Research Methods- Research Design Flashcards
How does specialist skills influence sociologists when choosing a research methods?
Sociologists often specialise in different fields of the subject and may choose a topic they have knowledge and expertise about
What influences a sociologist when choosing what to research?
- Experience and knowledge
- Topics they find enjoyable and interesting
- Topics popular in sociology at the time
- Research that could help develop solutions to social problems
- May feel that a particular issue is ignored
What are sources of funding?
Charities, industry, government and government agencies
What is a gatekeeper?
The organisation which funds the research and has the final say in choice of topic, way research is conducted, and whether a topic is worth researching
What decides if a topic is viable?
Potential subjects must give their cooperation in the study
How does a study improve employability?
Interesting, original or popular topics that are well researched have a better chance of having their work published which improves a researchers standing in academia
How can a sociologist respond to another’s work?
Use research to prove they are right or wrong, or add something to the topic
What is an important feature in any sociological report?
Reviewing and critiquing existing data and the researcher then analyses this to help clarify any issues around the subject
What information does the researcher get from reviewing the field?
Useful information on types of methodology used in previous studies
How does a researcher narrow down their research after choosing a broad topic area?
Coming up with a single research question that their researcher aims to answer
What are the features of a good research question?
- Focuses on one part of the topic
- Clear and easy to research
What does questions being value-free mean?
- Shouldn’t be biased
- Shouldn’t suggest potential social changes
What is a hypothesis?
A statement that makes a prediction and acts as a starting point for research
What does a hypothesis state?
A relationship between two factors
What is operationalisation?
Measuring concepts by measuring something else that’s linked to the concept called an indicator
When do researchers operationalise concepts?
Every time they conduct a piece of research because you can’t research something if you can’t measure it
What happens once researchers have operationalised concepts?
They need to be able to justify how they operationalised their concept which is often a subjective process and may be criticised by other researchers
What is triangulation?
When sociologists try to combine different methods or data to get the best out of all of them
How does triangulation increase validity?
It gives a more detailed picture than when you only use one method
What does triangulation allow you to do?
Check different sets of data against each other, and combine strengths and weaknesses of different types of data
What issues does triangulation have?
Can be expensive and time-consuming, not always possible to use triangulation
What is a pilot study?
A small-scale practice run of a study
What is the purpose of a pilot study?
Allows you to test the accuracy of questions, check if there are any technical problems in research design, make study more valid and reliable, test how long research will take, train interviewers
What are issues with pilot studies?
Can be time-consuming, expensive and create lots of work
What are strengths of pilot studies?
Show that project is feasible and help secure research funding
What do social surveys do?
Collect information about large target populations
Who uses social surveys?
Positivists as a primary source of quantitative data
What can data from social surveys be used for?
Data is analysed to discover overall patterns and trends
Why are social survey used by government agencies and research companies?
They’re reliable
Why do sociologists need a sample?
It’s too expensive and time-consuming to sample the whole target population
What makes a sample representative?
If the characteristics of the sample reflect characteristics of the target population
What is representativeness?
The extent to which a sample represents the target population
When is it possible to make generalisations about the wider target population?
If the sample is sufficiently large and representative
What is generalisability?
The extent to which you can generalise a sample to the wider population
What is a sampling frame?
A complete list of the population being sampled which needs to be accurate, complete and without any duplicate entries
Random sampling
Names are taken completely at random by a person or a computer so each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected
Systematic sampling
Choosing a random starting point in the sampling frame and selecting every nth value
Multi-stage sampling
Selecting a sample within another sample, often used to select samples for opinion polls to measure voting intention
Stratified random sampling
Population is put into segments called ‘strata’ (groups based on age, gender etc) and then selected at random from within each segment
Quota sampling
Like stratified random sampling but not random
What are types of representative sampling?
Random sampling, systematic sampling, multi-stage sampling, stratified random sampling, quota sampling
What are types of non-representative sampling?
Snowball sampling, purposive sampling, opportunity sampling
Snowball sampling
Finding initial contacts and getting them to give you more names for your research
Purposive sampling
When researchers select non-representative samples, often in order to falsify a hypothesis
Opportunity sampling
Researchers use captive audiences and go to public areas and select people who are willing to participate
