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A LEVEL SOCIOLOGY > Research Methods > Flashcards

Research Methods Flashcards

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Sociology 101 flashcards
1
Q

What is the purpose of sociological research?

A

To investigate and provide insights into how human societies function. Test existing theories, test a new hypothesis.

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2
Q

What is primary data?

A

Information collected directly. From their own research they have carried out.

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3
Q

What is quantitative data in both a primary source and secondary source?

A

Primary source: Numerical data from research conducted by sociologist (e.g. statistics from a questionnaire).
Secondary source: Existing Numerical data (e.g government statistics).

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4
Q

What is qualitative data in both a primary source and secondary source?

A

Primary source: Non-numerical data from a sociological study (e.g. notes on observation of a classroom).
Secondary source: Non-numerical data from existing material (e.g. content of diaries or email messages).

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5
Q

What three things need to be considered when evaluating data?

A

Reliability, Validity, Representation

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6
Q

What is validity?

A

How true the data is. Are people likely to tell the truth?

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7
Q

What is reliability?

A

If the study can be replicated, it would produce the same results. How reliable it is? Can you replicate it?

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8
Q

What is representativeness?

A

How typical the data is of the wider population. Is it an accurate cross-section of the whole population. If it’s an accurate representation of the whole population, then it can be generalised.

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9
Q

What is generalisability?

A

Will people understand the question in the same way?

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10
Q

What is a practical issue?

A

Researchers need to choose topics which it is feasible to develop and contact valid research.
A factor in research to do with time, money or access as opposed to ethical or theoretical issues.

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11
Q

What is a ethical issue?

A

Factors concerned with morality. Is research seen as morally acceptable. Confidentiality. Consent. Harms the subjects of research. Help carry out illegal or immoral acts.

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12
Q

What is a theoretical issue?

A

Factors concerned with the quality of information produced in research. Researchers are inevitably influenced by their own values about what they believe to be important.

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13
Q

What is an experiment?

A

Researchers set-up an artificial situation and manipulate it to test their theory. The idea of an experiment is that - whether in a laboratory or in the field - phenomena are observed in a tightly - controlled environment to see the impact of certain variables.

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14
Q

What is a questionnaire?

A

A written list of questions that are answered by respondents.

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15
Q

What is an interview?

A

Verbal questioning of one or more people by a researcher.

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16
Q

What is an observation/participant observation?

A

Researcher watches an event or behaviour and records the observations. In participant observation, the researcher takes part in the events being observed.

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17
Q

What are official statistics?

A

Numerical data produced by government agencies.

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18
Q

What are documents?

A

Any physical artefact containing information that could be used by a sociologist.

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19
Q

What is a positivism approach? The features and where it came from. Sociologists, correlations, stimuli…

A
  • Durkheim and Comte
  • Sociology can be a science
  • There are objective facts about the world
  • Correlations can be observed
  • There are laws of human behaviour to be discovered
  • Human behaviour is shaped by external stimuli (things that happen to us) rather than internal stimuli (what goes on in the mind)
  • Sociologists should only study what they can observe and not emotions etc.
  • Quantitative data
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20
Q

What is an interpretivist approach? The features.

A
  • Qualitative data
  • Meanings and motives matter
  • The way people interpret external stimuli matters
  • In depth interviews/observations
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21
Q

What was Alice Sullivan’s study (2001) on and what research method was used?

A

Class, cultural capital and achievement.
Collected data from 465 pupils in four schools, using questionnaires. She asked questions about: parents’ educational qualifications, the involvements of the children in cultural activities and their own educational achievements. Sullivan found a link between the performance in GCSEs and having high levels of cultural capital. She also found that cultural capital was strongly linked to class background. Her conclusion was that parental income helps to boost the educational performance of children independent of cultural factors.
(Questionnaires)

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22
Q

What are the two types of questionnaires?

A

Closed: Restricted range of options to choose from
Open: Respondents can answer the question in an unprompted way

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23
Q

What are the practical issues with a closed / structured questionnaire?

A
  • More likely to get responses - quicker to fill out
  • Cheap compared to other methods
  • Limited in the questions that can be put to young children or others with poor literacy skills
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24
Q

What are the practical issues with an open / unstructured questionnaire?

A
  • Slow to complete (lower response rate)
  • Longer to analyse (more expensive)
  • People may interpret questions in a different way ( low reliability)
  • Limited in the questions that can be put to young children or others with poor literacy skills
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25
Q

What are the ethical issues with questionnaires?

