PRIMARY Research Methods

Question 1

EXPERIMENTS

Lab - MILGRAM STUDY

Answer 1

High degree of control.
2 variables = independent (MANIPULATED and CONTROLLED), dependent (OUTCOME / BEHAVIOUR MEASURED)

Milgram study of obedience - shock study = found that 65% participants continued to the highest level (450V) and all participants continued to 300V.
Ordinary people are likely to follow the order given by an authoritative figure as they believe it is morally right.

Question 2

LAB experiments

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 2

ADVANTAGES:
POSITIVISTS — lab experiments achieve their goal of reliability.
Allow the researcher to identify and measure variable to establish course and effect relationships.
More likely to generate the same results if repeated than other methods.

DISADVANTAGES:
Practical — aspects of society are difficult to manipulate and test. Require small samples.
Ethical — informed consent needed, deception and potential harm to participants.
Artificial — lab highly artificial, doubtful whether the results can be transferred to the real world. Lack validity.
Hawthorne effect — subject mislead but know they are being observed, behaviour may change. Reduced validity.
Free will — inappropriate method for observing / studying humans.

Question 3

FIELD experiments

Answer 3

Experiments that take place in the real social world.

SISSONS - dressed as a rough sleeper one day and business man the next, test that more people would respond to business man than they would the rough sleeper. He was able to accept his hypothesis in the end.

Question 4

FIELD

Advantages disadvantages

Answer 4

ADVANTAGES:

• less artificial — set in real life situations, increase validity.
• reduced hawthorn effect — participants unaware so act normally, reactions are more genuine.

DISADVANTAGES:

• less control — not standardised.
• ethical problems — not gained informed consent.

Question 5

What is the COMPARATIVE method?

EXAMPLE?

Answer 5

Thought experiment carried out in a sociologists mind. Not actually carried out on people still designed to discover cause and effect relationships.

Durkehims suicide study:
Compared suicide rates or Protestant and catholics, used official statistics to make a comparison and found catholics had a lower suicidal level.

Question 6

COMPARATIVE method

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 6

ADVANTAGES:

• Avoids artificiality — not conducted on people.
• No ethical problems — doesn’t involve people.

DISADVANTAGES:
*No control over variables — can’t discuss true cause of something.

Question 7

INTERVIEWS

Answer 7

STRUCTURED — use interview schedule, pre set list of questions
EXAMPLE — Young and Wilmott , extended family east London — 933 people interviewed standardised and controlled.

UNSTRUCTURED — guided conversation, favoured by INTERPRETIVISTS, freedom to vary questions.
EXAMPLE — Sharpe — study girls changing attitudes to education, work and home. Open ended questions allows the girls yo respond in their own ways.

GROUP INTERVIEWS — interviews with up to a dozen people at a time.
EXAMPLE — Paul Willis — “lads” interviews allowed lads to talk freely about the way they viewed schools.

Question 8

Interviews: advantages and disadvantages

Answer 8

ADVANTAGES:

• quick.
• collaborative thinking.
• sharing ideas.

DISADVANTAGES:

• dominant personality types.
• dominating discussion or controlling ides.

Question 9

Structured interviews

ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES

Answer 9

ADVANTAGES:
Practical — large amount of data gathered, cheap and quick, training interviewees is inexpensive, easily quantifiable.
Representativeness —generally quicker to conduct that unstructured interviews, researcher can make generalisations.
Reliability — easy to control and standardise, produce replicable data and very similar results.
Response rate — higher than postal questionnaires.
Limited “interviewer effect” — contact limited to asking a set list of questions, deadpan delivery showing no emotion or stress.

DISADVANTAGES:
Validity — false picture of the people they are trying to study, interviewees unable to say how they truly feel, may be lying o Exaggerating answers.
Ethical issues — deadpan manner can be off putting, not useful for investigating sensitive topics.
Inflexibility — rigidly stick to the set questions, unable to pursue any interesting leads.

Question 10

Unstructured interviews

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 10

ADVANTAGES:
Validity — INTERPRETIVISTS claim that valid data is produced, opportunity to raise new ideas, questions are flexible.
Rapport and sensitivity — likely to put interviewee at ease, DOBASH and DOBASH study domestic violence.
Flexibility — interviewer not restricted and have the flexibility to explore things that seem relevant.
Checking understanding — interviewee / interviewer checking each other’s meaning, ensuring clarity both ways.
Exploring unfamiliar topics — ordinary conversation, interviewers get to know things as they move through the interview.

DISADVANTAGES:
Practical — time consuming, limiting number or interviews that can be carried out, interviewer needs training to be able to probe deeper.
Representativeness — don’t generate large sample, difficult to obtain representative sample, limit generalisability of findings.
Reliability — interview not standardised or controlled, impossible to replicate or draw conclusions.
Validity — interviewee may distort the information given by giving answers the interviewer doesn’t want to hear. (Generally high validity.)
Unsuitability for sensitive issues — some may prefer to complete anonymous postal questionnaires rather than answering face to face questions.

Question 11

OBSERVATIONS

Answer 11

NON-PARTICIPANT — Researcher observes group or event but doesn’t get involved EXAMPLE Francis observed gendered classroom interaction and student behaviour and found that boys got negative attention and this method was unsuccessful due to background noise.

