Dissemination and integration of methodological approaches in sociological research: Empirical analyses based on a contextual language model
Empirische Analysen auf Basis eines kontextuellen Sprachmodells
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21241/Keywords:
Large Language Models, bibliometric analysis, scientometrics, computational social sciences, methodologyAbstract
We apply scientometric techniques of automated content analysis to the question of the methodologies prevalent in published sociological research. In doing so, we consider the methodological focus of the articles as well as the corresponding characteristics of the journals in which they appeared. At the same time, we provide a brief introduction to some of the basic procedures of relevant computer-assisted methods and their limitations. We are particularly interested in productive connections between conventional analysis techniques and recently developed models of discourse analysis.
References
Beltagy, Iz, Kyle Lo und Arman Cohan. 2019. SciBERT: A pretrained language model for scientific text. arXiv preprint. arXiv:1903.10676v3. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1903.10676.
Birkle, Caroline, David A. Pendlebury, Joshua Schnell und Jonathan Adams. 2020. Web of Science as a data source for research on scientific and scholarly activity. Quantitative Science Studies 1(1):363–376.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. Homo academicus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Bryman, Alan. 2008. The end of the paradigm wars? In: The SAGE Handbook of Social Research Methods, Hrsg. Pertti Alasuutari, Leonard Bickman und Julia Brannen, 13–25. London: SAGE.
Clarivate Analytics. 2025. Web of Science database. https://www.webofscience.com (Zugegriffen: 6. Oktober 2025).
Creswell, John W., und Vicki L. Plano Clark. 2011. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
De Solla Price, Derek J. 1963. Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia University Press.
Edelmann, Achim, Tom Wolff, Danielle Montagne und Christopher A. Bail. 2020. Computational social science and sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 46:61–81.
Fetters, Michal D., und José F. Molina-Azorin. 2017. The Journal of Mixed Methods Research starts a new decade: Principles for bringing in the new and divesting of the old language of the field. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 11(1):3–10.
Garfield, Eugene. 1955. Citation indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas. Science 122(3159):108–111.
Gerring, John. 2017. Qualitative methods. Annual Review of Political Science 20:15–36.
GESIS. (o.J.). GESIS-SOLIS Datenbank. Zugriff über https://git.gesis.org/open-data/solis-sofis (Zugegriffen: 13. April 2025).
Goertz, Gary, und James Mahoney. 2012. A Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Grimmer, Justin, und Brandon M. Stewart. 2013. Text as data: The promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts. Political Analysis 21:267–297.
Grimmer, Justin, Margaret E. Roberts und Brandon M. Stewart. 2022. Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Harris, Zellig S. 1954. Distributional structure. Word 10(2-3):146–162.
Johnson, R. Burke, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie und Lisa A. Turner. 2007. Toward a definition of mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 1(2):112–133.
Kelle, Udo. 2017. Die Integration qualitativer und quantitativer Forschung – theoretische Grundlagen von „Mixed Methods“. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 69(Suppl. 2):39–61.
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, und Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kuehn, David, und Ingo Rohlfing. 2024. Do quantitative and qualitative research reflect two distinct cultures? An empirical analysis of 180 articles suggests “no”. Sociological Methods & Research 53(3):1035–1070.
Lamont, Michèle, und Virág Molnár. 2002. The study of boundaries in the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 28:167–195.
Lazer, David, Alex Pentland, Lada Adamic, Sinan Aral, Albert-László Barabási, Devon Brewer, Nicholas Christakis, Noshir Contractor, James Fowler, Myron Gutmann, Tony Jebara, Gary King, Michael Macy, Deb Roy und Marshall Van Alstyne. 2009. Computational social science. Science 323:722–723.
Liu, Weishu. 2021. A matter of time: publication dates in Web of Science Core Collection. Scientometrics 126:849–857.
Maxwell, Joseph A. 2016. Expanding the history and range of mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 10(1):12–27.
Payne, Geoff, Malcom Williams und Suzanne Chamberlain. 2004. Methodological pluralism in British sociology. Sociology 38(1):153–163.
Ribeiro, Marco Tulio, Sameer Singh, und Carlos Guestrin. 2016. "Why should I trust you?": Explaining the predictions of any classifier. arXiv preprint. arXiv:1602.04938. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1602.04938
Schwemmer, Carsten, und Oliver Wieczorek. 2020. The methodological divide of sociology: Evidence from two decades of journal publications. Sociology 54(1):3–21.
Stoltz, Dustin S., und Marshall A. Taylor. 2021. Cultural cartography with word embeddings. Poetics 88:101567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2021.101567.
Tashakkori, Abbas, und Charles Teddlie. 2003. Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Tennant, Jonathan P. 2020. Web of Science and Scopus are not global databases of knowledge. European Science Editing 46:e51987. https://doi.org/10.3897/ese.2020.e5197
Tenopir, Carol, und Donald W. King. 2014. The growth of journals publishing. In: The Future of the Academic Journal (2nd ed.), Hrsg. Bill Cope und Angus Phillips, 105–123. Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
Vanderstraeten, Raf. 2025. Quo vadis Web of Science? The expansion and selection criteria of the Social Science Citation Index. Social Science Information 64(2):248–260.
Visser, Martijn, Nees Jan van Eck und Ludo Waltman. 2021. Large-scale comparison of bibliographic data sources: Scopus, Web of Science, Dimensions, Crossref, and Microsoft Academic. Quantitative Science Studies 2(1):20–41.
White, Howard D., und Katherine W. McCain. 1989. Bibliometrics. Annual Review on Information Science and Technology 24:119–186.
Wiley, Norbert. 1979. Recent journal sociology: The substitution of method for theory. Contemporary Sociology 8(6):793–799.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Transitions. Proceedings of the 42nd Congress of the German Sociological Association in Duisburg 2025

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Contributions in the proceedings of the 42nd Congress of the German Sociological Association in Duisburg are published under the Creative Commons license “Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)”.
Third parties may:
- Share: reproduce and redistribute the contributions in any format or medium
- Edit: remix, modify, and build upon
them under the following conditions:
- Attribution: Third parties must provide appropriate copyright and rights information, include a link to the license, and indicate whether changes have been made.
- Non-commercial: Third parties may not use the material for commercial purposes.