China Social Science Review

No.3, 2020

 

Resolving Dilemmas in the Research Methods of Empirical Sociology through Digitization

(Abstract)

 

Fan Xiaoguang

 

Empirical sociology is one of the basic paradigms of sociological research. In terms of methodology, traditional empirical sociology displays internal tensions between macro- and micro-explanations, between data and theory, between correlation and causation, between homogeneity and heterogeneity, etc. In the era of the Internet, digitization provides opportunities for a change of research methods. Making research design the entry point for reliability and validity, objective and multidimensional measurement, the effective matching of big and small data, and the combination of online and offline experiments will give us possible means of dealing with the challenges of research methodology.