Quantitative Research Methods Flashcards
According to positivists, why should sociology model its research methods on those of the natural sciences?
In their view, this will produce objective, true, scientific knowledge of society.
Give an example of a pattern of social reality.
There are clear patterns of educational achievement and underachievement.
According to positivists, why do social patterns exist?
They exist because society exerts an influence over its members, systematically shaping their behaviour in various ways.
How can cause and effect be discovered?
Positivists believe through careful observation and measurement , they can discover laws of cause and effect that explain social patterns.
Give an example to show how quantitative data can be used to show patterns of behaviour in society.
Quantitative data on exam results may show class differences in achievement. By correlating this with other quantitative data on class differences in income, we may be able to show that low income is a cause of underachievement.
In what sense is a laboratory experiment a controlled experiment?
The laboratory is an artificial environment on which the scientist can control different variables in order to discover what effect they have.
Briefly explain what happens to the experimental group in an experiment.
The experimental group are exposed to a variable (independent variable) that the researcher believes may have a particular effect.
Briefly explain what happens to the control group in an experiment.
The control group aren’t exposed to the independent variable - their conditions are kept constant.
Briefly explain how a laboratory experiment can show cause-and-effect relationships.
The condition of both groups is recorded before and after the experiment. If a change is discovered in the experimental group but not the control group, they may conclude that this was caused by the treatment the two groups received.
Briefly explain the following practical issues associated with laboratory experiments:
- Open systems
- Individuals are complex
Open systems:
- Sociologists such as Keat and Urry (1982) argue that lab experiments are only suitable for closed systems.
- However, society is an open system where countless factors are at work in any given situation, interacting with each other in complex ways.
- This makes it impossible for the researcher even to identify, let alone control, all the relevant variables.
Individuals are complex:
- Therefore it’s not really possible to ‘match’ the members of the control and experimental groups exactly.
- While we can find identical samples of chemicals, no two human beings are exactly alike.
Briefly explain the following practical issues associated with laboratory experiments:
- Studying the past
- Small samples
Studying the past:
- Lab experiments cannot be used to study an event in the past, since we cannot control variables that were acting in the past rather than the present.
- Nor can we keep people in lab conditions for long periods of time so we can study them.
Small samples:
- Lab experiments can usually only study small samples.
- Making it difficult to investigate large-scale social phenomena.
- Ex: we cannot study all or even a large sample of the members of a major religion.
Briefly explain the following practical issues associated with laboratory experiments:
- The Hawthorne effect
- The expectancy effect
The Hawthorne effect:
- A lab experiment is in an artificial environment and any behaviour that occurs in it may also be artificial.
- In particular, if the subjects know they’re being experimented on, this may make them act differently.
- Ex: they may feel self-important, anxious or resentful about being in the experiment and act differently as a result.
The expectancy effect:
- Refers to the fact that what a researcher expects to happen in the experiment can affect its actual outcome.
- This can occur by the experimenter consciously or unconsciously treating the subjects in such a way that it influences how they respond and produces the result the experimenter expected.
Briefly explain the following ethical issues associated with laboratory experiments:
- Informed consent
- Harm to subjects
Informed consent:
- This means gaining their agreement to take part, having first explained to them in terms they can understand, the nature and purpose of the experiment, what risks and effects there may be, and the uses to which the findings will be put.
- However, this can create the Hawthorne effect.
Harm to subject:
- Research shouldn’t normally harm the participants.
- However, some argue that minor or temporary harm may be justified ethically if the results yield significant social benefits.
According to positivists, what is the theoretical strength of laboratory experiments?
Their reliability. However, in other respects they suffer from important limitations even from a positivist perspective.
Briefly outline three reasons why positivists regard laboratory experiments as highly reliable.
- The original experimenter can control the conditions and specify the precise steps that were followed in the original experiment, so others can easily repeat these steps to re-run it.
- It produces quantitative data, so the results of the re-run experiments can be easily compared to the original.
- It’s a very detached and objective method: the researcher merely manipulates the variables and records the results. Their subjective feelings and values have no effect on the conduct or outcome of the experiment.
According to positivists, why is representativeness important?
Because they aim to make generalisations about how the wider social structure shapes individuals’ behaviour.
What is meant by external validity?
We cannot be confident the findings are true for the wide population.
Briefly outline two reasons why laboratory experiments may lack external validity.
- As experiments can only study small samples, there’s a greater risk that they’re not a representative cross section of the population the researcher is interested in. If so, the findings cannot be generalised beyond the experiment itself.