PARTICIPANT — Researcher takes part in event or group whilst observing, they become a member o the group. EXAMPLE COVERT — Patrick - Glasgow gang , Humphrey - tea room trade.
OVERT — Barker - the making of a moonie, Ventaktesh - going leader for a day.

Question 12

What is an overt observation?

Answer 12

Researcher makes their true identity and purpose known to those being studied
EXAMPLE: venkatesh - going leader for a day.

Question 13

What is a covert observation?

Answer 13

Researchers identity and purpose of the study is unknown to those being studied.
EXAMPLE: Macintyre - football hooligans

Question 14

2 main issues when conducting participant observation

Answer 14

1. Getting in, staying in, getting out.

2. whether the observation are covert or overt in nature.

Question 15

OVERT observations:

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 15

ADVANTAGES
— informed consent obtained, group not being deceived.
— observer can openly make notes.
— researcher can triangulate & use other methods.

DISADVANTAGES
— group may refuse researcher permission to observe them or may prevent them from seeing everything.
— risks creating the hawthorn effect if those who know they are being observed behave in an unnatural way as a result of being watched.

Question 16

COVERT observations

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 16

ADVANTAGES:
Practical issues
— less risk of observers altering behaviour.
— only way to generate valid data.
—only way to observe natural behaviour.

Ethical issues
—immoral to deceive people, obtaining information by pretending to become a a member of the group.
— lack informed consent.

DISADVANTAGES:
Practical issues
— researcher required to keep up an act at all time.
— cannot openly make notes, reliant on memory taking note.

Ethical issues
— observers have to lie about their reason for leaving at end of research.
— may have to participate in immoral or illegal activity as part of their cover.

Question 17

Participant observations

Advantages and Disadvanages

Answer 17

ADVANTAGES:
Theoretical
— validity
- researchers can obatain rich quantitative data providing a picture of how people really live.
- data generated gives true picture of peoples feelings, opinions and meaning.
—verstehen (German world for ‘empathy’)
- understanding other points of view.
-obtain empathy through personal experience by living as a group member.

Practical
— flexibility
- enter the situation with a relatively open mind about what will be found.
- don’t need to stick to their hypothesis, can follow new areas of interest.

DISADVANTAGES:
Practical
- time consuming.
- researcher need to be trained to identify which aspects of a situation are worth observing.
- stressful and demanding for researcher.
- requires good interpersonal skills
- difficult to gain access.

Ethical

• covert observation, deceiving people.
• may have to take part in illegal or immoral activity.
• lack informed consent.

Theoretical
— representative
- group studied = very small.
- unlikely to be able to generalise findings.
- sample usually generated through snowball sampling.
— reliability
- unlikely to be replicated as it wont be the same researcher.
- participant observations dependent on ONE researcher.
- rejected by POSITIVISTS as they are not standardised.
— bias and lack of objectivity
- risk getting too involved and going native.
- loyalty may prevent them from revealing full account.
- criticised for romanticised account, affecting validity.
— validity
- studies are subjective and biased.
- generate authentic account of actors works.

Question 18

Non-participant observations

EXAMPLES

Answer 18

When the researcher observes a group without taking part.
EXAMPLES:
*Wright - observed classroom interactions of over 1,000 students and teachers. She was able to see how they actually behaved towards teachers instead of how they claimed to behave.
*Francis - observed in 3 schools in London to record gendered classroom interactions and student behaviour. Boys got more attention and were told off more than girls.

Question 19

Non-participant

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 19

ADVANTAGES:

• openly ask questions to clarify meaning.
• observer gains informed consent off these involved.
• observer may have more freedom as they don’t have to join in with the groups activities.

DISADVANTAGES:

• presence of researcher may affect groups behaviours.
• the group may act in an unnatural way.
• researchers more likely to impose their own subjective interpretations on the events they witness.

Question 20

QUESTIONNAIRES

Answer 20

Close ended: Questions answered with a single word or with answer chosen from limited options or ticking a box.
Open ended: answered with more than one word, usually a sentence or phrase. No preselected answer choices offered by researcher.

EXAMPLES:
Bowles and Gintis - measured students personality traits using questionnaires. Compared questionnaires to exam results.

Chubb and moe - survey of parental attitudes to schooling.

Question 21

Questionnaires

Advantages and disadvantages

Answer 21

ADVANTAGES:
Practical
- Geographically wide spread.
- large amounts of data.
- cheap, no training.
- quick.
- no interviewer needed.
- easily quantifiable.

Ethical

• ask sensitive questions.
• respondents made aware don’t have to answer.
• informed consent.
• keep identity anonymous.

Theoretical 
Reliability 
- set of closed questions.
- restricted answers. 
- no researcher present to influence respondents answers.
Representativeness 
- large sample.
- generalisations can be made.
Hypothesis testing 
- cause and effect relationships.
- quantifiable data.
Detachment and objectivity 
- completed with little personal contact. 
- no bias or influence caused 

DISADVANTAGES
Practical
- superficial data.
- increase cost , incentive to increase response rates.

Response rate
- low response rate very few both to complete and return.

Inflexibility
- once finalised researcher is unable to explore any new area of interest.
Detachment (INTERPRETIVISTS CRITICISM)
- lack of validity
- too detached from respondents
- questions cannot be clarified.
Lying or forgetting the “right answerism”
- respondent may lie, not understands or try to please the researcher.
Imposing the researchers meaning
- impose meaning of researcher rather than revealing those if the respondent.