Reserach Methods- Topic 7 (Paper1)

Question 1

Explain the difference between registration and official surveys as ways of collecting official statistics.

Answer 1

Registration- the mae requires parents to register births.
Official surveys- such as the census or the General Househukf Survey.

Question 2

3 practical advantages of official statistics.

Answer 2

1) They are a free source of huge amounts of data.
2) Statistics allow comparisons between groups.
3) Officak statistics are collected at regular intervals, they show trends and patterns overtime.

Question 3

3 practical disadvantages of official statistics.

Answer 3

1) The government collects statistics for its own purpose and not for the benefit of sociologists.
2) The definitions that the state use may be different from the ones a sociologist would use.
3) If definitions change over time, it may make comparisons difficult.

Question 4

State one reason why offical statistics are often highly representative.

Answer 4

Official statistics often cover very large numbers and care is taken with sampling procedures.

Question 5

Why are offical statistics likely to be reliable?

Answer 5

They are complied in a standardised way he trained staff, following set procedures.

Question 6

Give 4 reasons why positivists might favour using offical statistics in their research.

Answer 6

1) They provide reliable belief.
2) They are collected at regular intervals.
3) They provide quantitative data.
4) They’re usually large scale and thus very representative.

Question 7

Why might interpretivists reject offical statistics?

Answer 7

Social construct and not social facts.
They fail to achieve the main interpretivist goal of validity.

Question 8

Hard statistics

Answer 8

Some ‘hard’ official statistics do succeed in doing this.

Question 9

Soft statistics

Answer 9

They give a much less valid picture.

Question 10

Public documents.

Answer 10

These are produced by organisations such as government departments, schools, welfare agencies, businesses and charities.

Question 11

Personal documents.

Answer 11

These are first-person accounts of social events and personal experiences and they generally also include the writers feelings and attitudes.

Question 12

Historical documents.

Answer 12

It’s simply a personal or public document created in the past.

Question 13

Authenticity according to Scott’s 4 criteria for assessing documents.

Answer 13

Is the document what it claims to be?
For example, the so-called ‘Hilted Diaries’ were later proven to be fake.

Question 14

Credibility according to Scott’s 4 criteria for assessing documents.

Answer 14

Politicians may write diaries intended for publication that inflate their own importance.

Question 15

Representativeness according to Scott’s 4 criteria for assessing documents.

Answer 15

Is the evidence in the document typical? If we cannot answer this question, we cannot know whether it’s safe to generalised.

Question 16

Meaning according to Scott’s 4 criteria for assessing documents.

Answer 16

The research may need special skills to under set and a document. It may have to be translated from a foreign language, words may be change their meaning overtime.

Question 17

Give 2 rewind why interpretivists might choose to use documents in their research.

Answer 17

They aren’t usalky written with research in mind and can thus be an authentic statement of their author’s views.

They provide qualitative data that gives us insight into the author’s world-view and meanings.

Question 18

Give 3 resins why positivits might reject their use.

Answer 18

They are often understandised and unreliable.
They are often unrepresentative.
Researches may impose their own meanings on interpreting documents.

Question 19

4 advantages of using documents in sociological research.

Answer 19

1) Persinal documents such as darien and letters enable the researcher to get close to the social actors reality, giving insight through their richly detailed quantitative data. Interpretivists favour then for this reason.
2) Sometimes documents are the only source of information, for example in studying the past.
3) By providing another source of data, documents offer an extra check on the results obtained by primary methods.
4) They are a cheap source of data, as someone else has gathered the information for the same reason, using existing documents saved the sociologist time.

Question 20

Summarise practical issues of using offical statistics to investigate education.

Answer 20

Saves time and money.
Allows sociologists to make comparisons.
The state nah not collect stats on pupils social class.

Question 21

Summarise representiveness of using offical statistics to investigate education.

Answer 21

Some offical stats on education are highly representative.

Question 22

Summarise reliability of using offical statistics to investigate education.

Answer 22

Postitivists favour offical stats because their reliability means that they can be used to test and re-test hypothesis and thus discover cause and effect relationships.

Question 23

Summarise validity of using offical statistics to investigate education.

Answer 23

Interpretivists question the validity of educational stats. They argue that such stats are socially constructed.
Schools may manipulate figures.

Question 24

Summarise practical issues of using documents to investigate education.

Answer 24

Public documents are often accessible.
They give an ‘offical’ picture.
Personal documents can be difficult to access.
Some educational documents are confidential.

Question 25

Summarise ethical issues of using documents to investigate education.

Answer 25

There’s a few ethical issues with public documents produced by schools. Having been placed in the public domain by the organisation that produced them, permission for their use isn’t required.
More ethical issues with personal documents as in some cases, informer consent for their use had not been obtained.

Question 26

Summarise representativeness of using documents to investigate education.

Answer 26

Some offical documents are legally required.
This makes it more likely that we can form a representative picture.
Personal documents are less representative.

Question 27

Summarise reliability of using documents to investigate education.

Answer 27

Public documents. It enables researchers to make direct comparisons of the absence rates of pupils in different schools.
Deliberate falsification or accidental mistakes made when filling in registers reduce their reliability because teachers aren’t applying the measure of attendance consistently.
Some educational documents can also be used in ways that other researchers can replicate.

Question 28

Summarise valifity of using documents to investigate education.

Answer 28

Documents can provide important insights into the meanings held by teachers and pupils can therefore be high in vaildity.
All documents are open to different interpretations.

Question 29

Why might school prospectuses and ofsted inspection reports not give a valid picture of school life?

Answer 29

School may make changes to statistics.
Pupils may change their behaviour around ofsted which leads to them not getting an accurate picture.