UK Sociology and Quantitative Methods: Are We as Weak as They Think? Or Are They Barking up the Wrong Tree?

Abstract

This piece responds to the Benchmarking Review of UK Sociology’s assertion that the discipline has a deficit in quantitative methods and that the solution involves a recognition that: ‘… statistical methods form the core of social science.’ It argues that whilst a quantitative programme is essential and we can agree that there are problems in relation to the quantitative competencies of sociologists at all levels in the UK, a turn to conventional statistical methods is not the way to go. The argument is developed first in relation to epistemic critiques of those methods by Pawson and Goldthorpe and then by the outlining of an alternative founded in a synthesis of complexity and systematic comparison. The key issue is that we need a quantitative programme which actually corresponds to social reality and that is not to be found in statistical methods which reify variables and consider causality in linear terms.