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A substantial amount of academic sociology is based on quantitative analyses of survey data. For example, here's an (open-access!) paper describing gender divides in US doctoral education: https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-v4-6-123/

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Surveys are only useful for studying for what people believe, and only then what they're willing to admit. The discipline shouldn't make any claims about actual behavior when the only observations that could possibly support them aren't permitted.

I agree! People are very inconsistent. They change their beliefs, lie to people, are unsure about things, etc. A lot of sociologists would argue that this is a good reason to combine this kind of quantitative data with in-depth ethnographic observation of real behavior (e.g. https://shamuskhan.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/talk-is-cheap...). When we want to see how someone's opinion actually plays out in a real situation, that's usually our best tool.

Also, a lot of survey data captures demographic characteristics, not just individual beliefs-- think censuses. Surveys are generally considered a robust instrument for measuring things (like income, occupation, gender) that are relatively fixed over time.

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