In his research, Dr. Davis focuses on deviance and social control. His interest in deviant occupations has led to ethnographic research on a number of unconventional workers, including polygraph examiners, fortunetellers, and religious seers. Two ongoing projects pertaining to social control are the intervention by strangers into domestic violence and the physical punishment of children by parents.
Children usually appear to take physical punishment in stride, neither crying nor complaining.
Adult and child demeanor is highly consistent with the widespread belief that spanking is normal, natural, and necessary, in spite of the fact that most researchers and experts claim that physical punishment is ineffective and potentially harmful. Dr. Davis believes that his own research activities should be brought into the classroom. As a symbolic interactionist, he believes it is important for students to avoid the naive reification of social structure and to recognize the importance of interaction, process, and meaning for understanding social life.