CHOOSING A RESEARCH METHOD Flashcards
What is ‘PET’?
- Practical, e.g: funding
- Ethical, e.g: consequences
- Theoretical. e.g: marxist
What is primary data?
Data collected by the sociologist themselves for their own purposes. This may be to gain a first-hand picture of a group or society or to test a hypothesis.
What is secondary data?
Information that has been collected by someone else for their own purpose. Examples including official statistics or secondary
documents such as letters, emails, diaries, news report, the internet.
What is quantitative data?
Information in numerical form. Official stats,
percentages. This can be information such as percentage of
divorces or stats on girls passing 5 or more GCSES
What is qualitative data?
Is about getting a feel for things, thoughts,
feelings and context- for example reasons girls do better in education or why marriages end in divorce. It aims to give us an indepth sense of the persons views. They may do this
through indepth interviews or observations of that group.
What is validity?
A valid method is one that produces a true or genuine picture of what something is like. Qualitative methods are more likely to do this as they are in depth and give context. The word in German is ‘verstehen’ to mean a deep, empathetic, understanding
What is reliability?
When something can be repeated by another researcher and give the same results. Quantitative methods are more reliable as they can be replicated i.e surveys or closed questions questionnaires that are always the same. Easier than qualitative methods such as observations or unstructured interviews as you would get different results every time
What is representativeness?
Whether the people studied are a typical cross section of the group we are interested in. We need to ensure our sample is representative of the total population. Then we can make generalisations to the total population
What is positivism?
What is interpretivism?
