This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface

1.4 Doing Research on Social Problems
LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. 
   List the major advantages and disadvantages of surveys, observational studies, and experiments.
   
2. 
   Explain why scholars who study social problems often rely on existing data.
   

Sound research is an essential tool for understanding the sources, dynamics, and consequences of social problems and possible solutions to them. This section briefly describes the major ways in which sociologists gather information about social problems. Table 1.2 "Major Sociological Research Methods" summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Table 1.2 Major Sociological Research Methods