WHAT IS SOCIAL SCIENCE?

To anyone who actually just got-in or jump-into the group that migrating from pure science research to social science research. You might fill a bit difficult to understands the difference between both sciences. The one thing that I actually learn was the statistics for analytical data process does not have much difference only that in pure science usually the data in the numeric form but contrary to social science where the data scales was sometimes in ordinal, nominal, interval, and ratio.

Actually, the social sciences are the fields of study of people in the society. It is commonly used to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural or pure sciences. There are various subfields namely includes anthropology, archaeology, business administration, criminology, economics, education, geography, linguistics, political science, government, sociology, international relations, communication, and, in some contexts, history, law, and psychology. According to UPM ezproxy (2013) library characterization such as below:-

Social Sciences

• Commerce

1. Balance of trade
2. Boards of trade. Chambers of commerce.
3. Business
4. By region or country
5. Commercial geography. Economic geography
6. Commodities. Commercial products

• Communities. Classes. Races

1. Classes
2. Human settlements. Communities
3. Races
4. Rural groups. Rural sociology
5. Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology

• Economic history and conditions

1. By region or country
2. Economic geography of the oceans (General)
3. Special topics

• Economic theory. Demography

1. Business cycles. Economic fluctuations
2. Capital. Capitalism
3. Competition. Production. Wealth
4. Consumption. Demand
5. Demography. Population. Vital events
6. Economics as a science. Relation to other subjects
7. History of economics. History of economic theory
8. Income. Factor shares
9. Methodology
10. Price

• Finance

1. Banking
2. Credit. Debt. Loans
3. Finance management. Business finance.
4. Foreign exchange. International finance. International monetary system
5. Insurance
6. Investment, capital formation, speculation
7. Money
8. Personal finance
9. Trust services. Trust companies

• Industries. Land use. Labor

1. Agriculture
2. Economic growth, development, planning
3. Industry
4. Labor. Work. Working class
5. Land use
6. Large industry. Factory system. Big business
7. Management. Industrial management
8. Special industries and trades

• Public finance

1. By region or country
2. Expenditures. Government spending
3. Income and expenditure. Budget
4. Local finance. Municipal finance
5. Periodicals. Serials. By region or country
6. Public accounting. Auditing
7. Revenue. Taxation. Internal revenue

• Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform

1. By region or country
2. Community centers. Social centers
3. The church and social problems

• Social pathology. Social and public welfare.

1. Accidents. Prevention of accidents
2. Alcoholism. Intemperance. Temperance reform
3. By region or country
4. Criminal justice administration
5. Criminology
6. Drug habits. Drug abuse
7. Emergency management
8. Free professional services
9. Protection, assistance and relief
10. Refugee problems
11. Social service. Social work. Charity
12. Tobacco habit

• Social sciences (General)
• Socialism. Communism. Anarchism

1. Communism
2. Anarchism
3. /socialism in relation to special
4. Communism: Utopian socialism, collective
5. Utopias. The ideal state

• Societies: secret, benevolent, etc.
• Sociology (General)

1. Culture
2. Deviant behavior. Social deviance
3. Groups and organizations
4. Social change
5. Social institutions
6. Social psychology
7. Social structure
8. Theory. Method. Relations to other subjects

• Statistics

1. Registration of vital events. Vital records
2. Statistical data
3. Statistical services. Statistical bureaus
4. Theory and method of social science statistics

• The Family. Marriage. Women

1. Life skills. Coping skills. Everyday living
2. Life style
3. Men
4. Sex role
5. Sexual life
6. The family. Marriage. Home
7. Women. Feminism

• Transportation and communications

1. Air transportation. Airlines
2. Artificial satellite telecommunications
3. Automotive transportation
4. Cellular telephone services industry. Wireless telephone industry
5. Express service
6. Ferries
7. Freight (General)
8. Messenger service
9. Passenger traffic (General)
10. Postal service. Stamps. Philately
11. Railroads. Rapid transit systems
12. Signaling
13. Stage lines
14. Telecommunication industry. Telegraph
15. Telephone industry
16. Traffic engineering. Roads and highways.
17. Transportation geography. Trade routes
18. Urban transportation
19. Water transportation 

A total of 16 categories defined social science field by UPM library. Moreover, the Scimago Lab Networks maped social science field as part of the engineering that linked all together as part of the big picture network (SJR, 2014).

Social Science Network Map

In a very typical amature researcher who changed to the social science field must at least know about the earlier phillosopher of the 19th century includes Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber. They are most typically cited as the principal architects of modern social science. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining the quantitative and qualitative techniques). The term "social research" has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods (Wikipedia, 2013).

References

SJR (2014). SCImago Journal Rank. The Scimago Lab Networks. Retrieved from http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php

UPM Library (2013). Ezproxy search engine. Serdang: Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Wikipedia (2013). Social Sciences. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_sciences