Читать книгу Contemporary Sociological Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 67

James S. Coleman

A central problem in social science is that of accounting for the functioning of some kind of social system. Yet in most social research, observations are not made on the system as a whole, but on some part of it. In fact, a natural unit of observation is the individual person; and in the development of quantitative methods of research, the dependence on individual-level data has increased greatly. This has led to a widening gap between theory and research: Social theory continues to be about the functioning of social systems of behavior, but empirical research is often concerned with explaining individual behavior.

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