A
  • Easy to gain consent

- Easy to keep anonymous

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26
Q

What is an reliability issue with questionnaires?

A
  • Harder to replicate
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27
Q

What is a validity issue with closed questionnaires?

A
  • If anonymous people are more likely to tell the truth - not face to face (interview) Advantage
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28
Q

What is a validity issue with open ended questionnaires?

A
  • Might be harder to tell the truth if there are no set responses
  • More true / opinion-ated
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29
Q

Evidence / link to closed questionnaires?

A

Likert Scale

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30
Q

Evidence / link to open ended questionnaires?

A

Cleland 2016

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31
Q

The issue with representativeness in questionnaires?

A
  • Not likely to be representative of society at large - people who return questionnaires usually have strong views one way or another.
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32
Q

Which sociological perspective prefers the open ended questionnaires?

A

Interpretivists

33
Q

Which sociological perspective prefers the closed ended questionnaires?

A

Positivists

34
Q

What is a laboratory experiment?

A
  • Experiments that are set up and controlled by the researcher.
  • Do not take place in natural habitat.
  • Interested in the relationship between an independent variable and dependent variable.
35
Q

What is a field experiment?

A
  • An experiment taken in real life rather than controlled environment.
  • To examine the way people, behave in everyday small social groups.
  • Control groups not always apponent.
36
Q

What are the practical issues with laboratory experiments?

A
  • Can be difficult gaining permission especially when having to take young children out of classrooms.
  • Can take a long time to set up to have effective research
  • Harder to organise
  • Easier to control the variables to get the data you desire
37
Q

What are the practical issues with field experiments?

A
  • More practical and easier to gain permission than lab but still need permission from teachers act
  • Harder to record data / notes in field as your there and involved
  • Easier to organise
  • Data uncovered often benefits society
38
Q

What are the ethical issues with laboratory experiments?

A
  • Informed consent
  • May damage childrens’ education
  • Manipulation
  • May involve exposing damaging context
39
Q

What are the ethical issues with field experiments?

A
  • Informed consent (hard to access parents aswell)
  • May damage childrens’ education
  • Manipulation
  • May involve exposing damaging context
40
Q

What are the reliability issues with laboratory experiments?

A
  • Reliable as the researcher can control the conditions and steps taken so that others can repeat
  • Produces quantitative data
  • Humans are complex beings so impossible to construct identical human experiment and control variables
41
Q

What are the reliability issues with field experiments?

A
  • With limited control variables following researchers may struggle to create the same environment.
  • Each human interaction is different so no two groups will produce the same data
42
Q

What are the validity issues with laboratory experiments?

A
  • Lab experiments are artificial environments, subjects will act differently as not natural an aware they are being watched - Hawthorne effect.
  • Human free will means you will never be able to fully control the participants (too many variables)
43
Q

What are the validity issues with field experiments?

A
  • Allows researcher to learn hidden processes to day-to-day social life as can get close to people’s interactions
  • Difficulties between naturalism and centralism
  • Dangers of Hawthorne effect
44
Q

Evidence of laboratory experiments?

A
  • Harvey and Slatin - labelling - photos of children from different social classes shown to teachers asked to rate on how likely they’d succeed.
  • DR Milgram, looked in obedience and the blind obedience to authority.
45
Q

Evidence of field experiments?

A
  • Rosenthal and Jacobson, Pygmalion effect by giving teachers fake information about students ability and potential.
  • Elliot, discrimination, discriminated in classroom about features.
46
Q

How representative are laboratory experiments?

A
  • Lab experiments can only focus on small groups so do not study large scale social phenomena.
  • Can be repeated with other groups with same steps as groups.
47
Q

How representative are field experiments?

A
  • Conducted on small group not large-scale social life.
  • Take a long time to create a large scale sample especially as little control over length of each experiment.
  • More representative as about normal social interactions not created ones.
48
Q

What are the theoretical issues lab experiments?

A
  • Positivists view lab experiments as reliable as they can control the conditions and them being scientific like to be able to replicate.
  • Positivists want to be able to control
  • Interpretivists do not agree with controlling humans.
  • Behaviour is not caused by external forces so cannot be explained this way
49
Q

What are the theoretical issues field experiments?

