Testing Typological Hypotheses

Though it has played an important role in sociological inquiry, typological research has been criticized on two major issues. Theorists have been critical of the tendency to reify theoretical concepts by treating them as if they were directly observable; quantitative researchers have been critical of the tendency among typologists toward oversimplification of measurment. The basic thesis of this paper is that both issues are related to the failure to distinguish between theoretical terms and empirical constructs and to recognize that the relationship between the two can never be directly ascertained. Through an example, a logic of testing typological hypotheses is explored, utilizing multivariate statistical procedures. The results indicate that such an approach is very useful in testing hypotheses derived from typologies and in_ providing complex measures of configurations implied by the theory without committing the error of reification. Moreover, the results tend to point to specific areas where the theory is limited or inadequate to explain concrete phenomenon.