Topic 1: Choosing a research method Flashcards
What is a primary
Primary data is information collected by sociologists themselves. for their own purposes. These purposes may be to obtain a first-hand ‘picture’ of a group or society, or to test a hypothesis (an untested theory).
Methods for gathering primary data include:
• Social surveys: these involve asking people questions in a written questionnaire or an interview.
• Participant observation: the sociologist joins in with the activities of the group he or she is studying.
• Experiments: sociologists rarely use laboratory experiments, but they sometimes use field experiments and the comparative method
A big advantage of using primary data is that sociologists may be able to gather precisely the information they need to test their hypotheses. However, doing so can often be costly and time consuming.
What is secondary data
Secondary data is information that has been collected or created by someone else for their own purposes, but which the sociologist can then use.
Sources of secondary data include:
• Official statistics produced by government on a wide range of issues, such as education, crime, divorce and unemployment, as well as other statistics produced by charities, businesses, churches and other organisations.
• Documents such as letters, emails, diaries, photographs, official reports, novels, newspapers, the internet and television broadcasts.
Using secondary data can be a quick and cheap way of doing research, since someone else has already produced the information. However, those who produce it may not be interested in the same questions as sociologists, and so secondary sources may not provide exactly the information that sociologists need.
What is Quantitative data
Quantitative data refers to information in a numerical form. Examples of quantitative data include official statistics information collected by opinion polls and market research surveys often comes in the form of quantitative data - for example, on the proportion of the electorate intending to vote for a particular party
What is Qualitative data
Qualitative data, by contrast, gives a ‘feel’ for what something is like - for example, what it feels like to get good GCSE results, or for one’s marriage to end in divorce.
Evidence gathered by using participant observation aims to give us a sense of what it feels like to be a member of a particular group.
Similarly, in-depth interviews that probe deeply into a person’s views can give us an insight into what it is like to be in that person’s ‘shoes’. These methods can provide rich descriptions of people’s feelings and experiences.
Practical issues of research
L’ots ‘of’ FACTS
**Location: **
** Funding**
Research institutes, businesses and other organisations that provide the funding for research may require the results to be in a particular form.
Acsess
It may be much harder to study a particular group or subject by one method than by another.
Cost: different methods may require different amounts of money, e,g large scale surveys require more money
Time
Sometimes the opportunity to carry out research occurs unexpectedly and this means that it may not be possible to use structured methods such as questionnaires, which take longer to prepare.
skills
Each sociologist possesses different personal skills and this may affect their ability to use different methods.
Ethical issues of methods
V RICH DAD
Vunreable groups
Special care should be taken where research participants are vunreable often because of their age, disability or physical or mental health.
Risk to researcher/participants
Need to be aware of possible effects of tsudy. Such as police intervention, social exclusion and pschological damage.
Informed consent
Research participants should be offered the right to refuse to be involved. The researcher should inform them of the research so they can make a fully informed descion.
Confidentiality’
Researches should keep the identity of research participants private inorder to prevent any negative effects on them. Personal information should be kept private and confidential.
**Anonmyity **
covet research is when the researcher’s identity and the research purpose are hidden from the participants.Anonymity is important in research to protect participants’ identities and ensure their privacy is maintained.
Deception
Deception is sometimes used in research to prevent bias, but it must be justified and minimized to avoid harm to participants.
Debrief and right to withdraw
Debriefing is essential to inform participants about the true nature of the study and to address any misconceptions or distress caused during the research. The right to withdraw ensures participants can leave the study at any time without consequence, preserving their autonomy and well-being.
Reliability
Refers to whether the research could produce similar results if repeated. Quantitative methods such as written questionaires tent to produce more reliable results compared to qualatative unstructured interviews
Validity
Refers to whether the researcher has measured what they intended to measure, has the hypothesis been accurately tested? does it reflect the true reality of participants.
Interpretivists argue that qualitative methods such as participant ibservation provide more truth and validity. Positivists disagree and argue that validity can be achieved using quantative data that is reliable and representative.
Examples/evidence
Refers too actual sociological studies. e.g wilmot and young structured interviews
oakley unstructured
willis observational
Representativeness
Refers to whether or not the people we study are a typical cross section of the groups we are intrested in. (Whether the sample is typical of the rest if the target population). Then we can make primary resources and genrealisations about our research. Large scale quantitative surveys that use sophisticated sampiling techniques are more likley to produce represenatative data.
Interpretivists (dont mind this factor) positivists (do care about this factor)
Theoretical
Positivism vs interpretevism
Positivists favour quantative data and seek to discover patterns of behavior and see sociology as a science Functionalists and marxists often take a positivist approach as they see society as a macro level scale.
Interpretivists prefer qualitative date and seek to. understand social actors’ meanings and reject the view that sociology is a science. Interactionalists favour this approach as they view society on a micro level
Factors influencing choice of topic
Sociologist perspective: for example a new right researcher may study the effects of welfare benefits on the growth of lone parent families.
Societys values: As societal values change so does the focus on research, eise of feminsim in 1960s led to a focus in gender inequality research
Practical factors: Acssesability of certain situation may restrict topics they are able to study. e.g secrets like corporations making descions
Funding bodies: most research requires funding from an external body, inclduing government agencies, economic and social research council charities and businesses.
