AQA A-level Sociology: Research Methods Super Set

What is primary data?

Information collected by sociologists themselves for their own purposes.

What is the main advantage of using primary data?

Sociologists can ensure that the information gathered will help test their hypotheses exactly.

What is the main disadvantage of using primary data?

It is often time consuming and costly.

What is secondary data?

Information that has been collected or created by someone else for their own purposes, but which the sociologist can use.

What is the main advantage of using secondary resources?

It can be quick and cheap as someone has already produced the information.

What is the main disadvantage of using secondary resources?

The sociologist who produced the information may not have the same interests as you so their data does not provide the information you need.

What is quantitative data?

Information in numerical form.

What is qualitative data?

Data that represents information and concepts that are not represented by numbers.

What are the three types of issues influencing choice of method?

• Practical Issues

• Ethical Issues

• Theoretical Issues

What are the practical issues that influence choice of method? [5]

• Time and money

• Requirements of funding bodies

• Personal skills and characteristics

• Subject matter

• Research opportunity

What are the ethical issues that influence choice of research method?

• Informed consent

• Confidentiality and privacy

• Harm to participants

• Vulnerable groups

• Covert research

What are the theoretical issues that influence choice of research method?

• Validity

• Reliability

• Representativeness

• Methodological perspective

AO2: How may research opportunity impact choice of research method?

Patrick (1973): his chance to study a gang came out of the blue so he had no choice but to use participant observations.

What are ethical issues?

Moral issues of rights and wrong when conducting research.

What is covert research?

Research where the researcher's identity for the purpose of the research is hidden from the people being studied.

What is a validity?

Valid methods produce a true or genuine picture of what something is really like, allowing the researcher to get closer to the truth.

What type of methods are high in validity?

Qualitative methods

What is reliability?

A reliable or replicable method ir one that can be repeated by another researcher and give the same results.

What types of methods are high in reliabilty?

Quantitative methods

What is representativeness?

Whether or not the people involved in the study are a typical cross-section of the group we are interested in.

What are the two types of methodological perspective?

Positivists and Interpretivists

What are the characteristics of positivists?

They prefer quantitative data, try to discover patterns of behaviour and see sociology as a science.

What are the characteristics of interpretivists?

They prefer qualitative data, seek to understand individual meanings and reject the view that sociology can resemble the natural sciences.

What are the factors influencing choice of topic?

• The sociologist's perspectice

• Society's values

• Practical factors

• Funding bodies

What is a hypothesis?

A possible explanation that can be tested by collecting evidence to prove it true or false.

What types of sociologists prefer to create hypotheses?

Positivists

What is an aim?

They are more general than hypotheses and they simply identify what you want to study and hope to achieve.

What types of sociologists prefer aims?

Interpretivst

What does operationalise mean?

To define concepts or ideas in a way that makes them measurable.

What is a disadvantage to operationalising concepts?

Operationalising concepts has disadvantages because sociologists may operationalise the same concept differently. This makes it difficult to compare findings.

What are different sociologists' opinions on operationalising concepts?

Positivists are keen to operationalise concepts because they help to create and tests hypothesis.

Interpretivists aren’t so concerned to operationalise concepts as they are more interested in how actors’ define and understand these broad concepts.

What is a pilot study?

A trial run of a research method, usually with a small sample, in order to ensure that the method will work as intended.

AO2: Give an example of sociologists who used a pilot study?

Young and Willmott (1962): they carried out 100 pilot interviews to help them decide on the design of their study, the questions and how to word them.

What is a sample?

A smaller sub-group drawn from the wider group that we are interested in.

What does it mean for the sample to be representative?

The sample accurately reflects the characteristics of the larger population.

What is the advantage of having a representative sample?

Your findings can be generalised and applied to your entire research population as a social fact.

Which sociologists aim for their samples to be representative?

Positivists

What is a sampling frame?

A list of all the members of the population we are interested in studying.

AO2: What did Young and Willmott (1962) use as their sampling frame?

The electoral register.

What are the different types of sampling techniques?

• Random

• Systematic Stratified

• Quota

• Snowball

• Opportunity

What is random sampling?

When the sample is selected purely by chance and everyone has an equal chance of being selected.

What is the disadvantage of random sampling?

When the sample is large enough this should create a representative sample, but this isn’t always the case. With smaller samples they tend to be less representative.

What is systematic sampling?

When every nth person in the sampling frame is selected.

AO2: Who used systematic sampling for their research and how?

