Chapter 12Chapter 12Historical and Comparative

Research

Introduction

Methodological tools that we can call “unobtrusive methods” allow us to investigate social processes at other times and in other places, when the actual participants in these processes are not available.

Unobtrusive methods for historical and comparative research can generate new insights into social processes due to their ability to focus on aspects of the social world beyond recent events in one country.

Introduction, cont.

They involve several different approaches and a diverse set of techniques, and they may have qualitative and/or quantitative components.

These methods provide ways to investigate topics that usually cannot be studied with experiments, participant observation, or surveys.

However, because this broader focus involves collecting data from records on the past or from other nations, unobtrusive methods used in historical and comparative investigations present unique challenges to social researchers.

Overview of Unobtrusive Methods for Comparative and Historical Research

The central insight behind unobtrusive methods in historical and comparative investigations is that we can improve our understanding of social process when we make comparisons to other times and places.

Research may be historical, comparative, or both historical and comparative.

Historical and comparative methods can be quantitative or qualitative, or a mixture of both.

Overview of Unobtrusive Methods for Comparative and Historical Research, cont. There are no hard-and-fast rules for determining

how far in the past the focus of research must be in order to consider it historical or what types of comparisons are needed to warrant calling research comparative.

In practice, research tends to be considered historical when it focuses on a period prior to the experience of most of those conducting research

Overview of Unobtrusive Methods for Comparative and Historical Research, cont. Both historical events research and historical

process research investigate questions concerning past times.

These methods are used increasingly by social scientists in sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics, as well as by many historians

Much historical (and comparative) research is qualitative.

This style of historical social science research tends to have several features that are similar to those used in other qualitative methodologies.

The Focus on the Past Presents Special Methodological Challenges: Documents and other evidence may have been

lost or damaged. Available evidence may represent a sample

biased toward more newsworthy figures. Written records will be biased toward those who

were more prone to writing. Feelings of individuals involved in past events

may be hard, if not impossible, to reconstruct.

Oral History

History that is not written down is mostly lost to posterity (and social researchers).

However, oral histories can be useful for understanding historical events that occurred within the lifetimes of living individuals.

Sometimes oral histories even result in a written record that can be analyzed by researchers at a later point in time.

Oral History, cont.

Whether oral histories are collected by the researcher or obtained from an earlier project, the stories they tell can be no more reliable than the memories that are recalled.

Unfortunately, memories of past attitudes are “notoriously subject to modifications over time” (Banks 1972:67), as are memories about past events, relationships, and actions.

Use of corroborating data from documents or other sources should be used when possible to increase the credibility of descriptions based on oral histories.

Historical Process Research

Historical process research extends historical events research by focusing on a series of events that happened over a longer period of time.

This longitudinal component allows for a much more complete understanding of historical developments than is often the case with historical events research, although it often uses techniques such as event history analysis and oral histories that are also used for research on historical events at one point in time.

Historical Process Research, cont.

Historical process research can also use quantitative techniques.

The units of analysis in quantitative analyses of historical processes are nations or larger entities, and researchers use a longitudinal design in order to identify changes over time.

One common measurement problem in historical research projects is the lack of data from some historical periods

Historical Process Research, cont. Those measures that are available are not always

adequate. What is included in the historical archives may be

an unrepresentative selection of materials that still remain from the past.

At various times, some documents could have been discarded, lost, or transferred elsewhere for a variety of reasons.

“Original” documents may be transcriptions of spoken words or handwritten pages and could have been modified slightly in the process; they could also be outright distortions

Comparative Social Science MethodsCross-Sectional Comparative Research. Comparisons between countries during one time

period can help social scientists identify the limitations of explanations based on single-nation research. These comparative studies may focus on a period in either the past or the present.

Comparative Social Science Methods, cont.Comparative Historical Research. The combination of historical analysis with

comparisons between nations or other units often leads to the most interesting results.

The comparative historical approach focuses on sequences of events rather than on some single past (or current) occurrence that might have influenced an outcome in the present.

Comparative Social Science Methods, cont. Comparisons of these sequences may be either

quantitative or qualitative. Some studies collect quantitative longitudinal

data about a number of nations and then use these data to test hypotheses about influences on national characteristics.

Cautions for Comparative Analysis The features of the cases selected for comparison

have a large impact on the researcher’s ability to identify influences.

Cases should be chosen for their difference in terms of key factors hypothesized to influence the outcome of interest and their similarity on other, possibly confounding, factors

With cautions like these in mind, the combination of historical and comparative methods allows for rich descriptions of social and political processes in different nations or regions as well as for causal inferences that reflect a systematic, defensible weighing of the evidence.

Demographic Analysis

The social processes that are the focus of historical and comparative research are often reflected in and influenced by changes in the makeup of the population being studied.

Demography is the field that studies these dynamics.

Demography is the statistical and mathematical study of the size, composition, and spatial distribution of human populations and how these features change over time.

Demographic Analysis, cont.

Demographers explain population change in terms of five processes: fertility, mortality, marriage, migration, and social mobility

Demographers obtain data from a census of the population and from registries—records of events like births, deaths, migrations, marriages, divorces, diseases, and employment

Four concepts are key to understanding and using demographic methods: population change, standardization of population numbers, the demographic bookkeeping equation, and population composition.

Demographic Analysis, cont.

Population change is a central concept in demography. The absolute population change is calculated simply as the difference between the population size in one census minus the population size in an earlier census.

Population composition refers to a description of a population in terms of such basic characteristics as age, race, sex, or marital status).

The demographic bookkeeping (or balancing) equation is used to identify the four components of population growth during a time interval—births, deaths, in and out migration.

Demographic Analysis, cont.

Standardization of population numbers, as with the calculation of intercensal percent change, is a key concern of demographic methods

Ethical Issues in Historical and Comparative Research Analysis of historical documents or quantitative

data collected by others does not create the potential for harm to human subjects that can be a concern when collecting primary data.

It is still important to be honest and responsible in working out arrangements for data access when data must be obtained from designated officials or data archivists, but, of course, many data are available easily in libraries or on the Web.

Ethical Issues in Historical and Comparative Research, cont. Researchers who conclude that they are being

denied access to public records of the federal government may be able to obtain the data by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Ethical concerns are multiplied when surveys are conducted or other data are collected in other countries.

If the outside researcher lacks much knowledge of local norms, values, and routine activities, the potential for inadvertently harming subjects is substantial.

Ethical Issues in Historical and Comparative Research, cont. Cross-cultural researchers who use data from other

societies have a particular obligation to try to understand the culture and norms of those societies before they begin secondary data analyses.

It is a mistake to assume that questions asked in other languages or cultural contexts will have the same meaning as when asked in the researcher’s own language and culture, so a careful, culturally sensitive process of review by knowledgeable experts must precede measurement decisions in these projects.

Conclusions

Historical and comparative social science investigations use a variety of techniques that range from narrative histories having much in common with qualitative methods to analyses of secondary data that are in many respects like traditional survey research.

Each of these techniques can help the researchers gain new insights into processes like democratization.

Systematic historical and comparative techniques can be used to test deductive hypotheses concerning international differences as well as historical events.