The Power of Social Facts: Exploring Lisa Wades Perspective

Abstract

[Name] [Name] Sociology 100 28/01/2024 The Science of the Social Facts: Lisa Wade Terrible According to Wade (Pg 5) social facts are powerful realities brought into existence by humans thus they serve as products of human interaction with persuasive or coercive power that exists externally to any individual. One can also argue that social facts are anything produced collectively by people that exerts a force upon humans. For example handshakes which only exists because traditionally, people across the globe greeted each other by shaking hands thus such a social fact passed from one generation to the other and the practice persists ( Wade, Pg, 5). Shaking hands still persist because it has a persuasive or a coercive power. Wade also associates nature with social facts as humans mold it to suit their ends. For example manicuring backyards and city parks to ensure a habitable environment and humans embrace such a practice and pass it from one generation to the other. From personal experience I can define language, gender roles and fashion and styles as social facts as they are products of a long time tradition and still persist amongst humans because they exert a certain persuasive force that no one can run away from. Research questions are distinct from other type of questions because they serve as queries about the world that can be answered empirically and they answer the questions through sociological research methods or the scientific strategies that collects empirical data about social facts (Wade, pg 7). To this effect, one can argue that research questions are focused on inquiry, objective and neutral, specific and precise and linked to a research problem or phenomena which are not the case with normal questions. They are also testable and researchable, researchers formulate them from a scholarly context, and they are structured for explorations as well as aimed at leading to generalized knowledge. In general one can conclude that the fact that research questions are designed for systematic investigation or the generation of new knowledge distinct them from other casual inquiries. Sociological research methods or scientific strategies for collecting empirical data about social facts serve as the major tools that scholars use to answer research questions. Basically, literature reviews, surveys and questionnaires, interviews, observations, experiment and case studies among others become the specific methods and strategies that define these tools. The main difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods is that qualitative serves as tools of sociological inquiry that involve careful consideration and discussion of the meaning of non-statistical data while quantitative involves the tools of sociological inquiry that involve examining statistical data (Wade, Pg 7)....