key terms

Question 1

What’s primary data?

Answer 1

Researcher collects data specifically for the experiment e.g interviews

Question 2

What’s secondary data?

Answer 2

Researchers use data that’s already been collected beforehand e.g official statistics

Question 3

Disadvantage of primary data

Answer 3

Can be time consuming

Question 4

Advantage of primary data

Answer 4

Data is gathered specifically for the experiment so is accurate

Question 5

Disadvantage of secondary data

Answer 5

The data may not be specific to the experiment

Question 6

What’s quantitative data

Answer 6

Numerical data
e.g stats

Question 7

What’s qualitative data

Answer 7

Data in words
e.g interviews

Question 8

Strength of qualitative data

Answer 8

Valid because participants have the chance to fully explain their answers

Question 9

Strength of quantitative data

Answer 9

Reliable because it’s easy to replicate

Question 10

What are the 5 practical factors that affect experiments

Answer 10

• Time and Money
• Requirements of funding bodies
• personal skills and characteristics
• subject matter
• research opportunity

Question 11

What are the 5 ethical factors that needs to be considered when doing an experiment

Answer 11

• informed consent
• confidentiality and privacy
• harm to participants
• vulnerable groups
• covert research

Question 12

What are the 3 theoretical factors that need to be considered when doing an experiment

Answer 12

• validity
• reliability
• representiveness

Question 13

What does validity mean

Answer 13

If research accurately measures what it’s claiming to measure
so how true a research is

Question 14

What does reliability mean

Answer 14

How easy the research is to replicate

Question 15

List some key features of positivist

Answer 15

• scientific
• likes experiments
• like data that give them patterns
• see soc as a science
• likes quantitative data
• likes research to be reliable and representative

Question 16

Key features of an interpretivist

Answer 16

• not scientific
• likes interviews (deep insight)
• soc not a science
• likes qualitative data
• value validity

Question 17

What are some factors affecting choice of topic

Answer 17

• the sociologist perspective
• society’s values
• practical factors
• funding bodies

Question 18

What’s a sample

Answer 18

The group of people the researcher is experimenting on

Question 19

What are the 6 sampling techniques

Answer 19

• opportunity
• quasi random/systematic
• stratified
• quota
• snowball
• random

Question 20

What’s opportunity sampling

Answer 20

researched selects participants based on availability

Question 21

What’s quasi-random/systematic sampling

Answer 21

choosing every nth term
still have random but not every participant from the sample has an equal chance of being picked

Question 22

What’s stratified sampling

Answer 22

slitting sample into smaller groups and picking from them

Question 23

What’s quota sampling

Answer 23

Picking out participants with the characteristics you wany

Question 24

what’s snowball sampling

Answer 24

Asking participants to recommend other participants

Question 25

What’s random sampling

Answer 25

Randomly selecting participants e.g random number generator

Question 26

What does objective mean

Answer 26

Not up to other people’s opinions, it’s facts E.g statistics

Question 27

What does subjective mean

Answer 27

Up for interpretation e.g unstructured interviews

Question 28

What does representiveness mean

Answer 28

if the sample can be generalised to a large population.
This can be done by making sure you have different genders and ages in your sample