It is commonly held that the most laudable research is constructed around a healthy interplay among theories, methods, and data. Despite this long-standing consensus, many scholars have voiced concerns that theoretical frameworks are too often given inadequate attention and are generally underdeveloped. This impression has yet to be expressed with an empirical basis. For this reason, we evaluate this apparent disciplinary situation by creating a dataset made up of 217 articles from general sociology journals, as well as 22 US graduate-level classical theory syllabi. Through various means, we assess how often and to what extent sociologists apply classical theory in their research. Rather than intensive theorizing and/or earnestly striving to elevate historical consciousness, we find that sociologists typically reduce the theoretical dimensions of their analyses to thin commemorations of foundational texts. To our knowledge, this is the first empirically based assessment of the degree to which classical theory is used and cited in sociological research.

人们普遍认为，最值得称赞的研究是围绕理论、方法和数据之间的健康相互作用构建的。尽管存在这一长期共识，但许多学者表示担心，理论框架往往没有得到足够的重视，而且普遍不发达。这种印象尚未得到实证基础的表达。因此，我们通过创建一个由普通社会学期刊的 217 篇文章以及 22 个美国研究生水平的经典理论大纲组成的数据集来评估这种明显的学科状况。通过各种方式，我们评估社会学家在其研究中应用经典理论的频率和程度。与其深入理论化和/或认真努力提升历史意识，我们发现社会学家通常将他们分析的理论维度简化为对基础文本的简单纪念。据我们所知，这是对经典理论在社会学研究中使用和引用程度的首次基于经验的评估。