Original scientific paper
Some Problems of the Empirical Identification of the Social Structure of Society
Duško Sekulić
; Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb
Abstract
The author discusses some implications about different empirical approaches to the investigation of stratification structure of society. The usual way of research consists of a certain vision of the concrete structure which a researcher has in mind. This vision is then tested using different indicators as values, opinions, etc. But, using this criteria one must get not only one but many parallel stratification structures which than opens the question: to which criteria one structure is supposed to be more valid than the others? It is possible of course to start with the parallelism of structures as an objective quality of the reality, even researchers very rarely explain the problems on that way.
The author stresses the importance of more inductive approaches in which the use, for example of the taxonomic or factor analysis will result in more reliable results of the “objectively existing structures”. But, even in these approaches, structures are formed only within the set of indicators which one has used and therefore the assumption like this is always valid: new clusters of indicators will give also new structures.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155782
URI
Publication date:
30.6.1985.
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