- Lack of external validity arises out of the high level of control the experimenter has. The higher the level of control we have over an experiment, the more unnatural the circumstances this creates.
What is meant by internal validity and why might laboratory experiments lack it?
Their findings may not be true for the subjects of the experiment itself, let alone the wider world.
According to interpretivists, why are laboratory experiments inappropriate for studying human beings.
- Humans are fundamentally different from objects natural scientists study.
- We have free will and choice.
- Our behaviour isn’t ‘caused’ by external forces, so it cannot be explained in terms of cause-and-effect statements as positivists believe.
- Our choices can only be understood in terms of choices we make freely on the basis of meanings we give to events.
Briefly outline two ways in which a field experiment differs from a laboratory experiment.
- It takes place in the subjects natural surroundings.
- Those involved don’t know they’re subjects of an experiment, thereby avoiding the Hawthorne effect.
What variable did Rosenthal and Jacobson manipulate in their field experiment and how did they do it?
They manipulated teachers’ expectations about pupils by giving them misleading information about the pupils abilities in order to discover what effects this had on the children’s achievement.
Briefly explain the following types of field experiment:
- Actor tests
- Correspondence tests
Actors tests:
- To test the hypothesis that there’s racial discrimination in employment, Brown and Gay (1985) sent a white and a brown actor for interviews for the same post, to see which one would be offered the job.
- Actors were of different ethnicity but matched for age, gender, qualifications etc.
Correspondence tests:
- Wood et al (2010) sent closely matched job applications for almost 1000 vacancies, apparently from three different applicants of different ethnicity.
What is the value of field experiments?
They’re more natural and valid for real life, and they avoid the artificiality of lab experiments.
What is meant by the trade-off between naturalism and control in field experiments? Why is loss of control a problem?
The more natural and realistic we make the situation, the less control we have over the variables the might be operating. If so, we cannot be certain that we have identified the true cause.
Ex: while it may have been racism that resulted in the white actors getting more job offers, we cannot be certain because Brown and Gay couldn’t control (or even know about) all the other variables in the situation.
Why might field experiment be seen as unethical? How might you counter this view?
Since they involve carrying out an experiment on subjects without their knowledge or consent. However, in Brown and Gay’s and Noon’s experiment, although the researchers did deceive their subjects (the employers) no harm was done, and something of value to society was learnt as a result.
Briefly outline how the comparative method works.
- Identify two groups that are alike in all major respects except for the one variable we’re interested in.
- Then compare the two groups to see if this one difference between them has any effect.
Briefly outline the three advantages of the comparative method over laboratory experiments.
- It avoids artificiality.
- It can be used to study past events.
- It avoids the ethical problems of harming or deceiving subjects.
How does the lack of control in a thought experiment affect the findings?
It gives the researcher even less control over variables than do field experiment, so we can be even less certain whether a thought experiment really has discovered the cause of something.
Briefly define the following types of questions used in questionnaires:
- Closed-ended
- Open-ended
- Closed-ended: respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has selected in advance (e.g yes/no/idk). These answers are pre-coded for ease of analysis.
- Open-ended: Respondents are free to answer however they wish, in their own words, without any pre-selected choices being offered by the researcher.
Briefly outline three practical strengths of questionnaires.
- Quick and cheap way to gather large amounts of quantitative data from large numbers of people, widely spread geographically.
- No need to recruit and train interviewers - respondents complete the questionnaire themselves.
- Data is usually easy to quantify, particularly where pre-coded questions are used, and can be computer-processed to reveal relationships between variables.
Briefly outline seven practical limitations of questionnaires.
- Data is often limited and superficial. This is because questionnaires need to be fairly brief - most people are unlikely to complete a long, time-consuming questionnaire.
- May be necessary to offer incentives (such as entry into a prize draw) to persuade respondents to complete the questionnaire. This adds to the cost.
- Questionnaires are only snapshots - pictures of reality at one moment in time, when the respondent answers the questions. They fail to capture the way people’s attitudes and behaviour change.
- Questionnaires are inflexible - once it is finalised, the researcher is stuck with the questions they’ve decided to ask and cannot explore any new areas of interest should they come up during the course of the research.
Briefly outline the reasons why positivists favour the use of questionnaires.
- They produce representative findings that can be generalised to the widest population.
- They’re reliable, objective and detached method for producing quantitative data, testing hypotheses and developing causal laws of social behaviour
Briefly explain how questionnaires can be used to establish correlations.
Because they yield quantitative data about the links between different variables.
