COMPARATIVE METHOD OF STUDY

INTRODUCTION:Comparison is an important source of knowledge and understanding. It is said to be a technique, a discipline, an implementation and a method by which the values of human life, relations and activities are known and evaluated. Here I am trying to elaborate the essentials of the art of comparing by discussing relation between theory, method and law as it is discussed with reference to the Comparative approach. The various contributions of legal thinkers and writers are by all means the results of their comparative approach. As jurisprudence is regarded as the science of law, its essential feature is that it is a particular method pf study, not the law of one country, but the general notions of law itself, that is the law of almost all the countries of the world. These legal philosophers and jurists have propounded their own line of thinking towards the study of law, its philosophy, functions and institutions after making extensive study of their own legal system and the system of various other countries of the world, by comparing each from one another. This approach in the field of the study of law has given rise to a new branch of legal study, which is called by the name of Comparative Law and which sets put a method of studying laws of different nations in a comparative manner

Statement of problem:1

To do a research on Comparative Method of study.

Study of comparative research:-

1. Comparative research methods have long been used in cross-cultural studies to identify, analyse and explain similarities and differences across societies. 2. The comparative approach to the study of society has a long tradition dating back to Ancient Greece. Since the nineteenth century, philosophers, anthropologists, political scientists and sociologists have used cross-cultural comparisons to achieve various objectives. 3. For researchers adopting a normative perspective, comparisons have served as a tool for developing classifications of social phenomena and for establishing whether shared phenomena can be explained by the same causes. For many sociologists, comparisons have provided an analytical framework for examining (and explaining) social and cultural differences and specificity. More recently, as greater emphasis has been placed on contextualisation, cross-national comparisons have served increasingly as a means of gaining a better understanding of different societies, their structures and institutions.

Comparison as a scientific research method

Comparative research represents one approach in the spectrum of scientific research methods and in some ways is a hybrid of other methods, drawing on aspects of both experimental science (see our Research Methods: Experimentation module) and descriptive research (see our Research Methods: Description module). Similar to experimentation, comparison seeks to decipher the relationship between two or more variables by documenting observed differences and similarities between two or more subjects or groups. In contrast to experimentation, the comparative researcher does not subject one of those groups to a treatment, but rather observes a group that either by choice or circumstance has been subject to a treatment. Thus comparison involves observation in a more natural setting, not subject to experimental confines, and in this way evokes similarities with description. Importantly, the simple comparison of two variables or objects is not comparative research. Tysons work would not have been considered scientific research if he had simply noted that pygmies looked like humans without measuring bone lengths and hair growth patterns. Instead, comparative research involves the systematic cataloging of the nature and/or behavior of two or more variables, and the quantification of the relationship between them. While the choice of which research method to use is a personal decision based in part on the training of the researchers conducting the study, there are a number of scenarios in which comparative research would likely by the primary choice. The first scenario is one in which the scientist is not trying to measure a response to change, but rather he or she may be trying to understand the similarities and differences between two subjects. For example, Tyson was not observing a change in his pygmie in response to an experimental treatment. Instead, his research was a comparison of the unknown pygmie to humans and apes in order to determine the relationship between them. A second scenario in which comparative studies are common is when the physical scale or timeline of a question may prevent experimentation. For example, in the field of paleoclimatology, researchers have compared cores taken from sediments deposited millions of years ago in the worlds oceans to see if the sedimentary composition is similar across all oceans or differs according to geographic location. Because the sediments in

these cores were deposited millions of years ago, it would be impossible to obtain these results through the experimental method. Research designed to look at past events such as sediment cores deposited millions of years ago is referred to as retrospective research. A third common comparative scenario is when the ethical implications of an experimental treatment preclude an experimental design. Researchers who study the toxicity of environmental pollutants or the spread of disease in humans are precluded from purposefully exposing a group of individuals to the toxin or disease for ethical reasons. In these situations, researchers would set up a comparative study by identifying individuals who have been accidentally exposed to the pollutant or disease and comparing their symptoms to those of a control group of people who were not exposed. Research designed to look at events from the present into the future, such as a study looking at the development of symptoms in individuals exposed to a pollutant, is referred to as prospective research. The utility of comparative science was significantly strengthened in the late 19th-early 20th century with the invention and popularization of modern statistical methods for quantifying the association between variables (see our Data: Statistics module). Today, these statistical methods are critical for quantifying the nature of relationships examined in many comparative research studies. The outcome of comparative research is often presented as a probability, statement of statistical significance, or declaration of risk

Limitations of comparative methods

One of the primary limitations of comparative methods is the control of other variables that might influence a study. For example, as pointed out by Doll and Hill in 1950, the association between smoking and cancer deaths could have meant that: a) smoking caused lung cancer, b) lung cancer caused individuals to take up smoking, or c) a third unknown variable caused lung cancer AND caused individuals to smoke (Doll & Hill, 1950). As a result, comparative researchers often go to great lengths to choose two different study groups that are similar in almost all respects except for the treatment in question. In fact, many comparative studies in humans are carried out on identical twins for this exact reason. For example, in the field of tobacco research, dozens of comparative twin studies have been used to examine everything from the health effects of cigarette smoke to the genetic basis of addiction.