Theory & Methods Flashcards
UK Census
Questionnaire
- 10 yearly questionnaire completed online / post on the whole UK population.
- Source of official statistics.
Young + Willmott
Structured Interview
- Researched extended family.
- Formal and standardised.
CSEW
Survey
- Victim survey.
- Sample size of 50 000,
- Uncovers crimes not reported to the police.
Archer
Interview
- Yr10 + 11 students from w/c backgrounds + a broad range of ethnicity.
Willis
Unstructured Group Interview, Participant Observation
- Research of lads + schooling.
Venkatesh
Observation, Interview
- Interviewed people at all levels.
- Participated in the life on the gang.
- Become ‘gang leader for a day’.
Patrick
Covert Observation
- Joined Glasgow gang through connections.
- Nearly blew his cover.
Thomas + Znaniecki
Secondary Data: Personal Documents
- Studied letters from Polish migrants to America.
- Interactionalists: interested in meanings.
Rosenthal + Jacobson
Experiment
- Studied teacher’s expectations through fake IQ test results to see the effect on pupil performance.
- Interactionism: what people believe to be true will have true effects.
Weber (Social Action)
Verstehen - walking in someone else’s shoes.
- Rich, valid data can be acquired through participant observation + unstructured interviews…
- Used case study (secondary data) on Calvinists, giving him a detailed insight.
- Structural cause - social institutions.
- Subjective meaning - people’s interpretation of structures.
Durkheim (F)
- Official statistics are ‘social facts’ - true + objective measures of the real date of crime, suicide, etc.
- Positivist: sociology as a science - discover the causes of behavioural patterns / social problems that stats reveal + provide solutions - improve society.
- Sociologists can discover laws that determine how society works.
Parsons (F)
- Organic analogy - function of each part of society helps to meet the needs of the system.
- Integrated into society through socialisation + social control.
Marx (M)
- Bourgeoisie exploit the labour of the proletariat through ideology + hegemony.
- Revolution for communist society.
Gramsci (M)
- People have free will so socialism will occur when people become conscious + overthrow capitalism.
- Encourages political action.
Althusser (M)
- Individuals are passive puppets.
- Controlled by ideological + repressive state apparatus.
Oakley (F)
Distinguished between sex + gender.
- Sex - biological differences.
- Gender - socially constructed ideas about roles + identities.
Firestone (F)
- Patriarchy due to women’s biological capacity to bear + care for infants.
- Dependent on men.
Walby (F)
- Dual systems feminist.
- Capitalism + patriarchy are interrelated.
- E.g. cheap female labour.
Cooley (Symbolic Interactionism)
- Self-concept - ability to take the role of the other.
- Looking-glass - we become what others see us as.
Goffman (Symbolic Interactionism)
- Dramaturgical approach - construct ourselves by manipulating people’s impression of us.
- E.g. props, language.
Giddens (LM)
- Rapid change is a characteristic of late modernity.
- Disembbedding + reflexivity.
- Structure + Action co-exist.
Popper
- Falsification.
- Sociology is unscientific + can’t necessarily be proved false.
Garfinkel
- Ethnomethodology.
- Indexicality - nothing has a fixed meaning + everything is dependent on context.
Comte
- Positivist.
- Sociology discovers truth about how society works.
- Scientific certainty on what is best for society.
Gouldner
Research is influenced by values:
- Choice of methods, perspectives, topics.
Becker
- Interactionalists - reveal meanings.
- Take the side of the underdog.
Murray (NR)
- New Right: role of sociologist is to propose policies that promote individual choice.
- Policies like universal welfare benefits act as ‘perverse incentives’ that encourage a dependency culture.
Mayo
- People worked harder under surveillance.
- Hawthorne effect.
