Experience of Health and Illness Transformations in the Life Course.” Sociology of Health & Illness 41(4): 723–39.72 Olafsdottir, Sigrun. 2013. “Social Construction and Health.” Pp. 41–59 in Medical Sociology on the Move: New Directions in Theory, edited by William Cockerham. Dordrecht: Springer
73 Outhwaite, William (ed.). 1996. The Habermas Reader. Cambridge: Polity Press.
74 Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press.
75 Pearlin, Leonard I. 1989. “The Sociological Study of Stress.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 30(3): 241–56.
76 Phelan, Jo C. and Bruce G. Link. 2013. “Fundamental Cause Theory.” Pp. 105–26 in Medical Sociology on the Move: New Directions in Theory, edited by William Cockerham. Dordrecht: Springer.
77 Phelan, Jo C. and Bruce G. Link. 2015. “Is Racism a Fundamental Cause of Inequalities in Health?” Annual Review of Sociology 41: 311–30.
78 Pilgrim, David. 2014. Understanding Mental Health. London: Routledge.
79 Riska, Elianne and Katarina Wegar (eds.). 1993. Gender, Work, and Medicine. London: Sage.
80 Ritzer, George and David Walczak. 1988. “Rationalization and the Deprofessionalization of Physicians.” Social Forces 67(1): 1–22.
81 Ritzer, George and William Yagatich. 2012. “Contemporary Sociological Theory.” Pp. 98–118 in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Sociology, edited by George Ritzer. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
82 Scambler, Graham (ed.). 2001. Habermas, Critical Theory and Health. London: Routledge.
83 Scambler, Graham. 2002. Health and Social Change: A Critical Theory. Buckingham: Open University Press.
84 Scambler, Graham (ed.). 2012. Contemporary Theorists for Medical Sociology. London: Routledge.
85 Scambler, Graham. 2018. Sociology, Health and the Fractured Society. London: Routledge.
86 Scheff, Thomas J. 1999. Being Mentally Ill, 3rd edition. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
87 Seale, Clive. 2008. “Mapping the Field of Medical Sociology: A Comparative Analysis of Journals.” Sociology of Health & Illness 5: 677 –95.
88 Sitton, John. 1996. Recent Marxian Theory: Class Formation and Social Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism. New York: State University of New York Press.
89 Strauss, Anselm, Leonard Schatzman, Danuta Ehrlich, Rue Bucher, and Melvin Sabshin. 1963. “The Hospital and its Negotiated Order.” Pp. 147–69 in The Hospital in Modern Society, edited by Elliot Freidson. New York: Free Press.
90 Swartz, David. 1997. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
91 Turner, Bryan S. 1988. Status. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
92 Turner, Bryan S. 1992. Regulating Bodies. London: Routledge.
93 Turner, Bryan S. 1995. Medical Power and Social Knowledge, 2nd edition. London: Sage.
94 Turner, Bryan S. 2004. The New Medical Sociology: Social Forms of Health and Illness. London: Norton.
95 Turner, Bryan S. 2008. The Body and Society, 3rd edition. London: Sage.
96 Weber, Max. [1904-5] 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by T. Parsons. New York: Scribner.
97 Weber, Max. [1922] 1978. Economy and Society, Vol. 2, translated by G. Roth and C. Wittich. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
98 Williams, Monica M., Blakelee R. Kemp, Kenneth F. Ferraro, and Sarah A. Mustillo. 2019. “Avoiding the Major Causes of Death: Does Childhood Misfortune Reduce the Likelihood of Being Disease Free in Later Life?” Journals of Gerontology 74B(1): 170–80.
99 Williams, Simon J. 1995. “Theorising Class, Health and Lifestyles: Can Bourdieu Help Us?” Sociology of Health & Illness 17(6): 577–604.
100 Williams, Simon J. 1999. “Is Anybody There? Critical Realism, Chronic Illness and the Disability Debate.” Sociology of Health & Illness 21: 797–819.
101 Willson, Andrea E. and Kim M. Shuey. 2019. “A Longitudinal Analysis of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health Inequality.” The Journals of Gerontology 74B(1): 181–91.
3
Research Methods in Medical Sociology
JOSEPH D. WOLFE, SHAWN BAULDRY, AND CINDY L. CAIN
INTRODUCTION
After accepting the task of writing a chapter on research methods in medical sociology, we were excited and then immediately overwhelmed at the breadth of the topic. Medical sociology is a diverse field in terms of methodological approaches. In the sections of this chapter that follow, we’ve tried our best to meaningfully condense this large literature into an introduction to key methodological issues and research in medical sociology (but many of the issues we review are relevant to all social science research). In an effort to speak to a broad audience within medical sociology, we rarely discuss more than the most basic technical details of specific methods. Instead, we highlight the underlying logic of research methods in medical sociology and the types of answers to research questions different methods can provide. To that end, before we outline the specific topics in this chapter, we need to mention a few basic requirements of sociological research.
The first requirement is a researchable question (Firebaugh 2008; Lieberson 1985). People often bring up broad existential questions to spark conversation – What’s the true nature of humankind? Is world peace possible? These are examples of questions that we don’t consider researchable, though they can inspire researchable questions. A researchable question in medical sociology is one that can be answered with empirical evidence collected and analyzed using acceptable research methods among contemporary medical sociologists. Researchable questions are also asked in such a way that their answer is capable of overturning one’s assumptions about the social world. For example, is educational attainment associated with health in the US population? This is a question that is answerable with available data and research methods in medical sociology. Its answer also speaks to an underlying theory about education and health in the US, which brings us to our next requirement – a theoretical model.
The second requirement is a theoretical model informed by sociology. In very simple terms, theoretical models are abstract representations of social phenomena, and research methods are how sociologists investigate the empirical implications of theoretical models (Lieberson and Horwich 2008). Theory is thus critical to deciding which methodological approach, among many potentially appropriate approaches, is best suited for your research question. No single theoretical perspective dominates medical sociology, but a baseline – if often tacit – assumption is that the distribution of illness and disease in a population is determined by how exactly that population is socially organized. Continuing with our education-health example from above, we only arrived at our question because of an extensive body of research that finds an association between education and health. One explanation of the education-health association suggests that sweeping macroeconomic