Ex: by correlating respondents’ answers to a question about their occupation and one about their level of education, we might be able to make the generalisation that w/c people are less likely to go to university.
Define reliability.
Reliability involves replicability: if another researcher repeats the research using the same method, they should gain the same results (a replica) as the first researcher.
According to positivists, why is reliability important?
Because it allows a scientist’s findings to be checked and confirmed or falsified by others. If others can repeat the research and obtain the same results, we can have more confidence that its findings are true.
Briefly explain why questionnaires are seen as a reliable method of collecting data.
When we repeat someone’s research, we can use a questionnaire identical to the original one, so new respondents are asked exactly the same questions as the original ones. In other words, the questionnaire is a standardised measuring instrument.
How do questionnaires enable comparisons to be made.
By asking the same questions in different times or societies, we can compare the results obtained. If the results differ, we can assume this is because there’s a real difference between the societies or times we’re comparing.
According to positivists, why is representativeness important?
Because they’re macro or structural theorists - they aim to make generalisations about how the wider social structure shapes our behaviour.
Briefly outline the two main reasons why questionnaires may yield representative data.
They’re large scale:
- Can be distributed quickly + cheaply by post or email over wide geographical areas so they can collect information from a large sample of people.
- Result: findings stand a better chance of being truly representative of the wider population.
They use representative samples:
- Researchers who use questionnaires tend to use more sophisticated sampling techniques designed to obtain a representative sample.
Briefly explain why questionnaires might not be representative.
Representativeness can be undermined by low response rate, especially if those who do return their questionnaires are different in some way from those who don’t (for example, better educated).
If so, this will produce distorted and unrepresentative results, from which no accurate generalisations can be made.
What is a sample?
Smaller sub-group drawn from the wider research population we’re interested in.
What is the aim of sampling?
Usually to ensure that the people we’ve chosen to study are representative or typical of the research population. If they are, we can generalise our findings to the whole research population.
Why is sampling important for positivists?
In enables them to make law-like statements.
What is a sampling frame?
A list of members of the research population.
Briefly explain the following representative sampling techniques:
- Random sampling
- Quasi-random sampling.
- Random sampling: where the sample is selected purely by chance, e.g. names drawn out of a hat.
- Quasi-random sampling: is similar, e.g selecting every tenth name on a list.
Briefly explain the following representative sampling techniques:
- Stratified random sampling
- Quota sampling
- Stratified random sampling: we divide (‘stratify’) the population into the relevant categories (e.g w/c males, w/c females), and then randomly select a sample of each, ensuring that the proportions of the total sample in each category are the same as in the overall population.
- Quota sampling: is similar, but instead of choosing the samples randomly, researchers go looking for the right number (quota) of each sort of person required in each category.
Briefly explain the following non-representative sampling techniques:
- Snowball sampling
- Opportunity sampling
- Snowball sampling: collects a sample by contacting key individuals, who are asked to suggest others to be interviewed, and so on, adding to the sample ‘snowball’ fashion. This is a way to contract a sample who might otherwise be difficult to find e.g criminals.
- Opportunity sampling: chooses from those individuals who are easiest to access e.g a captive audience such as prisoners.
Why do interpretivists have less need for representative samples?
They believe it’s more important to gain a valid understanding of actors’ meanings that to discover laws of behaviour, so they’re less concerned to make generalisations.
According to positivists, why is it important for research to be objective and detached?
The scientist’s own subjective opinions and values must be kept separate from the research and not be allowed to ‘contaminate’ or affect the subject matter or research findings in any way.
Briefly explain why questionnaires are seen as detached and scientific.
The sociologists personal involvement with their respondents is kept to a minimum.
What do interpretivists seek to discover?
The meanings that underlie our actions and from which we construct social reality. Their main concern is with validity.
Define validity.
Obtaining an authentic or truthful picture of how actors construct and experience social reality.
Why do interpretivists tend to reject the use of questionnaires?
They argue that questionnaires cannot yield valid data about the meanings of social actors.
Why do interpretivists reject the positivists’ preference for detachment and objectivity?
They believe it fails to produce a valid picture of actors meanings.
According to interpretivists, why do questionnaires give invalid data?
They’re the most detached of all primary methods. The lack of contact between researcher and respondent makes it almost impossible to clarify what the questions mean or to check that the researcher has correctly understood the answers given.
Briefly explain why respondents might not give full and accurate answers in questionnaires.
Problems of validity are created when respondents lie, forget, don’t know or don’t understand (and don’t admit they don’t know).
