Howard S. Becker is a master of his discipline. His reputation as a
teacher, as well as a sociologist, is supported by his best-selling
quartet of sociological guidebooks: Writing for Social Scientists,
Tricks of the Trade, Telling About Society, and What About Mozart?
What About Murder? It turns out that the master sociologist has yet one
more trick up his sleeve--a fifth guidebook, Evidence.
Becker has for seventy years been mulling over the problem of evidence.
He argues that social scientists don't take questions about the
usefulness of their data as evidence for their ideas seriously enough.
For example, researchers have long used the occupation of a person's
father as evidence of the family's social class, but studies have shown
this to be a flawed measure--for one thing, a lot of people answer that
question too vaguely to make the reasoning plausible. The book is filled
with examples like this, and Becker uses them to expose a series of
errors, suggesting ways to avoid them, or even to turn them into
research topics in their own right. He argues strongly that because no
data-gathering method produces totally reliable information, a big part
of the research job consists of getting rid of error. Readers will find
Becker's newest guidebook a valuable tool, useful for social scientists
of every variety.