The Uses of Social Research (Routledge Revivals) by Martin Bulmer

Author:Martin Bulmer [Bulmer, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317449904
Google: 6GLbCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-06-11T05:03:16+00:00

Figure 4.4 A simplified causal model of the relationship between social class and depression.

Source: Brown et al., 1975, p. 246.

The procedures for the causal analysis of health data are set out by Susser (1973), following the principles established by Stouffer, Lazarsfeld, Hyman, Rosenberg and Hirshci and Selvin. Unfortunately, Brown’s research is an all too rare British example of the use of such procedures, given the proclivities among social administrators and epidemiologists for unbridled empiricism. An ounce of theory is worth several pounds of data.

A number of recent attempts, arising out of the DHSS working group on inequality in health, have been made to explore theories and explanations of health inequalities (see Blaxter, 1981). Hart (1978, p. 110) represents some of the relationships involved in Figure 4.5. Her analysis places primary emphasis upon sociological factors in the explanation of health inequality. The report of the working group itself (DHSS, 1980, pp. 153–98) discusses explanatory factors and identifies four different types of explanation: (a) that inequalities are an artefact of the classificatory systems used in analysis; (b) that they can be accounted for by theories of natural or social selection; (c) that a materialist explanation best fits existing inequalities; or (d) that a cultural or behavioural explanation provides the best fit. Their analysis tends to favour the importance of materialist factors, while acknowledging that cultural explanations and a genetic element play some part. At the same time they recognise the complexity of explaining health inequalities, involving as it does access to, and use of, health services, specific issues in other areas of social policy and more general features of social class, material inequality and deprivation.

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