What is formulating an aim or hypothesis
Most studies have a genreal aim or hypothesis.
Hypothesis:a possible explanation that can be tested by collecting evidence to prove it true or false
If the hypothesis is false it must be discarded. (This is not a negative thing it just means we can turn our attention to something else and formulate a new hypothesis)
Advantage of a hypothesis: gives direction to research
and gives a focus to questions
posivitists favour hypothesis because they seek to discover cause and effect relationships. using quantative data allows the discovery of facts and links
aims are more genreal and identifies what we intend to study and achieve. This is beneficial at the start of research when we know little about the topic.
advantage of aims: more open ended we are not restricted to prove a hypothesis and we can gather data on anything intresting.
interpretivists favour aims since they are intrested in understanding meanings
What is operationalising concepts
before testing a hypothesis it needs to have a working or operational definition of the key ideas. without a working definition we wont be able to identify what we are looking for. (e.g class)
operationalisation: process of converting a sociological concept (class) into something we can measure.
Once we have opreationalised our concept we can start devising questions that measure it. e.g what is your job, we can then correlate this with information we collect to test the hypothesis.
positivists are concerned to operationalise concepts because of the importance they plase on creating and testing a hypothesis.
interpretvists put less emphasis on operationalising concepts because they are intrested in participants own understandings and views
What is a pilot study
Sociologists that use social surveys (questionares and structured interviews) often carry out a pilot study before conducting their main study. This involves tetsing a draft version of questions on a small sample size.
the basic aim of a pilot study is to test for any problems refine or clarify questions and their wording and give interviewers practice.
e.g young and wilmott carried out over 100 pilot intevriews.
it may reveal that some questions are poorly worded or difficult to analyse.
what are samples and sampling?
Sociologists often intend to produce genrealisations that apply to all cases of the topic they are intrested in.
a samle is a smaller sub group drawn from a wider group that we are intrested in. the process of selecting this group is called sampiling. It ensures that those people included in the stidy are representative or typucal of the research population, including all of those not included in the study. (research population whole group we are intrested in)
so long as it is representative we should be able to make genrealisations about the whole research population. Posivitists favour this who wish to make genreal law like statements about the wide social structure.
What is the sampiling frame
This is a list of all the members of the population we are intrested in studying.
Wilmott and young used the ekectoral register (list of people entitled to vote) as their sampiling frame.
It is important that the list we use is complete and as accurate as possible, it should be up to date and without dupilcations otherwise it may not be representative.
Once we have obtained the sampiling frame we can choose our sample from it, in selecting our sample it needs to be representative of the wider population.
The research population the sampiling frame the sample the respondents
What is random sampiling
Random sampling is the simplest technique, where the sample is selected purely by chance. For example, names may be drawn out of a hat. Everyone has an equal chance of being selected. A large enough random sample should reflect the characteristics (e.g. gender, class etc.) of the whole research population. However, not all random samples are large enough to ensure this happens.
What is Quasi-random sampiling
Quasi-random or systematic sampling is where every nth person in the sampling frame is selected. Young and Willmott used every thirty-sixth name on the electoral register for their sample.
What is Stratified random sampling
Stratified random sampling The researcher first stratifies (breaks down) the population in the sampling frame by age, class, gender etc. The sample is then created in the same proportions, e.g. if 20% of the population are under 18, then 20% of the sample also have to be under 18.
What is quota sampiling
Quota sampling The population is stratified as in startified random sampiling, and then each interviewer is given a quota of say, twenty females and twenty males, which they have to fill with respondents who fit these characteristics. The interviewer keeps at this task until their quota is filled.
What is non representative sampiling
Non-representative sampling
As we have seen, the purpose of sampling is usually to ensure that the people we include in our study are representative of the research population. However, for both practical and theoretical reasons, not all studies use representative sampling techniques.
What are the practical reasons why it may not be possible to create a representative sample
Unknown:The social characteristics of the research population, such as age, gender and class, may not be known. It would thus be impossible to create a sample that was an exact cross-section of the research population.
It may be impossible to find or create a sampling frame for that particular research population. For example, not all criminals are convicted, so there is no complete list available from which to select a sample.
Potential respondents may refuse to participate. For example, some criminals may refuse for fear that their responses may be passed to the police.
Where it is not possible to obtain a representative sample, sociologists sometimes use snowball or opportunity samples.
Snowball sampling involves collecting a sample by contacting a number of key individuals, who are asked to suggest others who might be interviewed, and so on, adding to the sample ‘snowball’ fashion, until enough data has been collected. Although not representative, this can be a useful way to contact a sample of people who might otherwise be difficult to find or persuade to take part, such as criminals.
Opportunity sampling, sometimes called convenience sampling, involves choosing from those individuals who are easiest to access. Examples include selecting from passers-by in the street or from a captive audience such as a class of pupils. In neither case is the sample likely to be representative of the target research population
What are theoretical reasons a researcher may not choose to create a representative sample
Even where it is possible to create a representative sample, some researchers may not choose to do so, because of their methodological perspective
Interpretivists believe that it is more important to obtain valid data and an authentic understanding of social actors’ meanings than to discover general laws of behaviour. Because interpretivists are less concerned to make generalisations, they have less need for representative samples.
Once we have selected the sample, we can begin to collect data about the topic using a suitable research method.
