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Doing Research for a Living

20 October, 2015 - 10:39

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Identify the areas outside of academia where sociologists are most commonly employed.
  2. Define evaluation research and provide an example of it.
  3. Describe the work of a market researcher.
  4. Describe what sociologists working in policy and other government research do.

There are a variety of employers who hire social researchers. These include, but are not necessarily limited to, market research firms, corporations, public relations and communications firms, academic institutions, think tanks and other private research firms, public research firms and policy groups, and all levels of government. Some businesses hire social researchers to assist with personnel selection, many universities hire social researchers for their research institutes, 1 and other firms such as Gallup (http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx) and Nielsen (http://www.nielsen.com/us/en.html) hire social researchers to examine societal trends. The areas where sociologists holding undergraduate degrees in research are most likely to find employment as researchers are in evaluation research, market research, and government research. Each of these represents a particular use of research rather than a research method per se. Evaluation, market, and government researchers may use any of the data collection or analysis strategies we described in "Survey Research: A Quantitative Technique" and "Other Methods of Data Collection and Analysis", but their purpose and aims may differ. We’ll explore each of these different uses of social scientific research methods in the following.