First, as an introduction, Durkheim's four general types of suicide are given; anomic and fatalistic suicides, meaning excess and lack of social regulations, followed by egoistic and altruistic suicides, meaning excess or lack of social integration. Then he briefly mentions his point on how emotion is another important influence in driving a person to commit altruistic suicide, backed by Blake's study on altruistic suicide in military combat. He writes that, according to Durkheim, altruistic suicide can occur when a person becomes strongly integrated into a social group, and suicide becomes a duty for those who are integrated an individual may be punished, ridiculed, or ostracized for not committing suicide: the expected conduct for the person is not to please himself or herself but to please the group to which he or she belongs. .
After the quote by Durkheim, he gave his research methods, starting from a brief history of the Congressional Medal of Honor, followed by the regulations behind awarding a person the medal. Using the government documents on each recipients of the medal, he used a content analysis approach to analyze these data. Content analysis is an established social science research technique that provides an objective coding procedure for analyzing written material. Using the manifest coding and latent/open coding technique of content analysis, and the process of analytical induction, he was able to create empirical generalization and ultimately grounded theoretical explanations. Both qualitative and quantitative data were used in his research, quantitative being the Government documents, and qualitative being his visit to Congressional Medal of Honor Headquarters and an interview with the director.
When analyzing his data, he does not overlook the fact that such data have limitations. For example, death eliminates any interview options, and organizations that gather the data have a vested interest in the kind of data they create and showcase.