Has Funding Made a Difference to Research Methods?

Abstract

It has been argued that foundation funding has distorted methods in American sociology in the direction of quantification. This argument rests on a number of assumptions, of which the key one is that in the absence of such funding, method would have developed differently. Data on the methods of funded and unfunded research articles are analysed, and show that the trend to increasing levels of quantification is almost equally present in unfunded work, which suggests that funding should not be held responsible for the trend.