Quantitative sociology grows fast
Time series and panel data should be applied more to deal with the crisis of spatio-temporal theoretical vision facing China’s quantitative sociology. Photo: FILE
In recent years, significant breakthroughs have been made in the field of quantitative sociology in China. Despite this, a series of new challenges facing the field have prompted scholars to actively innovate with research methods to further its development.
Compared with international sociological studies, quantitative sociology in China began relatively late but developed rapidly, said Liang Yucheng, a professor from the School of Sociology and Anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University. Quantitative sociology in China has experienced three stages of development. In the first stage, academic rules were formulated for professional data surveys based on comprehensive domestic social surveys, which marked initial development within the discipline. In the second stage, quantitative research continued improvement due to the introduction of a series of more cutting-edge research methods such as counterfactual analysis. In the current, or third stage, the rapid development of computational sociology has provided new methods and scopes for quantitative research.
Zhao Lianfei, a research fellow from the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that since the restoration of sociology in China four decades ago, quantitative research, marked by an increase in social surveys, has gradually recovered and rapidly developed. Scholars have introduced relatively systematic quantitative research methods into sociology, while basically completing the construction of textbook systems, the curriculum system and talent teams. At the same time, they have conducted many large-scale national-level quantitative survey projects, popularized quantitative analysis technology in sociological research and further standardized quantitative research.
“Quantitative sociology in China has transitioned from parallel development to convergent innovation,” said Qiu Zeqi, a professor from the Center for Sociological Research and Development Studies at Peking University. In recent years, domestic scholars have made active contributions to curriculum construction and talent training in quantitative sociology. Meanwhile, many returnees have introduced the latest analytical methods into sociological research. Since the 1990s, these two academic forces have gradually realized the integration of discourse systems and accelerated the maturity of sociology in blended qualitative and quantitative studies. Due to their joint efforts, China’s sociological research methods, including basic quantitative research and multi-level and multivariate research, have already reached the international community’s forefront.
According to Chen Yunsong, a professor from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University, over nearly four decades of development, quantitative sociology has made considerable progress in China, quickly growing its share of the discipline system, continuously expanding research fields, increasingly diversifying research methods and models, increasing professional data objects and significantly expanding academic teams. At present, the disciplinary objectives of quantitative sociology are gradually shifting from simply describing and revealing correlations between variables to revealing the causes and effects of social phenomena and analyzing complex social phenomena, which is the most important breakthrough made in quantitative sociology in China. With their years of hard work which is based on Chinese data and aims to reveal Chinese phenomena, domestic quantitative researchers have been able to dialogue with top international peers to a considerable degree.
Quantitative sociology still has a long way to go in China, Zhao noted. China has accumulated valuable experience and also observed many new social phenomena in the course of comprehensively deepening reforms. At present, concepts and theories related to these phenomena are not yet perfect. The development of big data technology has brought new challenges to traditional quantitative research, and an urgent problem for quantitative sociology researchers is how to achieve smooth transitions and integration of research paradigms.
When promoting the diverse development of research paradigms, the constant expansion of research power has also encountered problems, Liang said. For instance, a lot of studies merely deduce some common conclusions through complex models. Sociological researchers should realize that the purpose of quantitative research is not to apply models but to solve practical social problems.
Although the new generation of information technology provides a solid technical foundation for further research, sociologists actually have relatively limited access to big data, which to a certain extent restricts the development of quantitative research. In this context, how to independently access, use and produce big data is a new requirement of the times, Liang added.
“The crisis of endogenous causal logic and the crisis of spatio-temporal theoretical vision are a major dilemma facing China’s quantitative sociology,” Chen said. Broadening a macro vision, improving data quality and strengthening basic training are an important way to break through the dilemma. In terms of data collection, time series and panel data should be used more frequently to track temporal differences. When discussing research design, it is necessary to cultivate more experimental thinking; flexibly use such research methods as instrumental variables, difference in differences and regression discontinuity; and utilize big data to build a measurement system for macro social phenomena and social indicators.
Edited by YANG LANLAN
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