Dear Jen, it might be relevant to know your field of study or topic as that may help clarify the particular emphasis as in education (my field) we do not use this terminology to describe research (unless we discuss / encourage students to go beyond looking at the trees - the more micro focused aspect of the data analysis - to the examine the forest - the macro level in this case larger scale broad view).

Macro and Micro are often framed as opposing approaches, macro- and microsociology are actually complementary approaches to studying society, and necessarily so. Macrosociology refers to sociological approaches and methods that examine large-scale patterns and trends within the overall social structure, system, and population. Often macrosociology is theoretical in nature too. On the other hand, microsociology focuses on smaller groups, patterns, and trends, typically at the community level and in the context of the everyday lives and experiences of people.

These are complementary approaches because at its core, sociology is about understanding the way large-scale patterns and trends shape the lives and experiences of groups and individuals, and vice versa.

Between macro- and microsociology are differences like which research questions can be addressed at each level, what methods one can use to pursue these questions, what it means practically speaking to do the research, and what kinds of conclusions can be reached with either. Let's examine these differences to learn more about each and how they fit together.

Research Questions

Macrosociologists will ask the big questions that often result in both research conclusions and new theories, like these, for example.

In what ways has race shaped the character, structure, and development of U.S. society? Sociologist Joe Feagin poses this question at the beginning of his book, Systemic Racism.

Why do most Americans feel an undeniable urge to shop, even though we have so much stuff already, and are cash-strapped despite working long hours? Sociologist Juliet Schor examines this question in her classic book of economic and consumer sociology, The Overspent American.

Microsociologist s tend to ask more localized, focused questions that examine the lives of smaller groups of people. For example:

What effect does the presence of police in schools and communities have on the personal development and life paths of Black and Latino boys who grow up in inner-city neighborhoods? Sociologist Victor Rios addresses this question in his celebrated book, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.

How do sexuality and gender intersect in the development of identity among boys in the context of high school? This question is at the center of sociologist C.J. Pascoe's widely popular book, Dude,You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School.

Research Methods

Macrosociologists Feagin and Schor, among many others, use a combination of historical and archival research, and analysis of statistics that span long time periods in order to construct data sets that show how the social system and the relationships within it have evolved over time to produce the society we know today. In addition, Schor employs interviews and focus groups, more commonly used in microsociological research, to make smart connections between historical trends, social theory, and the way people experience their everyday lives.

Microsociologists, Rios, and Pascoe included, typically use research methods that involve direct interaction with research participants, like one-on-one interviews, ethnographic observation, focus groups, as well as smaller-scale statistical and historical analyses. To address their research questions, both Rios and Pascoe embedded in the communities they studied and became parts of the lives of their participants, spending a year or more living among them, seeing their lives and interactions with others firsthand, and speaking with them about their experiences.

Research Conclusions

Conclusions born of macrosociology often demonstrate correlation or causation between different elements or phenomena within society. For example, Feagin's research, which also produced the theory of systemic racism, demonstrates how white people in the U.S., both knowingly and otherwise, constructed and have maintained over centuries a racist social system by keeping control of core social institutions like politics, law, education, and media, and by controlling economic resources and limiting their distribution among people of color.

Feagin concludes that all of these things working together have produced the racist social system that characterizes the U.S. today.

Microsociological research, due to its smaller-scale, is more likely to yield the suggestion of correlation or causation between certain things, rather than prove it outright. What it does yield, and quite effectively, is proof of how social systems affect the lives and experiences of people who live within them. Though her research is limited to one high school in one place for a fixed amount of time, Pascoe's work compellingly demonstrates how certain social forces, including mass media, pornography, parents, school administrators, teachers, and peers come together to produce messages to boys that the right way to be masculine is to be strong, dominant, and compulsively heterosexual.

Jen Smith - I don't think that there is any established macro and micro research designs however, there are macro and micro level phenomena. In this context, micro refers to small scale individual or group phenomena or interactions or situations while as macro is at large scale. Design is the plan of the study and it can be same for both macro and micro phenomena with some variations.

Dear Jen,

a lot of macro-designs try to analyize social strcutures by statistical approaches like cross-sectional-studies or longitudinal-studies (like panel studies, event-history-analysis etc.) whereas qualitative designs often try to approach a phenomenon in more detail through methods like Interviews, Oberservations or taking part etc. (This dosen't mean, that quanitative research isn't detailed, but 'detail' is understood in a different way here).

Often both are conceptualized as opposites (theoretically and methodically) but this must not be true, because there are a lot of approaches that try to link both. Theories of (e.g.) Bourdieu, Giddens, or even Foucault discuss such relations as well as mixed-method approaches try to do this with quantiative staticstial studies and interviews or when discussing qualitative methods within discourse analysis on a method(olog)ical level. The Point is often seen in the relation between 'Society' and the 'Individual' and their separation, where the macro-perspective tries to analyize the societal level and the micro perspective the Individual.

Newer approaches IMO tend to take into account, how both, society and the individual subject, aren't separable in the first place and create each other co-constitutively. A lot of performative approaches would argue this way.

For your proposal it could be important to discuss, why the qualitative approach is important or necessary to analyze the phenomenon and why this can be done better e.g. with an qualitative approach.