Research Methods

Question 1

WHAT DO POSITIVISTS ARGUE

Answer 1

They argue that sociologists should only study what they can observe and measure as it is unscientific to study emotions and feelings.
They like Quantitative Data

Question 2

WHAT DO INTERPRETIVISTS ARGUE

Answer 2

They believe sociology is a social science and that having an understanding of people’s unobservable state is required.
This cannot be achieved with quantitative data.
They prefer Qualitative data.

Question 3

WHAT IS PRIMARY DATA

Answer 3

Which is collected by sociologists for their own purposes.

Question 4

WHAT IS SECONDARY DATA

Answer 4

Information that is collected or created by somebody else but used by a sociologist for their own purposes.

Question 5

2 WEAKNESSES FOR LAB EXPERIMENTS

Answer 5

1. Lacks Validity - Hawthorne Effect

2. Harm to Participants / Difficult to gain consent.

Question 6

A STRENGTH OF LAB EXPERIMENTS

Answer 6

1. Reliability - positivists favour lab experiments as the researcher has full control over the scientific conditions and can manipulate variables to establish cause and effect.

Question 7

A STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF FIELD EXPERIMENTS

Answer 7

S- More natural and avoid the artificiality of lab experiments.
W - Sociologists have less control over the variables

Question 8

THE 6 KEY CONSIDERATIONS WHEN PREPARING TO CONDUCT A SOCIAL SURVEY

Answer 8

1. Choose a topic
2. Make an aim or hypothesis
3. Operationalising Concepts
4. Closed or Open Questions
5. Conduct a Pilot Study
6. Sampling- are the participants representative?

Question 9

2 STRENGTHS OF QUESTIONNAIRES

Answer 9

1. Quick and Cheap - no need to train interviewers or observers.
2. Strong Reliability - can be repeated with the exact questions etc
3. Representativeness - as they collect info from a large amount of people.

Question 10

2 WEAKNESSES OF QUESTIONNAIRES

Answer 10

1. Low Response Rate - those who do fill them in are not representative of the population.
2. Lacks Validity - Relies on people giving truthful answers.

Question 11

2 STRENGTHS OF STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Answer 11

1. Higher response rate than questionnaires - YOUNG AND WILMOTT STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS RESPONSE RATE OF 95%
2. Reliability - Positivists say they are reliable because they are standardised.
3. Quick and Cheap

Question 12

2 WEAKNESSES OF STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Answer 12

1. The Halo Effect - lacks validity.

2. Inflexibility - researcher has already decided what is important.

Question 13

2 STRENGTHS OF UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Answer 13

1. Rapport and Sensitivity - respondent can be relaxed and trust can be built.
2. Gaining Verstehen - empathy and understanding
3. You can really understand the interviewee’s view about the topic as there are no fixed questions.

Question 14

2 WEAKNESSES OF UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

Answer 14

1. Time consuming as they require a skilled interviewer.

2. Positivists would say this method lacks reliability and is subjective.