WHAT COUNTS IN CULTURAL-STUDIES

This article argues that Cultural Studies has tended to ignore questio ns of research methodology, and that some research methods have been d ismissed and abandoned too easily. The article reviews the Cultural St udies critique of quantitative survey methods and, in most cases, endo rses them. Nevertheless, while quantitative methods are not without th eir limitations, they are not irredeemably Inked to empiricism. Rather , the quantitative survey may indeed be compatible with a Cultural Stu dies approach. A number of suggestions are made for the use of survey data within a Cultural Studies framework, both in terms of reinterpret ing existing survey data (that may have been designed in terms of conv entional empiricist models) and designing surveys that allow us to exp lore contemporary ideologies, the presence of opposition or resistance and the process of hegemony.