Breaking down the question
The pivot of the question is the word method, not the substance of suicide as such. The examiner wants an account of how Durkheim studied suicide — the distinctive procedure he devised — rather than merely a summary of his four types. The types are relevant only in so far as they illustrate the method.
Distinct is the second cue. It asks what was novel and specifically sociological about Durkheim's approach. The answer is that he took the most apparently individual and psychological of acts and demonstrated that it has social causes, thereby proving the very possibility of sociology as an autonomous science. The method — treating suicide rates as social facts, using official statistics, correlation and the comparative method, and inferring social causes — is what made Le Suicide (1897) a foundational demonstration.
The topic — Sociological Thinkers — means the answer should also situate the method within Durkheim's wider programme in The Rules of Sociological Method, of which the study of suicide was the practical vindication.
How to approach it
Open by stating what Durkheim set out to prove and why suicide was the ideal test case. Then work systematically through the components of his method: the object as a social fact, the rejection of extra-social explanations, the use of official statistics and comparison, the establishment of correlations, and the theoretical inference of social causes. Draw on the account of Durkheim's social facts and method to keep the treatment rigorous, and on the profile of Emile Durkheim for context.
Close with a critical appraisal — the strengths that made the study a model and the well-known methodological criticisms — so the discussion is evaluative, not merely descriptive.
Model answer
Durkheim chose suicide deliberately, and the choice was itself a methodological statement. If sociology could explain even suicide — seemingly the most private, individual and psychologically determined of acts — by reference to social causes, then the case for sociology as an autonomous science studying a reality sui generis would be made beyond dispute. Le Suicide (1897) was thus the practical proof of the programme he had laid down two years earlier in The Rules of Sociological Method.
The object as a social fact. The first and defining move was to shift the object of study. Durkheim did not seek to explain why any particular individual takes their own life — that, he conceded, belongs to psychology. His object was the social suicide rate: the number of suicides per unit of population in a given society. This rate is a social fact — external to individuals, general across the group, and remarkably stable over time despite the changing individuals who compose it. Its constancy showed it was determined not by the caprice of individuals but by the character of the society itself.
Elimination of extra-social causes. Following his rule that one social fact must be explained by another, Durkheim proceeded by systematic elimination. He examined and rejected the non-sociological explanations of his day — insanity and psychopathic states, race and heredity, imitation, and cosmic factors such as climate and season — showing in each case that the statistics did not support them. This via negativa cleared the ground for a social explanation.
Statistical correlation and the comparative method. The positive method was comparative and statistical. Using the official suicide records of European states, Durkheim correlated suicide rates with membership of different social groups and categories — religion, marital status, family size, military service, political and economic circumstances. He found stable patterns: Protestants had higher rates than Catholics, the unmarried higher than the married, the childless higher than parents, soldiers higher than civilians, and rates rose in times of both economic crisis and sudden prosperity. By holding factors constant and comparing across groups, he isolated the social variables at work — an early and influential use of the method of concomitant variation.
Theoretical inference: integration and regulation. From these correlations Durkheim inferred two underlying social currents governing the rate: the degree of social integration (how strongly individuals are bound into the group) and the degree of social regulation (how firmly their desires and conduct are governed by shared norms). Suicide rates vary inversely or excessively with these. From this he derived his celebrated typology, each type a departure from a healthy mean: egoistic suicide from too little integration (the isolated Protestant, the unmarried); altruistic from excessive integration (the soldier who dies for the group); anomic from insufficient regulation, when norms break down in economic upheaval; and fatalistic from oppressive over-regulation. The types are not the method but its yield — the theoretical fruit of the statistical analysis.
The distinctiveness of the method. What made all this distinctly sociological was the insistence that a collective phenomenon be explained by collective causes, without recourse to individual psychology; the treatment of the rate as an objective, external, measurable social fact; and the marriage of rigorous quantitative comparison with sociological theory. Durkheim demonstrated that society is a reality in its own right, exerting real force on its members, and that this force can be measured. In doing so he supplied sociology with a working model of scientific enquiry.
Critical appraisal. The study's strengths are considerable: it established sociology's autonomy, pioneered the use of official statistics and comparison, and yoked data to theory with rare elegance. Yet later scholars have pressed serious criticisms. The official statistics Durkheim trusted are themselves social constructions — the recording of a death as suicide depends on coroners, officials and cultural attitudes, as Jack Douglas argued, so the "facts" may reflect labelling rather than reality. His inference of subjective states such as integration from external rates risks the ecological fallacy, reading individual motives off group data. And his near-total exclusion of individual meaning sits awkwardly with the interpretive tradition. These criticisms qualify but do not overturn the achievement: Le Suicide remains the classic demonstration of the sociological method at work.
Examiner's perspective
The single most common failure is to answer the wrong question — narrating the four types of suicide as though the examiner had asked for a summary of Durkheim's findings. The question is about method. High marks go to candidates who foreground the procedure: rate as social fact, elimination of rivals, statistical correlation, comparative method, inference of integration and regulation.
Examiners reward the link back to The Rules of Sociological Method and the explanation of why suicide was chosen — as the decisive test of sociology's autonomy. Correct use of terms such as social fact, concomitant variation and the two currents lends rigour.
The strongest scripts do not stop at exposition but appraise the method critically, invoking Douglas on the social construction of suicide statistics and the ecological fallacy, while affirming that the study nonetheless remains sociology's model of scientific enquiry. That balance of exposition and evaluation secures the top band.