The overlooked contributions of applied work in sociology: Who now reads S.A. rice?

Abstract

Because so little attention is paid to the history of research methods, it easily is over-looked that so much of our current research technology originated in applied social research. Such contributions include probability sampling of human populations, many statistical techniques, and general strategies of data collection. The major reason the history of methods has been overlooked is that there are no classics in methods; we would not learn much by reading old methods texts because the newer texts clearly supersede the “classics.” Thus, the development of methods is cumulative, unlike the development of social theory.