The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach.
Abstract
Preface to the second edition. Introduction. 1. Knowledge in context 2. Theory, observation and practical adequacy 3. Theory and method I: abstraction, structure and cause 4. Theory and method II: types of system and their implications 5. Some influential misadventures in the philosophy of science 6. Quantitative methods in social science 7. Verification and falsification 8. Popper's 'falsificationism' 9. Problems of explanation and the aims of social science. Notes and references. Bibliography. Index
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
The agent-structure problem in international relations theory
Wendt, A. E. (1987) · International Organization · doi:10.1017/s002081830002751x · Cited by 1,896
Toward a process theory of entrepreneurial ecosystems
Spigel, B., & Harrison, R. (2018) · Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal · doi:10.1002/sej.1268 · Cited by 1,163
What’s in a mechanism? Development of a key concept in realist evaluation
Dalkin, S. M., Greenhalgh, J., Jones, D., Cunningham, B., & Lhussier, M. (2015) · Implementation Science · doi:10.1186/s13012-015-0237-x · Cited by 896
Toward an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research Program
Wurth, B., Stam, E., & Spigel, B. (2022) · Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice · doi:10.1177/1042258721998948 · Cited by 789
Kontos, P. C., & Poland, B. D. (2009) · Implementation Science · doi:10.1186/1748-5908-4-1 · Cited by 760
Metadata
- Authors
- Harp, J., & Sayer, A.
- Venue
- Contemporary Sociology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1986-05
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 453
- ISSN
- 0094-3061 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2089549167
- Cited by
- 2,603
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 99.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2070081
- The paper
- Harp, J., & Sayer, A. (1986). Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach. Contemporary Sociology. https://doi.org/10.2307/2070081
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.