Focusing on a Problem
Most beginning researchers believe that the first task, after gaining a sense of direction, is to do a literature review. That's a mistake. Being familiar with the relevant literature is important, but actually writing the literature review can wait. The thorniest problem in scientific thinking is to formulate a question that is interesting and yet manageable, given the resources available. A question that bears upon important practical, theoretical, or philosophical issues generally holds considerable interest. Whether "falling in love" at first sight foretells marital success or doom has been debated for years by sociologists, psychologists, and the lay public. Since the question has yet to be resolved, it is one surely worth pursuing. Willard Waller, a noted sociologist writing in the 1930s, believed that "love at first sight" is "almost always pathological and often symptomatic of profound disorders of the love-life" (Waller, 1938, p. 284). He went on to observe that:
Love which comes suddenly with no previous background of association is usually of compulsive nature. Under the feeling, "This is the man I love," is the hidden feeling, "This is the one whom I must love." In many cases, love at first sight is a mechanism by means of which one prepares himself to accept - or rather forces himself to accept - a bad bargain which is, nevertheless, the best bargain he believes himself able to make (pp. 284-285).
Others have suggested, however, that intense and immediate attraction, particularly of an erotic or sexual nature, provides a foundation out of which other forms of love are likely to evolve.
A question, like this one, that has stimulated debate inevitably brings up other arguments in the form of propositions (which are themselves open to empirical test). Most social scientists begin by formulating a question in general terms and then refine their question as they pursue it. It is useful to keep a notebook of your ideas; eventually, your ideas will begin to cohere around various issues and themes. The following paragraph provides an example of a partially sketched out way of thinking about the causes of marital happiness:
Marriage seems to produce little happiness for some couples. A lot of couples appear to be bored with each other - all they seem to do is watch TV - others seem unable to find a common ground for their marriage. Some social scientists suggest incompatibilities lie at the root of marital problems, but it has been difficult to predict before hand what differences foretell the development of marital problems, or why some qualities may be more important than others or identify the circumstances under which various levels of incompatibility are apt to come into play. It seems reasonable to assume that differences in leisure activities would create more disharmony or distancing than dissimilarity in regard to characteristics that have little direct bearing on the day-to-day preferences and activities of the partners. It also makes sense to assume that some areas of difference may be more relevant to the development of distress for some marital situations compared to others. Similarity in ideas regarding household role responsibilities would seem to be more important, for example, for couples who live together rather than for couples who live apart (as in the case, for example, of "commuter marriages."
The paragraph above contains a number of concepts and propositions (i.e., suggested relationships between concepts). A concept, such as "compatibility," might be defined in terms of certain kinds of similarity (e.g., similarity in regard to leisure interests or role preferences). This suggests that it is not similarity per se that defines compatibility but rather the relevance of the area of similarity to the day-to-day life of the couple. It remains to be clarified, however, how judgments concerning relevance are made other than intuitively. Since concepts are often defined by reference to other concepts, it is important to recognize that they are "(1) tentative, (2) based on agreement, and (3) useful only to the degree that they capture or isolate some significant and definable item in reality" (Hoover, 1976, p. 30).
A variable is a special kind of concept that embraces the idea of variation or diversity. The phrase "Marriage doesn't seem to create much happiness for some people" implies that for others marriage creates a good deal more happiness. The concepts introduced in the paragraph suggest, moreover, that spouses also vary in regard to boredom and amount of television watching, while couples differ in terms of compatibility, similarity in leisure interests, abstract values, and in gender role attitudes. Couples also differ in their living situation (i.e., they live together or apart).
The paragraph also includes statements indicating that particular variables are related to others. It is argues, for example, that compatibility promotes marital happiness; more specifically, it is proposed that certain kinds of similarity (e.g., gender-role attitudes, leisure attitudes) combined with specific circumstances (living together) change the likelihood that a couple will be happily married. Proposed linkages between and among variables are known as hypotheses. Hypotheses propose that variation in one variable covaries (or changes) with variation in other variables. Hypotheses may imply a cause and effect relationship, or they may merely state the relationship in terms of covariation. Thus, for example, a person might hypothesize that compatibility and marital happiness will covary (such that high compatibility relates to high levels of happiness, and vice versa), but decline to comment on whether compatibility causes happiness, or vice versa. It is possible, moreover, that the two covarying variables may not directly influence one another at all, but may covary because they are influenced by a third causal variable.
The example paragraph also presents the beginning of a theory of marital satisfaction. In simple terms, a theory is "a collection of hypotheses linked together by some kind of logical framework" (Hoover, 1976, p. 64). Theories can be distinguished from larger paradigms, which refer to larger frames of understanding, shared by a wider community of scientists, that organize smaller-scale theories and inquiries (paraphrased from Hoover, 1976, p. 65).
Scholars trying to understand the causes of marital happiness, for example, may differ in their theoretical perspective and yet share a paradigm that assures that (a) most people are at their core, hedonistic; and (b) marital happiness reflects the history of interpersonal attractions that take place as a result of being married to a particular person. A large body of social science literature is devoted the laying bare the assumptions behind various paradigms, and it has been suggested that "scientific revolutions" are initiated when one paradigm is replaced by another (see Kuhn, 1970).
Note: another good reference providing a useful introduction to the way social scientists move from an idea to a research project is Hoover's (1976) book, The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking.