Ex: In Schofield’s research on the sexual behaviour of teenagers, in reply to the question, ‘are you a virgin?’ one girl answered, ‘no, not yet’.
Use an example to explain why respondents might give answers they feel they ought to give in questionnaires.
Among groups where churchgoing is thought socially desirable, respondents in questionnaires on church attendance exaggerate how often they attend.
Why do interpretivists prefer observation to questionnaires?
It allows us to see for ourselves what people actually do, rather than what they say they do.
Why do questionnaires pose relatively few ethical problems?
Questions are often about less sensitive, routine factual topics. Even where questions are about more sensitive or personal issues, respondents aren’t obliged to answer them.
What ethical guidelines should be observed when using questionnaires?
- Take care to avoid causing psychological harm.
- Gain respondents informed consent.
- Make it clear respondents have a right not to answer any questions they don’t wish to.
- Parental consent may be required before administering them to children.
According to interpretivists, why do questionnaires impose the researcher’s meanings on the research?
By choosing in advance which questions to ask, the researcher has already decided what is important is important and what isn’t.
Briefly explain how closed-ended questions may distort reality and undermine validity.
Closed-ended questions are a kind of straitjacket where responders have to try and fit their views into the answers on offer. If they feel some other answer to be important, they have no choice but to express it.
Briefly explain how open-ended questions may distort reality and undermine validity.
Open-ended questions allow respondents to give whatever answer they wish, but when the researcher codes them to produce quantitative data, non-identical answers may get lumped together.
Briefly outline structured interviews.
Each interview is conducted in the same standardised way, with precisely the same questions, wording, order, tone of voice etc.
Briefly outline unstructured interviews.
- They’re like a guided conversation.
- The interviewer is free to vary the questions, wording, order etc pursuing whatever line of questioning seems appropriate, asking follow up questions etc
- Group interviews are relatively unstructured.
- They include focus groups, where the researcher asks the group to discuss certain topics and records their views.
Briefly outline semi-structured interviews.
They have the same set of questions in common, but the interviewer can also probe for more information and ask additional questions.
In what ways are structured interviews like questionnaires?
They both involve asking people a fixed set of prepared questions. In both cases, the questions are usually closed-ended with pre-coded answers. Both produce mainly quantitative data.
What is the main difference between structured interviews and questionnaires?
In a structured interview, the questions are read out and the answers filled in by a trained interviewer rather than by the interviewee. Interviews thus involve a social interaction, whereas questionnaires involve little to no interaction between the researcher and respondent.
Briefly outline five practical advantages of structured interviews.
- Structured interviews can cover large numbers of people because they’re quick and fairly cheap. E.g Young and Willmott (1962) interviewed 933 people in this way in their research of families in east London.
- They’re suitable for gathering straightforward factual info such as a person’s age, job, religion etc.
- Results are easily quantified because they use closed-ended questions with pre-coded answers. This makes them suitable for hypothesis testing.
- Training interviewers is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, since all they’re expected to do is follow a set of instructions. However, this is more costly than questionnaires.
- Response rates are usually higher than for questionnaires: perhaps because people find it harder to turn down a face-to-face request, and some may welcome the opportunity to talk. Young and Willmott had only 54 refusals out of 987 people they approached.
Briefly outline three practical limitations of structured interviews.
- Like questionnaires, structured interviews are inflexible, because the interview schedule is drawn up in advance and the interviewer must stick to it rigidly. This makes it impossible to pursue any interesting leads.
- Because the interview schedule is drawn up in advance, researchers must already have some knowledge of the subject and a clear hypothesis to test. This makes this method unsuitable for investigating unfamiliar topics.
- Structured interviews are only snapshots taken at one moment in time, so they fail to capture the dynamic nature of social life.
Why do structured interviews pose relatively few ethical problems?
Questions are more likely to be a routine factual nature about less sensitive topics. Even where questions are intrusive, interviewees are under no obligation to answer them.
Why might feminists view interviews as oppressive?
Because the interview is a social interaction, some interviewees (especially women) may feel pressured to answer questions.
Why might it sometimes be difficult to keep interviewees’ identity confidential? Give an example.
Fiona Brookman (1999) notes that is can be difficult to keep confidential the identity of murderers who have been interviewed. If their case has received much publicity, even minimal details can make them identifiable.
Suggest two special considerations that should be taken into account when interviewing vulnerable people.
- Such interviews may need to be kept brief and special care needs to be taken to not put pressure on the interviewee.
