The purpose of this chapter is to describe the different levels of analysis at which the theory of reintegrative shaming might be confronted with data collected systematically with a view to testing the theory. In turn, we shall discuss ethnographic, historical, and survey research, macrosociological studies based on official statistics, and experimental designs.

Ethnographic Research

The first test any theory should confront is for researchers to observe and talk to actors who routinely deal with the phenomena addressed in the theory. If the phenomena posited in the theory are never observed to happen, if grey-haired people with long experience of them say ‘They never heard of that happening’ (Macaulay, 1986) or ‘they never heard of it happening like that’, then there is reason to cast serious doubt on the explanatory framework of the theory.

Single case studies are useful in testing theories that generate many interdependent predictions about how things happen, such as the theory of reintegrative shaming. The ethnographic researcher can disconfirm the theory when most of them do not happen; the theory is tested with multiple degrees of freedom arising from the multiple implications of a single theory for a single research site. ‘The process is a kind of pattern-matching in which there are many aspects of the patterns demanded by theory that are available for matching with his observations on the local setting’ (Campbell, 1979: 57).