topic 6: Quantitative methods Flashcards
why do positivists prefer quantitative methods?
Positivists prefer quantitative methods for a variety of reasons including a preference for social factors, patterns and trends and objectivity/ value freedom
what is a questionnaire?
Questionnaires are the main method for gathering data in social surveys
A questionnaire is simply a list of questions written down in advance that are handed or posted to the respondent for self completion
explain open questions?
Open questionnaires ask open ended questions e.g respondent is asked to write down what they feel of what they’ve experienced
Such questionnaires produce qualitative data
Explain closed questions?
closed questionnaires contain questions with answers; the respondent has to tick the box next to the appropriate answer, answer of the participants are restricted.
Such questionnaires produce quantitative data
what are four things sociologists should consider whist formulating a questionnaire?
Questionnaires should be short as possible as people usually cannot be bothered to spend a lot of time completing a questionnaire
Questions need to be asked in a straight forward/ simple manner that could be understood
Researcher must think carefully about the language used in the question
Ideally questions should be natural and objective
Disadvantages of questionnaires: Misunderstandings
Interpretivists argue fact that sociologists is often not present when questionnaire is filled in to clarify any misunderstandings may mean misinterpretation of questions is likely to occur which may undermine the validity of data collected
Disadvantages of questionnaires: Researcher imposition
Respondents completing questionnaires/ surveys may be put off by pre-coded questions and answers - the answer they want may not be provided
Interpretivists argue tick box questionnaires suffer from researcher imposition so they measure what sociologists think is important rather than the respondent.
what are longitudinal surveys?
The study of the same group of people over a long period of time
Such surveys provide us with a clear image of changes in attitudes and behaviour over a number of years
Explain structured interviews?
A structured interview involves the researcher reading out a list of closed questions from an interview schedule and ticking boxes or writing down answers according to pre-set fixed categories on behalf of the respondent
The interviewer plays a robotic role which they don’t deviate from the questions on the interview schedule
Disadvantage of structural interviews: Relying on people to now their own behaviour
success of questionnaires, surveys and structured interviews depends on what people know about their own behaviour.
This may be affected by fault or hazy memory, but people may not be conscious of the way they behave or are in denial.
This reduces ability to answer questions accurately
Disadvantages of structural interviews: Social desirability bias
Individuals may answer questions in a manner that will be viewed favourably by others
Respondents may be open to their behaviour that make them look good but they may lie about their bad behaviours
Explain secondary data? two types?
Refers to any data that the sociologist has used that they did not collect for themselves
Two types of secondary data are:
1) official/ unofficial statistics
2) media products- content analysis
what are official statistics?
Official statistics are the numerical data collected by the government, usually gathered through surveys carried out by the state agencies such as the office for national statistics
what are unofficial statistics?
Unofficial statistics are the quantitative data that is collected by non-government sources such as employers, professional boards, trade unions, political parties, think tanks, charities and so on
explain content analysis?
content analysis involves sociologists analysing existing products created by other people
Media products such as newspapers, magazines, radio, posters, films and so on tell us something about the particular society that we live in.
Content analysis is mainly a quantitative method
Advantage of quantitative methods: standardised procedures
Refers to when all the participants are treated in exactly the same way at every step of the method and all have the same experience
Advantage of quantitative method: Operationalisation
Refers to way in which researchers make sociological concepts measurable e.g “inequality” could be operationalised by looking at differences in income
Advantages of quantitative methods: Representativeness/ Generalisability
Quantitative methods allow you to collect large quantities of data from a large number of people over relatively short period of time
This can be linked to representativeness, as the larger the number of people, the more representative it is likely to be
Advantages of quantitative methods: Additional strengths - value freedom/ objectivity
Concerned with the extent to which research can achieve objectivity - to be free from bias/ personal opinions of research
Positivists argue sociological research can be value free, researchers can detach their own values from the research in a quest to gain objective data free from bias
Quantitative methods allow researchers to obtain objectivity
Advantages of quantitative methods: additional strengths - patterns and trends
The researcher is able to use the data to make comparisons, identify patterns and trends, and establish correlations
Disadvantages of quantitative methods: validity - the “what” but not the “why”
Quantitative data is good at establishing what is going on, how often it’s happening
However it is weak in examining reasons behind such data. This limits validity
Disadvantages of quantitative methods: validity - limited deal
The data collected is likely to be limited in detail as respondents are restricted to brief responses
Interpretivist sociologists argue that quantitative methods produce low validity data as the argue real life is too complex to categorise into data such as statistics and numbers
Disadvantages of quantitative methods: validity - easier to lie
For a range of reasons it might be easier to lie in most quantitative methods
In questionnaires respondents may feel less guilty about lying
In structured interviews the rapport between interviewer and interviewee is usually limited
Disadvantages of quantitative method: representativeness - drop out rates
Respondents may drop out of researchers may lose track of them
The view of those who remain in the sample may also be significantly different to those who drop out
This undermines the representativeness of the original sample
