THE NATURE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
The nature of social research is based on a sound understanding of the scientific method, the specific intricacies of the social domain, and the key interrelationship between data and theory. Social research can be defined as the systematic study of society, the partners in it and the processes that shape what people do. It is basically about investigating and seeking answers to the social questions asked about our social world. Social science research is research on, and with, real people in the real world, one of social research’s exciting elements. The science in social science is traditionally defined as being about observation, classification, interpretation and the way we conduct the research. Social pattern and social meanings: social patterns are persistent patterns in social phenomena that occur repeatedly in the social world while social meanings is how people(s) make sense of aspects of their social lives and the understandings that they develop of these. Data and Theory: Data can be defined as the information we collect and analyze to answer our research question while theory can be defined as an idea or a set of ideas that explain social phenomena. Our interpretations or theories of social phenomena are not predicting what every single outcome for every single person within a society will be. Rather, as social scientists we deal with social aggregates, that is, the collective, aggregate of social outcomes or circumstances of