As with High Theory, the abstract empiricism of the cognition process is characterized by the fact that researchers snatch a private operation that takes over them entirely. Both directions allow the scientist to distance himself from the main tasks of social sciences. Of course, it is necessary to reflect on the method and theory, but in these directions such reflections become a barrier to cognition. The "methodological self-limitation" of abstract empiricism here plays the same role as the fetishization of the "Concept" in the "High Theory".
Undoubtedly, the simplicity and natural ease with which this procedure is taught to any thoughtful person is a major reason for its attractiveness. The results are usually presented in the form of statistical distributions. At the most primitive level, they are formulated as "rulers", and at more complex levels, the answers to various questions are combined into cross-classifications, often artificial, which are then aggregated into scales in various ways. There are many sophisticated ways of working with data, but we will not touch them here, because regardless of the degree of complexity they are manipulations with some kind of indicators.
Apart from advertising and media studies, the subject of most of the research done in this style is "public opinion". However, there is not a single, more or less related idea in such works that helps to re-interpret the problems of public opinion and communication as objects of in-depth study. The scope of such research is limited by the simple classification of answers to the questions: who, what, to whom, to whom, through what channels, and with what effect. Key terms are defined as follows
By "public" I mean mass opinion, i.e. generalization of non-individualized opinions expressed by a large number of people," writes Berelson. - This characteristic of public opinion makes it necessary to use sample surveys. In the term "opinion" I put not only the usual meaning of the opinion about the actual ephemeral and, as a rule, political problem, but also social attitudes, moods, values, knowledge and actions related to them. The right approach to them requires not only the use of questionnaires and interviews, but also projective methodologies and scales. These judgments tend to mix the subject matter of research with a set of research methods. What is meant by this can be reformulated in the following way: the word "public", as I use it, refers to any quantitatively measured aggregate of individuals, to which, consequently, the procedure of statistical sampling can be applied.
In order to know the opinions people hold, it is necessary to talk to them. However, sometimes they are unwilling or unable to express their opinion - in this case you can try to apply "projective methodology and method of scaling". In Western countries, the problem of the "public" arose in the era of transformation of the traditional and conventional consensus of medieval society and reached its peak in the idea of mass society. What was called "society" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has now become a "mass" society. Moreover, the structural significance of the "society" decreases as people turn into a "mass" within which the individual is completely powerless. Only in this or that way the conditions necessary for designing sample surveys of public opinion and mass media are created. Besides, it is necessary to understand even more fully the development of all historical phases of democratic societies, and, in particular, what can be called "democratic totalitarianism" or "totalitarian democracy". In short, the social and scientific problems characteristic of this sphere cannot be understood in the framework and vocabulary of abstract empiricism, at least in the form in which it is expressed today.
Many of the problems that empiricists try to study, such as the influence of the media, cannot be adequately formulated outside of any structural background characteristics.