Positivism in sociological research: USA and UK (1966–1990) <sup>1</sup>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Positivism has been declared dead in sociological theory circles, yet questions remain as to its viability among researchers. The authors present diagnostic evidence about positivism in sociological practice through a content analysis of journal articles published in the late 1960s and the late 1980s in the sociological journals of the USA and Britain. Using an index based on seven elements of positivism that were characteristic of the 'theory construction' movement of the late 1960s, the authors find evidence of the effects of time and nation on the use of positivism. Disaggregation of the index reveals that most of the observed change is associated with the elements of 'instrumental' positivism, particularly statistics. The results raise questions about the relationship between theory and research and about sociologists' philosophies of science.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.045 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.026 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".