Theory and Methods Flashcards
Quantitative
- Any data that can be represented as numbers and statistics and easily generalised to form a law of behaviour
- Collected through methods including structured interviews and questionnaires
- Positivists
STRENGTHS = more reliable
WEAKNESS = does not provide meaning behind a behaviour
Qualitative
- Any verbal data involving opinions and meanings
- Collected through methods such as unstructured interviews, observations and documents
STRENGTHS = good for researching sensitive topics
WEAKNESS = open to interpretation
Primary Data
- Collected first hand by a researcher to suit the hypothesis
STRENGTHS = more valid, reliable, relevant, scientific, preferred by positivists
WEAKNESS = costly, time consuming, could possibly be biased/unethical
Secondary Data
- Collected by other researchers and applied to modern hypothesis e.g. newspapers and government consensus
STRENGTHS = compare past and present society
WEAKNESS = may not be 100% suitable for the modern research question, may not be valid or reliable
When producing research, sociologists must think about key 5 things
- Reliability = whether the research can be completed again in the future and yield similar results
- Representativeness = the extent to which the sample used in the research represents the overall population
- Generalisability = the extent to which the findings can be applied to the target population
- Validity = whether the research provides a true picture for what is being studied
- Objectivity = research is objective when all personal and emotional bias has been completely removed from it
Social surveys
Typically structured questionnaires, designed to collect information from large samples
STRENGTHS = easy to generalise, high reliability
WEAKNESS = provides no meaning behind behaviours, participants may not understand a question
Structured interview
Social surveys read out face-to-face or or over the phone
STRENGTHS = high reliability
WEAKNESS = provides no meaning bad behaviour
Unstructured interview
A conversation guided by a few open questions which is then further flexed by the answers given
STRENGTHS = high validity
WEAKNESS = low reliability
Participant observation
The researcher involves themselves with a group of people in order to study them
STRENGTHS = high validity, covert = more truthful results
WEAKNESS = covert, ethical issues surrounding informed consent
overt, hawthorne effect
Non-participant observation
The researcher studies a group of people from afar
STRENGTHS = high reliability
WEAKNESS = ethical issues surrounding informed consent
Experiments
Aim to measure the effect of one variable on another, and establish and cause and effect relationship
STRENGTHS = lab experiments, field experiments = more natural behaviour
WEAKNESS = low reliability, field experiments = ethical concerns surrounding informed consent
Personal documents
Secondary sources of data gained from items such as diaries, letters and blogs
STRENGTHS = look into detail about a meaning behind a behaviour
WEAKNESS = hard to generalise findings to a wider population
Official Statistics
Secondary sources of data collected by gov agencies
STRENGTHS = hard statistics, reliable
WEAKNESS = may not always be able to directly apply to research questions
Social facts
- Developed by Durkheim
- They’re aspects of social life that influence and shape an individuals behaviour and attitudes
- They’re separate from people, but impose themselves on individuals
- e.g. norms, values, ideologies and social structures
Consensus, conflict and social action theories
- Consensus theories = believe all structures within society all act in agreement as without this, society would collapse - look for value consensus, e.g. functionalism
- Conflict theories = see institutions in society conflicting with each other, each trying to gain power over the other e.g. marxism and feminism
- Social action theories = examines the actions of people in context of the meanings that they assign to them and the relationship between these actions and the actions of others
Modern society
- Production is central to society
- Heavy capitalism
- Nuclear family is the norm
- Identities are built upon class and sex
- Media reflects reality
- Strong institutions bind people together
- Attitude to knowledge focuses on enlightenment, truth and progress
Postmodern society
- Service sector and consumption is central
- Declining power of the national state
- Disorganised capitalism
- Strong institutions have lost influence
- Culture is diverse and fragmented
- More freedom shapes identities
Is sociology a science?
YES
- Positivists = external factors which influence behaviour and can be studied using objective methods, Durkheim on suicide, tested his hypothesis with quantitative data
MAYBE
- Karl Popper = falsifiability, positivists tend to use inductive reasoning
- Kuhn = only is a single paradigm develops but this is unlikely as many theories conflict and compete
- Realists = they both study the unobservable and use an open system
- Postmodernists = science is influenced by social factors and there is no objective scientific method
NO
- Interpretivists = we can not ethically study humans in labs like objects, humans have agency; we can choose how we react
Subjectivity
- Sociologists are part of the society they’re studying
- Own values and beliefs impact the research
- Associated with interpretivists and feminists
- Focuses on qualitative data
Objectivity
- Independent of subjective matters, such as personal beliefs
- Associated with positivists
- Focuses of quantitative data
Can sociology be value-free?
YES
- Positivism (Comte and Durkheim) = sociology is a science so research can and should be value-free and should be kept objective using quantitative methods
SHOULDN’T
- Marxism/feminism = sociologists should not aim to make research value free as it is designed to help find solutions to issues in society and that can not take place if values and beliefs are removed from it
CAN’T BE
- New Right = sociology is not value free as it exaggerates the defects of capitalism and ignores the benefits so any research into capitalism is therefore biased
- Postmodernists = no such thing as value-free observation and science can not be applied to society in the same way that it is applied to nature as observations must be interpreted
