Breaking down the question
The statement makes a strong claim — that non-positivistic methodology is not merely useful but essential for understanding human behaviour. The command word "discuss" invites you to examine this claim from both sides, weigh the reasons for and against it, and arrive at a reasoned position rather than a flat endorsement.
The crux lies in the word "understanding". In the non-positivist methodologies tradition, understanding means grasping the subjective meanings that actors attach to their conduct — a task the positivist ideal of external observation cannot fully accomplish. Human behaviour, unlike the behaviour of falling bodies, is meaningful and interpreted, and this is the fulcrum on which the whole answer turns.
A strong response defends the necessity of interpretive methods while conceding that they are best combined with, rather than opposed to, positivist techniques. Treating the statement as an absolute either-or is the trap to avoid.
How to approach it
Open by distinguishing the two methodological camps: positivism, which models sociology on natural science and seeks external causal laws, and non-positivism, which insists that social reality is meaningful and must be interpreted from within.
Then build the case for essentiality. Argue that because human action is oriented to meanings, motives and values, a purely external, quantifying method misses what is distinctive about it. Bring in Weber's Verstehen, Dilthey's distinction between explaining and understanding, and Schutz's phenomenology to give the argument depth.
Balance this with the limits of the non-positivist stance — problems of subjectivity, generalisation and verification — and close by advocating methodological pluralism, so that "essential" is defended as necessary but not sufficient.
Model answer
The claim that non-positivistic methodology is essential for understanding human behaviour rests on a fundamental point about the nature of social reality: human beings act on the basis of meanings, and no account of their conduct that ignores those meanings can be complete. To assess the claim we must first contrast the two methodological traditions and then judge whether the interpretive approach is genuinely indispensable.
Positivism, in the lineage of Comte and Durkheim, held that society could be studied as an external object, that social facts should be treated as things, and that the goal of sociology was to establish general causal laws through observation, measurement and comparison, exactly as the natural sciences do. On this view, objectivity requires the researcher to stand outside the phenomenon and record only what is observable, setting aside subjective meanings as unscientific.
The non-positivist tradition challenges this at its root. Its central insight is that the subject matter of the social sciences differs in kind from that of the natural sciences. A stone does not interpret its fall, but a worshipper, a voter or a striker acts on an understanding of the situation. To grasp such action one must recover the meaning it holds for the actor — a task that external observation alone cannot achieve.
Max Weber gave this insight its most influential formulation. He defined sociology as the interpretive understanding, or Verstehen, of social action in order to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. For Weber, understanding the subjective meaning an actor attaches to conduct is not a soft supplement to explanation but a precondition of it; one cannot even identify an action as, say, a religious act without grasping how the actor sees it. Wilhelm Dilthey had earlier distinguished the natural sciences, which explain through external causes, from the human sciences, which must understand from within lived experience. Alfred Schutz extended the argument phenomenologically, showing how everyday actors construct a shared, taken-for-granted world of meanings that the sociologist must reconstruct rather than override.
From this standpoint the case for essentiality is strong. Interpretive methods — participant observation, ethnography, in-depth interviews, life histories and the analysis of symbols and documents — access the actor's own point of view, capturing motive, context and meaning in ways that a standardised questionnaire cannot. They are sensitive to the fine texture of social life, allow unexpected patterns to emerge, and treat respondents as knowing subjects rather than data points. For studying religion, deviance, ritual, kinship or the meaning of work, such depth is not a luxury but a requirement, since the very object of enquiry is constituted by meaning.
Yet the word "essential" must be handled with care. Non-positivist methods carry real liabilities. Findings drawn from a single setting are hard to generalise; small, purposive samples raise questions of representativeness; reliability suffers because another researcher may interpret the same scene differently; and the closeness that gives depth can produce observer bias and "going native". Without explicit procedures, interpretation can shade into the researcher's own storytelling. Positivist techniques, by contrast, offer breadth, comparability and the possibility of testing hypotheses across large populations — indispensable for studying, say, patterns of social mobility or fertility.
The reasonable conclusion is that the statement is largely correct but should not be read as exclusive. Non-positivistic methodology is essential for understanding human behaviour in the strict sense of grasping meaning, because no purely external method can reach the interpreted world in which humans act. But it is necessary rather than sufficient. The soundest practice is methodological pluralism: combining the depth of interpretive methods with the breadth and rigour of quantitative ones, and practising reflexivity throughout. So understood, the interpretive tradition is not one option among several but the indispensable core of any sociology that takes the meaningfulness of human action seriously.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners reward candidates who anchor the answer in the distinctive nature of social reality — that human action is meaningful — rather than merely listing qualitative techniques. The most common weakness is to describe positivism and non-positivism as a bare list of methods without explaining why understanding meaning requires interpretation.
The strongest answers deploy Weber's Verstehen with precision, distinguish understanding from explanation via Dilthey, and add phenomenological depth through Schutz. Honouring "discuss" means acknowledging the limits of the interpretive stance and reaching a defended position, ideally methodological pluralism, rather than an uncritical endorsement. Concrete illustration — why studying religion or deviance demands interpretive depth — and disciplined use of vocabulary such as Verstehen, reflexivity and value-relevance lift the answer into the top band.