Sociological knowledge production in Hungary between 1971 and 2021

A systematic review of six social science journals

Abstract

Sociological knowledge production – the forms of experience through which the researcher accesses 'data' in the broad sense, and through which the scientific knowledge is ultimately produced – determines the research questions, the possible answers and the nature of scientific discourse in general. In our study, we asked how these forms of knowledge production have changed over the last fifty years in Hungary. To answer our question, we conducted a systematic review of a total of 2650 studies published in six Hungarian sociological journals. Sociological knowledge production has undergone some major changes over the last five decades, such as the spread of empirically based approaches, the increase in the use of original data, the gradual rise in popularity of qualitative data use, and many methodological details of data collection have also changed a lot over the period. However, some parameters were more stable. For example, the topics and the diversity of topics have changed very little over the last five decades. The results also highlighted some shortcomings; it is common for authors not to disclose some details of data collections, although transparency has gradually improved over the period. In addition to presenting trends and critically analysing them, our study also aims to advance the discourse on the practice of Hungarian sociology.