2. research methods ao2 Flashcards
example of a structured interview
Young and Willmott
- interviewed 933 people in a structured manner and only 54 respondents refused
- therefore the face to face nature of the method helps to gather data from a large and representative sample
example of an unstructured interview
Ann Oakley = The experience of Childbirth(1974)
- unstructured interviews enabled her to establish rapport and to develop close relationships of trust and openness with the mothers concerned, allowing them to speak for themselves openly and personally about motherhood
- each woman was interviewed for 9 hours on avg
- 70% of the women came out dissatisfied with housework: monotony, loneliness and autonomy
examples of longitudinal studies
The Longitudinal Study of Young People in England
- studied the transition into adulthood
- wide range of data from around 15,000 young people and their parents
Parker et al
- studied illegal drug use among 1,125 young people age 14 at the outset for 5 years using a combination of self-completion questionnaires and interviews
Millennium Cohort Study
- following the lives of around 19,000 young people born across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000-02
examples of questionnaires
Sullivan, A (2003) = Cultural Capital, Rational Choice and Educational Inequalities
- using a closed questionnaire, Sullivan investigates the impact of parental cultural capital on their children’s achievement
- the higher the cultural capital of parents, the better the achievement of their children
example of a field experiment
Rosenthal and Jacobson, Pygmallion in the Classroom (1968)
- wanted to see if teachers’ expectations had important effects on pupils’ academic performance
- told the teachers that 20% of the children had been tested and had shown to have high intelligence BUT the students were actually chosen at random and within a year they made more progress compared to other students
