key terms Flashcards
What’s primary data?
Researcher collects data specifically for the experiment e.g interviews
What’s secondary data?
Researchers use data that’s already been collected beforehand e.g official statistics
Disadvantage of primary data
Can be time consuming
Advantage of primary data
Data is gathered specifically for the experiment so is accurate
Disadvantage of secondary data
The data may not be specific to the experiment
What’s quantitative data
Numerical data
e.g stats
What’s qualitative data
Data in words
e.g interviews
Strength of qualitative data
Valid because participants have the chance to fully explain their answers
Strength of quantitative data
Reliable because it’s easy to replicate
What are the 5 practical factors that affect experiments
- Time and Money
- Requirements of funding bodies
- personal skills and characteristics
- subject matter
- research opportunity
What are the 5 ethical factors that needs to be considered when doing an experiment
- informed consent
- confidentiality and privacy
- harm to participants
- vulnerable groups
- covert research
What are the 3 theoretical factors that need to be considered when doing an experiment
- validity
- reliability
- representiveness
What does validity mean
If research accurately measures what it’s claiming to measure
so how true a research is
What does reliability mean
How easy the research is to replicate
List some key features of positivist
- scientific
- likes experiments
- like data that give them patterns
- see soc as a science
- likes quantitative data
- likes research to be reliable and representative
Key features of an interpretivist
- not scientific
- likes interviews (deep insight)
- soc not a science
- likes qualitative data
- value validity
What are some factors affecting choice of topic
- the sociologist perspective
- society’s values
- practical factors
- funding bodies
What’s a sample
The group of people the researcher is experimenting on
What are the 6 sampling techniques
- opportunity
- quasi random/systematic
- stratified
- quota
- snowball
- random
What’s opportunity sampling
researched selects participants based on availability
What’s quasi-random/systematic sampling
choosing every nth term
still have random but not every participant from the sample has an equal chance of being picked
What’s stratified sampling
slitting sample into smaller groups and picking from them
What’s quota sampling
Picking out participants with the characteristics you wany
what’s snowball sampling
Asking participants to recommend other participants
