Methodological Considerations in the Study of African Political and Administrative Behavior: The Case of Role Conflict Analysis

scientists of all persuasions--"institutionalists," "behavioralists ," and so forth--have tended to ignore or treat lightly various methodological problems confronting the social sciences in general and their own discipline in particular. It is appropriate here to distinguish between methodology and preocedure. Methodology refers to the philosophy of science, to problems associated with the logic of systematic social inquiry; among the problems which are essentially methodological are classification, comparison, concept formation, theory construction, and nomothetic vs. idiographic inquiry. (Various methodological probems are examined by Brodbeck 1968, Hempel 1965, Kaplan 1964, Nagel 1961, and Natanson 1963.) Procedure, in contrast, refers to the application of specific techniques in research. While research techniques inform the day-to-day activity of systematic social inquiry, they are extraneous to the logic of that inquiry (Fleron 1968, p. 316).