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
