In turn, sociological monitoring is needed to monitor changes taking place in the society. Sociological monitoring is an integral system based on study and analysis of mass conceptions about the given changes. Its aim is to get new sociological information on a systemic way - every small period of time, say, month or quarter. That's why it requires obligatory monthly and quarterly express-surveys on most actual social problems.
Each subsystem provides different kinds of information: sociological information reflects people's subjective opinions on various issues while statistical - describes various phenomena with objective quantitative parameters. Differentiating by the character of data, the subsystems comply with the principles of their organizing. When united, they become parts of an integral system of social monitoring that provides a complex analysis of the obtained data. Its results serve as a reliable basis for drawing conclusions on humans' behaviour under objective conditions of living, and how humans' interests, values, motives and aims of their activities affect these conditions.
Sociological research process
An ASR has its own structure and methodology but methodology, no matter what type a research can be, assumes a common foundation. First, after specifying the topic and selecting the type of an ASR, at the preparatory stage sociologists should develop a research design. A research design is of great importance as it gives theoretic grounds for methodological approaches, methods and techniques of learning the object and subject of research. It consists of two parts - methodological and proceeding ones.
A methodological part is to show what is studied. Its function is to clearly define the study problem, formulate aims and objectives, make a primary analysis of the object and subject of research, put forward hypotheses, select basic conceptions and make their interpretation.
A proceeding part is to show how to study: what methods of research are applied, and what sample is selected. It also contains a research outline, schedule, participants' duties, costs etc.
A methodological part is the first step which is to select the problem by determining what the researcher wants to know about the topic. He conducts a review of the literature (relevant books and scholarly articles) to help to refine the problem, determine where gaps exist, and note mistakes to avoid. Before beginning the research, it is important to analyze what others have written about the topic. Here a researcher deals with a problem situation - a contradiction between knowledge of people's needs in some actions and lack of ways, methods and means of realizing such actions. A problem situation is not identical with a problem. It can be considered within the framework of a problem but it can be wider or narrower than the latter. Normally, analysis of the problem situation begins with defining the contradictions that specify a given situation. The example of a problem situation can be a contradiction between a person's need in employment and possibilities of a modern labour market: more people seeking for a job and fewer vacancies in the labour market.
Then the object of research or unit of analysis (the term used by Western sociologists) is defined. It can vary from social artifacts, phenomena, processes or groups to a society on the whole. Very often the object of research is people grouped into various communities, organizations or involved in different social processes because people bear a definite social problem. For instance, at learning the problems of employment of youth in Belarus, everybody who symbolizes the contradiction in the given area should be regarded as the object of research. It can be both existing and potential employers of a certain age, employees, law-makers who make laws of labour, representatives of state bodies of power and governance engaged in solving employment issues.
The object of research should be characterized from the viewpoint of its area (a country, region, city, enterprise etc), time (a period and terms of carrying out a research) and branch (type of activities such as industry, culture, education etc). For instance, the object of research is student youth of Belarus in early XXI century.
Often a selected object is too big for quantitative analysis that's why a researcher should define an approximate size of the general sample. A general sample is the number of units with a common feature attributing these units to the analyzed entity. For instance, when any social problem experienced by students of Minsk is studied, students of Minsk are the object of research. It embraces everybody who studies at state and private institutions in Minsk (universities, institutes, colleges and vocational schools), namely girls and boys of all years of study - from first to fifth. And the general sample here is the statistic number of all students who study in Minsk. It's a great number, for instance, 27,000 daytime and part time students study only at the Belarus State Economic University, and it's not expedient to put every of them under analysis. So sociologists use a random sample selecting a group of units (a sample) for study from a larger group. Each unit is chosen entirely by chance that is known, but possibly non-equal, to be included in the sample. There are a lot of methods to provide reliability of including units into a random sample so that sociologists can get reliable data. In our case, a random sample can be a number of students taken in proportion to the total number of students studying at every institution of learning located in Minsk.
Besides the object of research it's necessary to define the subject of research that fixes the limits under which the object should be studied. It helps the researcher to consider the object's definite feature, quality or distinction in a detailed way. Qualities, features, relationships and the like are selected so that they can be described, classified and measured. For instance, it's impossible to investigate students' all social problems in one research but their attitudes to studies, absenteeism, their satisfaction with methods of teaching etc. can be under study.
After that researchers should sound aims and objectives. Aim is the final result researchers want to get. The ASR is to obtain a practical aim, find ways to solve a social problem, work out recommendations that's why a novelty element is less important in it. Objectives are a totality of definite purposeful orientations which provide additional requirements to analyzing and solving the problem.
Now researchers may formulate a hypothesis - a statement of the relationship between two or more concepts, the object's structure, or possible ways to solve a problem. Hypotheses are called working if they contain preliminary explanation of the phenomenon or process which is good enough for the first stage of research. At analyzing the object, a general hypothesis is defined but it is often too theoretic for an ASR and requires transformation. According to the contents, hypotheses fall into describing, explanatory and forecasting, according to the level of development - into primary (if put forward before collecting the data) and secondary (if corrected and formulated while analyzing the data).
The last section of the methodological part is entitled “Basic concepts, their interpretation and operationalization”. Concepts are known to have an abstract character that's why in formulating a hypothesis concepts are converted to variables - concepts with measurable traits or characteristics that can change or vary from one person (time, situation, or society) to another. For instance, at learning teenagers' deviant behaviour, the subject is “teenagers' deviant behaviour”. This abstract concept is used in the hypothesis that there is a direct relationship of parents' deviant conduct and their children's deviant behaviour. To check up this hypothesis the concept “deviant behaviour” should be converted to a variable that is done stage by stage. The first stage is the concept's theoretic interpretation. It's not easy because different scientific sources can have different interpretations of one and the same concept. A basic (abstract) concept often contains variables or particular concepts that are less abstract. The second stage is operationalization or converting concepts to mono-semantic terms, finding their analogues in real life or its empiric indicators. Operational variables constitute the instruments to collect empiric data.
The second part of a research design is the proceeding part which includes a set of methods and technique of research. It means the proceeding part describes ways of collecting, processing and analyzing the data. As a rule, an ASR is carried out on the basis of a random sample, and its main requirement is to be representative that's why a random sample should represent basic characteristics of a general sample. If the country's population or its part a researcher intends studying is a general sample, the number of interviewed individuals is a random one.
As a rule, the general sample is defined by the aim of research, and a random one - by mathematic methods. When a sociologist is going to study how Belarusian youth spends its spare time, he defines all young people living in Belarus as the general sample but he'll have to question only a part of them as a random sample. The latter can exactly represent the general sample if a researcher follows the rule: each young person must have an equal chance to be included into the random sample, no matter where he lives, works or studies, what sex, age, state of health or the like he has. A researcher can't question respondents if they are most available or selected on purpose. Selection of respondents is done with a mechanism of probabilistic choice and special mathematic procedures providing a higher level of objectivity and reliability. An accidental method is regarded as the best way to pick up typical representatives of the general sample.
Additional literature
Blau P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). - New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. - 354 p.
Bourdeiu P. Logic of Practice. - Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. - 382 p.
Coser L. The Functions of Social Conflict. - Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. - 188 p.
Durkheim E. The Division of Labour in Society. - New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. - 272 p.
Durkheim E. Suicide. - New York, NY: Free Press; 1951. - 345 p.
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