II : SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH: MEANING AND SCOPE Meaning and Scope: Sciences are broadly divided into natural (physical) sciences and social sciences. Social sciences include various disciplines dealing with human life, human behaviour and institutions. e.g. Anthropology, History, Economics, Education, Commerce, Demography etc,. Social sciences are not exact science like physical sciences. It deals with human beings. Human nature and mans environment are so complex, that it is more difficult to comprehend and predict human behaviour than the physical phenomena. It is difficult see the underlying uniformities in the diversity of complex human behaviour. Social science research Social science research is a systematic method of exploring, analyzing and conceptualizing human life in order to extend, correct or verify knowledge of human behaviour and social life. Social research seeks to find explanations to unexplained phenomena, to clarify the doubtful and correct the misconceived fact of social life. It involves the application of scientific method for understanding and analyzing of social life in order to correct and verify the existing knowledge as a system. The main idea behind social research is to discover new inter relations, new knowledge, new facts and also to verify old ones. Human behaviour may be involved by certain values and laws. The main purpose of social research is to discover those laws which can be proper guidelines for studying human contact and behaviour. According to P.V. Young, we may define social research as “the systematic method of discovering new facts and verifying old facts. Their sequences inter relationship, causal explanations and the natural laws govern them”. From the above definition we can identify the following
