can promote patients' participation in diagnostic reasoning because the success or failure of the reasoning depends on the production of patients' accounts. However, this practice, which confers the right to discuss how patients conduct their daily lives, also problematizes patients' interior lives. This study describes a practice in which practitioners and patients collaborate to understand a patient's bodily condition based on the patient's daily life.

The new urban middle class, ――referred to as “Xiaozi” ―― emerged in chinese society in the 1990s. When “Xiaozi” came into the spotlight as China's new “urban middle class” , it was also viewed as the subject to promote the development of consumer society. However, with the development of consumer society, Xiaozi was reproduced in the mass media discourse space and undermined gradually, resulting in a semantic separation from the new urban middle class. Focusing on the analysis toward Xiaozi discourse, this study explores how the evolution of the new urban middle class as the subject of consumer society took place.

This study employed critical discourse analysis toward Xiaozi discourse on the three main newspapers in China and reached the following major conclusions. First, the reason why the concept of Xiaozi experienced a separation from urban middle class lies in the weakening of Xiaozi subject in the discourse space. Second, the Xiaozi subject weakened because the dominant mass consumer ideology―― which followed the development of consumer society ―― frustrated the distinction strategies of the new urban middle class. Based on the analysis above, we can conclude that the correlation between the evolution of the new urban middle class and such characteristic of the development of consumer society epitomizes the specificity of late starter countries for modernization.