Revision for Mock Exam (14.03.2024) Flashcards
Methodological Pluralism
Methodological pluralism refers to researchers using a range of methods in the same piece of research.
Triangulation
Triangulation is a term that refers to the collection and use of multiple data sources, research methods, theories, and/or investigator perspectives to verify and corroborate research findings.
Positivism
Positivism refers to the belief that there are ‘social facts’ that can be studied objectively using methods similar to the natural sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry and biology).
Positivist methods produce quantitative data on social patterns and trends which can be used to explain society.
Positivist research methods
> Laboratory experiments
Social surveys
Structured questionnaires
Formal/structured interviews
Non-participant observation
Official statistics
Content analysis
Interpretivism
Interpretivism implies that most people are conscious of their personal beliefs, meanings, values, and interpretations and that these influence the way they act.
Interpretivist researchers attempt to gain understanding of how people see and understand the world around them.
Interpretivist research methods
> Uncontrolled field experiments
Open-ended questionnaires
Unstructured interviews
Overt and covert participant and non-participant observation
Personal accounts and documents, such as diaries and letters
PERVERT factors
P - Practical
E - Ethical
R - Reliability
V - Validity
E - Examples
R - Representative
T - Theoretical
Practical
Refers to factors such as time, cost, location. These can affect which method a sociologist chooses.
Ethical
Refers to whether the research has met ethical guidelines. Examples include informed consent, protection from harm, confidentiality, anonymity, deception.
Reliability
Refers to whether the research produces the same or similar results if repeated.
Validity
Refers to whether the research has measured what the researcher intended to measure. Has the hypothesis accurately been measured?
Examples
Refers to actual sociological studies. You need to learn a study per research method.
Representative
Refers to whether the samples are typical of the rest of the target population. If it is, then the research can be generalised.
Theoretical
Refers to Positivism and Interpretivism. These two approaches have differing views on how research should be conducted.
The research process
1) Formulation of a hypothesis / aim
2) Choice of method
3) Operationalising concepts
4) Pilot study
5) Data collection
6) Publish findings
Emile Durkheim - value free
Positivists, such as Durkheim, believed that sociology was the science of society and therefore needed to follow scientific principles in order to gain credibility.
It was the job of sociology to identify social problems in society and cure social ills with scientific research.
Durkheim believed his study of suicide was value free because he found trends within official statistics that were gathered in a scientific way.
Max Weber - value relevance
Max Weber didn’t believe that sociology could be completely value free, instead, he discusses the approach of value relevance. To explain this, he breaks the research process down.
He argued sociologists will use their subjective feelings to identify a research topic and the concepts they feel are relevant.
However, sociologists must be objective in how they carry out their research.
Gouldner and Plummer - value laden
Another approach to values in research is value laden. This means that the researcher is weighed down by their values and cannot escape them.
Those who fund the research usually have an agenda. These people are referred to as paymasters and project their values onto the research.
Gouldner argues that research can often be for career progression for the sociologist.
They will pick a topic to research that will get them noticed in the sociological community.
Plummer argues our personal beliefs can never be removed from our conscience.
We are often drawn to a topic as we have a desire to explore something important to us. Plummer argues this was crucial to his research as he investigated his own sexuality through the development of ‘queer theory’.
Howard Becker - value committed
Howard Becker argues that all sociologists should be value committed. In this instance, sociologists will use their positions of power and insight to give a voice to the deprived and in doing so we can bring about social change.
Becker believes we should always side with those who are less fortunate and are therefore the ‘underdog’. Therefore we should be committed to our values and use them to improve the society we live in.
