Social Research?

[candistyx]

If I was thinking of doing a small scale survay (i.e. only encompassing specific small units - a workplace, a small geographic area etc rather than whole towns or countries) into levels of identification with "class" (Defining class explicity as relationship to means of production in order to avoid confusions with other social definitions of class), the extent to which people recognise class power, the extent to which people identify their interests along class lines etc along with an additional survay as to what it is they feel drew them to have whatever level of identification or not with class.

Would this serve any useful purpose at all or would it just be a waste of time? Could it have any scientific validity? Do you think it would be possible to create a quantitive tool in the course of this investigation that could be used to make detailed comparisons of changes over time?

[AGramsci]

Candistyx, I'm a sociology grad student and I'd be more than happy to help you out as best I can if you want to pursue this project further. I have a good grasp on research methodology and issues regarding socio-economic status (SES) and class relations. So let me just ask you a couple of questions first to make things a bit more clear.

1) What ends are trying to reach through this project? Is it for a class project, an activist group, or just personal enjoyment? This is very important regarding what level of validity is desired, ie, how serious you want the intended audience to take your findings.

2) First, you need to get down in words two things:

- Research Question: What question are you trying to answer with this project? What do you want to find out about this matter?

- Hypothesis: What do you think the answer to your research question will be? What is your prediction?

Though it seems elementary, these are probably the two most important parts of designing a valid experiment. Try to make them as specific as possible. You seem to have many goals regarding this project judging from your post, but try to make your research question as vague as possible and then we can work on your hypothesis(hypotheses) in terms of making that very specific (that's just how its done).

This sounds pretty exciting and I hope to get something back.