• Just as there are natural laws governing behaviour of natural phenomena, there are also social laws (Durkheim called these 'social facts') shaping and determining the social actions of people, particularly with everyday experiences and life chances

• People should be treated as objects whose behaviour can be directly observed , measured and counted in the same way as natural phenomena.

• They've adapted the scientific laws to human behaviour.

• Influenced by natural scientists - Biologists, Physicists and Chemists have shown that plants, animals and chemicals behave in very predictable ways because of natural laws.

• The organisation of society is called the 'social structure'.
• The sociologists who study this are called 'structuralists'.

societies ability to shape human behaviour is more influential then the individuals themselves and the choices they make

what is it?
A particular set of assumptions about how society is organised and the appropriate ways of studying it.

Structured:

• closed questions & fixed choice responses which produce quantitative data.

Designed to depict and fully describe the characteristics of a research population as fully as possible.

Produce qualitative data.

• Descriptive data
• Difficult to analyse

Strengths:

• flexible
• often result in unexpected findings