- Parental consent may be required when interviewing children.
According to positivists, why are structured interviews appropriate for testing hypotheses?
They can establish correlations between variables by analysing interviewees’ answers. This allows us to make generalisations about behaviour patterns. Once a correlation has been established, we can construct a hypothesis about its possible cause.
Briefly explain why structured interviews are seen as reliable method.
They’re reliable because they’re easy to standardise and control.
According to positivists, why might structured interviews be likely to give representative findings?
- Relatively quick and cheap to conduct, so large numbers can be surveyed.
- Relatively high response rates and the sophisticated sampling techniques that are often used also help improve representativeness.
Briefly outline four reasons why structured interviews may not give valid data.
- Usually use closed-ended questions. This forces interviewees to choose from a number of limited pre-set answers. If none of these fits what the interviewee wants to say, the data will be invalid.
- They give interviewers little freedom to explain questions or clarify misunderstandings.
- People may lie or exaggerate and this will produce invalid data.
- The sociologist has to draw up the interview schedule in advance, perhaps with little knowledge of the subject.
Why does Reinharz call the use of survey methods for data collection ‘research as rape’?
“The researchers take, hit and run. They intrude into their subjects’ privacy, manipulate the relationships, and give little or nothing in return. When the needs of the researchers are satisfied, they break off contact with the subjects.”
Briefly outline Oakley’s criticism of positivistic methods such as structured interviews.
Oakley argues that this positivists ‘masculine’ approach to research places a high value on objectivity, detachment and hierarchy, and regards ‘science’ as more important than furthering the interests of the people it researches.
Briefly explain how the roles taken in an interview may mirror the gender divisions and hierarchies of patriarchal society.
- The researcher takes the active role in asking the questions.
- Interviewees have a passive role as mere objects of study, to be milked for info by answering the questions. They have no role in deciding the subject or direction of the interview.
According to Graham, how do questionnaires and structured interviews give an invalid picture of women’s experience?
They impose the researcher’s categories on women, making it difficult for them to express their experiences, and concealing the unequal power relationships between the sexes.
Define secondary data.
Data collected by someone else for their own non-sociological purposes.
Briefly describe the following sources of information used to create official statistics, giving an example of each:
- Registration
- Official surveys
Registration: The law requires parents to register births.
Official surveys: Such as the Census or the General Household Survey.
Briefly describe the following source of information used to create official statistics, giving an example:
- Administrative records
Administrative records: Of state agencies such as hospitals, courts and schools. These include records of illnesses,convictions, truancy etc.
Give an example of ‘non-official’ statistics.
Stats produced by non-state organisations. For example, churches produce membership and attendance stats, while the charity Shelter produces stats on homelessness.
Briefly outline four practical advantages of official statistics.
- They’re a free source of huge amounts of quantitative data.
- Only the state has the power to compel individuals to supply certain data. For example, heads of household must complete the Census form. This reduces the problem of non-response.
- Official stats allow us to make comparisons between groups.
- Because official stats are collected at regular intervals, they show trends and patterns over time. This means sociologists can use them for ‘before-and-after’ studies to identify correlations between variables and suggest possible cause-and-affect relationships.
Briefly outline four practical disadvantages of official statistics.
- The government produces stats for its own purposes, and not for the benefit of sociologists, so there may be none available on the topic we’re interested in.
- There may be mismatches between sets of statistics. For example, if we want to compare stats on ill health with stats of unemployment for the people of a particular town, we find find that the two sets of data cover slightly different areas and therefore different populations.
- The definition the state uses in collecting data may be different from those that sociologists would use. For example, they may define ‘homelessness’ differently. In turn this may lead to different views of how large the problem is.
- The state may change the definitions it uses over time, and different states may define the same term differently. This makes comparisons over time or between countries difficult.
Using the example of mental illness, briefly explain how official statistics may be used to identify and measure behaviour, test hypotheses and develop casual laws.
- By using official stats to identify patterns in mental illness, positivists can establish correlations.
- Stats may reveal, say, gender differences in rates of depression.
- From this knowledge, a testable hypothesis can be put forward to explain a possible causal link between the variables.
Why is representativeness important for positivists?
Because they wish to make general statements about society as a whole and how it shapes our behaviour.
Why do official statistics often provide a more representative sample than research that sociologists are able to carry out themselves?
They’re very large-scale, often covering the entire population. For example, stats gathered by compulsory registration, such as birth and death stats, are likely to cover virtually all cases and therefore be representative.
