Sociology

Social science is the application of scientific logic and methods to social phenomena.  It seeks to understand social behavior through (a) the measurement of social phenomena, (b) the discovery of social regularities, and (c) the creation of social theories. There are four types of social science research. These include

Surveys Research,
Scheuren (1980) in his book what is survey writes that the word survey is used most often to describe a method of gathering information from a sample of individuals. This sample is usually just a fraction of the population being studied. Survey research is one of the most important areas of measurement in applied social research. The broad area of survey research encompasses any measurement procedures that involve asking questions of respondents. A survey can be anything from a short paper-and-pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview and it is widely used in most social researches.

Scaling Research
Trochim M.K. William in Research Methods Knowledge Base descries scaling as the branch of measurement that involves the construction of an instrument that associates qualitative constructs with quantitative metric units. Scaling evolved out of efforts in psychology and education to measure unmeasurable constructs like authoritarianism and self esteem, he says. In many ways, scaling remains one of the most arcane and misunderstood aspects of social research measurement. This is because it attempts to do one of the most difficult of research tasks i.e. measure abstract concepts. Scales are generally divided into two broad categories unidimensional and multidimensional. The unidimensional scaling methods were developed in the first half of the twentieth century and included the following methods Thurstone or Equal Appearing Interval Scaling, Likert or Summative Scaling, Guttman or Cumulative Scaling. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, measurement theorists developed more advanced techniques for creating multidimensional scales one of which is concept mapping.

Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is a vast and complex area of methodology that as Trochim (2006) expresses can easily take up whole textbooks on its own. Before undertaking qualitative research one must consider the following three important questions Do you want to generate new theories or hypotheses Do you need to achieve a deep understanding of the issues Are you willing to trade detail for generalizability If your response is yes then go a head to carry out qualitative research. This is because one of the major reasons for doing qualitative research is to become more experienced with the phenomenon one is interested in qualitative research has special value for investigating complex and sensitive issues and finally qualitative research certainly excels at generating information that is very detailed.
In general, I find the qualitative and survey research most appropriate in my field of study since they are more objective and can be applied in a wider sense of measurement. The variables can be identified and measured objectively.