Difficulties with Applying Social Sciences to Social Problems

There are several scientific difficulties in successfully applying social science to solve social problems. There are three main scientific issues (Randolph and Haynes, 1968):

1. the so-called “Hawthorne effects” or changes in behavior that result from the fact that individuals are subjects in an experimental study;

2. the inadequacy of existing data on social problems and individual behavior and the flaws of indirect data; and

3. the manipulability of social factors variable in social scientific analyses of problems.