case studies

Question 1

what is a case study ?

Answer 1

a case study is an in-depth group into a particular group/ person, not just investigating one thing about them but instead trying to understand multiple aspects of their identity and life.

Question 2

what is a secondary source

Answer 2

people or systems, other than the sociologist themselves, who have collected useful information.

Question 3

what is secondary data

Answer 3

data that other people have created or gathered.

Question 4

what are the two types of secondary data

Answer 4

1. official stats
2. documents ( public/personal/ historical )

Question 5

what is an Ethnographies ?

Answer 5

when a society or culture is being studied over a long period by someone who understands a long participant research- they go and live with them.

Question 6

what was a case study where Ethnographies used ?

Answer 6

1. jolly amish studies
2. Malinowski (1927) - studied South Pacific tribe who had little contact with the outside world, he studied their society and culture, he found teenagers on the island were committing insect but no one minded along as it was kept a secret. as soon as it was made public everyone negatively labelled the teenagers and they killed themselves.

Question 7

what are 2 pros of using ethnographies

Answer 7

1. valid data which would lead to valid versterhen.
2. researcher could build rapport/ qualitative data.

Question 8

what are the cons of using ethnographies ?

Answer 8

1. unethical - influence
2. not generalisable

Question 9

what is life history ?

Answer 9

indepth unstructured interviews and personal documents about one person are collected over time to find out how their early life impacted their decisions later.

Question 10

what are the pros of using life history ?

Answer 10

build rapport- researcher can get an unclose view.
empirical data

Question 11

what are the cons of using life studies ?

Answer 11

not representative/ generalisable/ impractical.

Question 12

what is a case study example when life history was used ?

Answer 12

landesco (1933) studied the life of a Chicago gang member to find out why he became a member and that it was like

Question 13

what is a longitudinal study ?

Answer 13

when a researcher selects a sample group (cohort/panel) and data is repeatedly collected over a period of years, each data collection is referred to as a ‘wave’ or ‘sweep’

Question 14

what is an example of a longitudinal study being used ?

Answer 14

the millennium cohort survey studies the lives of 19,000 people who were born in the millennium in order to track their lives, health, interests and aspirations

Question 15

what are he pros of using a longitudinal study ?

Answer 15

1. easy to repeat
2. macro/ generalisable

Question 16

what are the cons of using a longitudinal study ?

Answer 16

1. only focused on 1 group/ practical issues/ funding- time

Question 17

what are the strengths of public documents

Answer 17

easily accessible
wide range of variety
can be very in-depth

Question 18

what are the limitations of public documents

Answer 18

not representative- could have a bias.
written with an audience in mind
30 year rule.
may be hard to interpret.

Question 19

what did gewitz study ?

Answer 19

Gewitz studied ways in which schools responded to being part od an ‘education market’ this is where schools compete with one another for ‘customers’ for example GCSE grades might attract more students. She collected a range of school documents including brochures and prospectuses to see how schools adapt to competing in a ‘market’

Question 20

what is coding/ content analysis

Answer 20

a technique for systematically describing written, spoken or visual communication. It turns qualitative data into a quantitative data (numerical) list of codes.

Question 21

what’s two strength of using documents

Answer 21

theyre practical, they already exist so the researcher just has to find them, easy to double check your findings.

2. qualitative, valid versterhen, interpretavists, would like e.g diaries and autobiographies.

Question 22

what’s a limitation of using documents

Answer 22

1. impractical because they often need interpreting and coding- time consuming-
2. qualitative means its micro, hard to find trends or know if its representative- positivist would like.