Por qué, qué y para qué investigamos: la trastienda de la investigación social

Abstract

Methodological reasonings, problems and uses of a significant selection of the investigations directed by the author are analyzed and discussed, in first person. The selection includes quantitative investigations and qualitative ones and the article is centered, more than in the details of the methodology or the results of those studies, in the questions considered before initiating the technical work of the investigation or after making the analysis of their results: how the encounter between demand and offer takes place, the relation between investigator and client, the discussion of perspectives and interpretations as well as the uses of the results. The author selects for this purpose three very different research programs and the field in which he is developing the most recent investigations: (1) the Investigaciones Cualitativas Continuas (ICC) [Continuous Qualitative Investigations], in particular the ICC of the CIS [Center for Sociological Investigations] that was accomplished between 1979 and 1982; (2) the Surveys on Youth in Spain of 1984 and 1988; (3) The Socio-demographic Survey of the INE [National Institute of Statistics], complementary of the Census of Population of 1991; (4) the studies on Electoral Tendencies, focusing attention on some investigations, representative by its methodology, made between 1996 and the present time. It is concluded that the work of the investigating sociologist is not confined to the methodological design, the direction of the investigation processes and the analysis of the results, but that it is so important –as much practical as theoretically– the work of the project and the one of the investigation itself. Without a good approach one cannot arrive at any site– or does it at any other–; what it is not imagined in the starting planning –except for lucky serendipities– will not be in the result. Without a theoretical reflection on the object, the investigation does not do more than to accumulate empirical data without meaning.