Apart from the use of large samples, why might official statistics provide a sound basis for making generalisations?
They’re only based on a sample of the relevant population and great care is taken with sampling procedures when conducting official surveys.
According to positivists, why are official statistics reliable?
They’re compiled by trained staff who used standardised categories and collection techniques, and follow set procedures that can be easily replicated by others.
Why might official statistics be unreliable?
Census coders may make errors or omit information when recording data from Census forms, or members of the public may fill in the form incorrectly.
According to interpretivists, why should we treat official statistics as a topic for investigation rather than as a useful resources? Give an example to illustrate this.
In their view, stats are merely social constructs that represent the labels officials attach to people.
Ex: official stats on mental illness are largely a record of the number of people who consult a doctor about their problem, and whom the doctor then deems to be suffering. Thus to end up as a stat, the individual has to go through a series of social interactions.
Briefly explain what is meant by soft statistics. Give an example.
- Tend to give a less valid picture of reality.
- Often complied from the administrative records created by state agencies such as the NHS.
- Represent record of decisions made by agencies, rather than the real world.
- Often neglect ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded cases.
- Ex: schools may keep a record of racist incidents, but pupils don’t report every incident, and teachers don’t record all those that are reported.
Briefly explain what is meant by hard statistics. Give an example.
- Provide a more valid picture.
- Ex: they include stats on births, deaths, marriages and divorces.
- While a small number of births and deaths go unrecorded, we can place a high level of trust in the validity of hard stats.
- This is because: there is little dispute as to how to define the categories used to collect data (e.g death, divorce). Also, they’re often created from registration data.
Briefly explain how the Marxist view of official statistics differs from the positivist view.
Marxists reject the positivists claim that official stats are objective facts.
Briefly explain how the Marxist view of official statistics differs from the interpretivist view.
Marxists don’t see official stats as merely the outcome of the labels applied by officials. Instead they regard them as serving the interests of capitalism.
Identify three ways in which Marxists see official statistics as performing an ideological function.
- Politically sensitive data that would reveal the unequal, exploitative nature of capitalism may not be published. Ex: since the 1980s, data derived from analysis of Census returns no longer includes class difference in death rates.
- The definitions used in creating official stats also conceal the true reality of capitalism. Ex: the state has frequently changed its definition of unemployment, and this has reduced the numbers officially defined as unemployment.
- Social class categories used in official stats are based on occupation. This gives the impression of a gradual hierarchy of several classes, rather than a conflict between two opposed classes.
Briefly explain two reasons why feminists criticise the use of official statistics.
- Feminists such as Oakley and Graham reject the use of quantitative survey methods such as structured interviews and questionnaires because they regard this as a ‘masculine’ or patriarchal model of research. Official stats are often created using these methods.
- Official stats are created by the state, which feminists regard as maintaining patriarchal oppression. In this view, official stats are a form of patriarchal ideology - they conceal or legitimate gender inequality and maintain women’s subordination.
Using examples, briefly explain why not all official statistics may reflect patriarchy.
Some stats, such as those on earnings from paid work, show clear evidence of gender inequality.
Briefly outline why official statistics tend to present fewer ethical problems than other research methods.
- There are few problems with confidentiality and privacy.
- The data refers to whole groups and it’s rarely possible for the sociologist to identify actual individuals. Because of this, informed consent is largely irrelevant.
- Although individuals often have no choice about providing info, it’s the state that compels them to do so, not the sociologist.
Give an example of an ethical issue that may be raised when using official statistics.
- The use of an organisation’s unpublished stats may raise ethical issues.
- Ex: if a researcher made public a school’s confidential stats on bullying, this could harm its reputation and chances of recruiting pupils.
- In such cases, informed consent and concealing the organisations identity may both be essential.
List 5 examples of practical issues.
- Time and money
- The requirements of funding bodies
- The personal skills and characteristics of researchers
- The subject matter of the study
- Research opportunity
List 5 examples of ethical issues.
- Informed consent
- Confidentiality and privacy
- Harmful effects
- Vulnerable groups
- Covert methods
List 3 examples of theoretical issues.
- Reliability
- Validity
- Representativeness
Which types of research methods do positivists prefer?
- Experiments
- Questionnaires
- Structured interviews
- Analysis of official stats
What is a closed system?
Where the researcher can control and measure all the relevant variables and make precise predictions, as in physics or chemistry.
What is a standardised measuring instrument?
A field yardstick that can be used by any researcher, just like a thermometer or pressure gauge is used in the natural sciences.