A
  • Interpretvists argue deception does not involve harming participants and data discovered often benefits society
  • Preferred by interpretivists - participants have more free will and choice
  • Easier to observe and explain cause and effect in field experiments
50
Q

What is a participant observation? L

A

Is one type of data collection method by practitioner - scholars typically used in qualitative research and ethnography.

51
Q

What is a non-partcipant observation?

A

Is one where the researcher chooses not to play any part in what is being observed.

52
Q

What the practical issues with observations?

A
  • Still have the problem of gaining access to observe lessons
  • Time consuming
  • Expensive
  • If structured, then making it easier to record large amounts of standardised data
53
Q

What are the ethical problems with participant observation?

A
  • Legality has been a problem (Venkatesh)

- Confidentiality

54
Q

What are the ethical problems with non-participant observation?

A
  • Still need the consent of the pupils and the school

- Confidentiality

55
Q

How reliable are participant observation?

A
  • Relies on the skills of the observer
56
Q

How reliable are non-participant observation?

A
  • Is good if the observation is structured, so they can repeat it.
57
Q

What are the validity issues with participant observation?

A

Hawthorne effect - participants know they’re being observed

58
Q

What are the validity issues with non-participant observation?

A
  • You have little opportunity to get people to explain why they are doing what they are doing
59
Q

Evidence for participant observation?

A
  • Venkatesh’s “Gang Leader for a Day” (2009)
60
Q

Evidence for non-participant observation?

A
  • Whyte
61
Q

How representative are participant observation?

A
  • Poor representativeness due to small samples
62
Q

How representative are non-participant observation?

A
  • Can have larger sample sizes. However, schools that are better than others will have a bigger sample as more students are more likely to engage
63
Q

The theoretical issues with participant observation?

A
  • Interpretivists less natural than non-participant observation
64
Q

The theoretical issues with non-participant observation?

A
  • Interpretivists argue it better as its more natural
65
Q

What is an unstructured interview?

A

Few or no fixed questions, more like a conversation

66
Q

What is a structured interview?

A

Pre-set questions asked in some order without variation

67
Q

What is the practical issue with unstructured interviews?

A

Interviewing children in schools requires consent from parents and head-teachers. This may limit access and those in authority may wish to restrict the scope of the interview.

68
Q

What is the practical issue with structured interviews?

A

Have to adjust for children’s understanding

69
Q

What would be the ethical issues for interviews?

A
  • Make sure that you don’t cause stress or fatigue (adapt for children)
  • Confidentiality needs to be ensured. However, evidence of abuse must not stay confidential.
70
Q

What would be an validity issue with unstructured interviews?

A
  • Perhaps less likely to tell the truth as interviewer puts in questions and trys to get an answer out of the interviewee
71
Q

What would be a validity issue with structured interviews?

A
  • Pressure of interviewer may lead to incorrect answers
72
Q

How representative are the interviews?

A
  • Less responses as it requires more time and effort than for example a questionnaire
73
Q

A theoretical problem with unstructured interviews?

A
  • Perhaps less likely to tell truth as interviewer may be looking for the answer (interviewer bias)
  • Interviewees may see the interviewer as an authority figure, like a teacher or school inspector, and therefore be unwilling to give full and frank answers.
74
Q

A theoretical problem with structured interviews?

A
  • Interviewees may see the interviewer as an authority figure, like a teacher or school inspector, and therefore be unwilling to give full and frank answers.
75
Q

How reliable are interviews?

A

Unstructured - harder to replicate

Structured - easier to replicate

76
Q

What was Venkatesh’s study on (Participant observation)?

A
  • Conducted an overt participant observation
  • Chicago, change his approach of clipboard and questions
  • What it meant to be black and poor
  • Conducted a 7 year participant observation
77
Q

What was Whyte’s study on (Non-participant observation)?

A
  • A summary
  • Ethnography - long term study
  • Qualitative data
  • Ecological validity - generalise to real world
  • Micro sociology, flexible, free-will, natural habitat
  • He was able to get a detailed and in depth look at the social interactions and behaviours of his research subjects, for more than if he completed a different research method.
78
Q

What was Milgram’s study on (laboratory experiment)?

A
  • How German people could permit the extermination of the jews
  • The issue of authority. Under what conditions would a person obey authority who commanded actions that went against conscience.
  • Obedience - why is it that we follow orders?
  • Major ethical considerations

A LEVEL SOCIOLOGY (8 decks)

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