Diversity Bargain

The sociology research field seeks to utilize a sociological imagination when exploring the unanswered questions of our world. Such perspective defined by C. Wright Mills as an attempt to understand an individual’s biography through their historical, cultural, political and economic context. With this in mind, once the sociologist’s interest is sparked by a question, they must decide which methods to employ in order to collect data and come to evidence-based sociological conclusions. In this is essay I will evaluate Natasha K. Warikoo’s, The Diversity Bargain, along with Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout’s Century of difference: How America Changed in the Last Once Hundred Years sociological studies and their methods of research. I find it
Warikoo’s method of research relied solely on strategically-controlled interviews with students. The relatively small-scale study began with sending emails fraught by monetary incentives to students inviting them to speak about issues of race at their universities. Warikoo foresaw the potential bias and unreliability of interviews and took necessary precautions – she trained post-graduate students to do the interviews and assigned them to alike-race participants to also reduce social desirability bias. She carefully formulated open questions neutral in nature. Likewise, when interpreting the interviews, she chose to be sympathetic to all students in order to collect the most genuine data rather than pushing her own views.
On the other hand, Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout’s research attempted to understand the evolution of American society over 100 years, more specifically how the population fell into categories over the years. Their data collection was mostly indirect, as they interpreted outside studies and based their analysis on already existing data like the census and other nation-wide