Young and Willmott (1962) used systematic sampling as they picked every 36th named on the electoral register.

What is stratified sampling?

The researcher first stratifies (categorises) the population by characteristics such as age, gender etc. Participants from each strata are randomly selected, ensuring it is proportional to the actual population.

What is quota sampling?

The researcher stratifies the population and then has a quota to reach.

What are some reasons why a sample may not be representative? [4]

Practical reasons why:

• The social characteristics of the population may not be known.

• Hard or impossible to create a sampling frame, e.g. for criminals as not all are convicted.

• Potential respondents may refuse to participate.

• Interpretivists are less concerned about having a representative sample as they aren’t concerned about making generalisations.

What is snowball sampling?

• The researcher gains new participants by asking certain individuals to suggest other people to be part of their study.

• They continue doing this until they have enough data.

• This can be useful for contacting people who are often difficult to find or encourage to be part of your study.

What is opportunity sampling?

The researcher simply chooses individuals who are easiest to access, e.g. approaching passers-by on the street.

What are the main groups and settings looked at when researching education?

• Pupils

• Teachers

• Parents

• Classrooms

• Schools

What did Hill (2005) say are the major differences between researching young people and researching adults? [3]

• Power and status

• Ability and understanding

• Vulnerability

How does power and status impact reseachers when studying pupils? [7]

• Pupils have less power and status than adults. May be difficult for them to state their opinion openly, especially if they are challenged by adults.

• This is worsened by the fact that schools are hierarchical institutions.

• Teachers may use this power to select particular students for their research.

• Formal research methods may reinforce power differences.

• Sociologists have to find ways to overcome the power differences. E.g. group interviews may be preferable over formal one-to-one interviews.

• Pupils who resent the power teachers have may be less likely to cooperate.

• Some students may feel empowered and express their true feelings about school.

How does pupils' ability and understanding impact reseachers when studying pupils?

• Pupils’ vocabulary, self-expression and confidence tend to be more limited than adults - especially when discussing abstract ideas.

• This means that sociologists have to be careful in the way they word their questions.

• It’s also harder to gain informed consent from pupils.

• Pupils will need more time to answer questions.

How does pupils' vulnerability and ethical issues impact researchers when studying pupils?

• Pupils are more susceptible to harm due to their limited power and ability.

• Sociologists should consider if the participation of pupils is absolutely necessary.

• You need to get informed consent from not just teachers and parents, but also the pupil themselves. However this can be difficult due to their limited understanding and maturity.

• Child protection issues and laws are very significant.

• The researcher should also consider if the form of research will cause any stress to the participant.

• It’s harder to carry out research involving pupils as their are more gatekeepers.

How do laws and guidelines negatively impact researchers studying pupils?

• Child protection laws, such as the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act (2006), make it difficult to work with pupils.

• Researchers have to have a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check which delays or even prevents research.

How do child protection laws positively impact researchers studying pupils?

• An advantage of studying pupils is that they are easy to find as they are legally required to attend school.

• However this isn’t always the case, such as with pupils who are part of anti-school subcultures and regularly truant.

• Plus pupils are only in school during term time.

How may a teacher's power and status impact a researchers when studying teachers?

• Teachers have more power and status within the school and a duty of care towards their pupils.

• The classroom environment often reinforces this power and the researcher may be seen as a trespasser.

• However their power is still limited and restricted by higher-ups as headteachers.

• Researchers may wish to develop a cover to carry out covert research, e.g. a teaching assistant.

• However this gives the researcher a lower status in schools.

Who coined the term impression management?

Goffman (1969)

What is impression management?

When people try to manipulate the perceptions other people form of them.

Why is impression management an issue when researching teachers?

• Teachers are used to being observed, e.g. by Ofsted.

• This means that they are accustomed to putting on an act for pupils and others (impression management).

• The classroom would be referred to as the front stage where teachers are performing their part.

• To see their true behaviour, researchers would need access to backstage spaces, such as the staffroom.

• This poses problems such as teachers being wary of a newcomer.

• Teachers are conscious that any criticisms they make of the school could impact their career → less likely to answer all questions honestly.

• Headteachers may influence which staff are involved in the research → lowers representativeness.

How does the school's data impact researchers when studying schools?

• Their is a great deal secondary data about schools available to the public, e.g. exam results and league tables. Due to marketisation policies and schools being heavily scrutinised.

• This makes schools data-rich places.

• However these records are sometimes confidential.

• Data on sensitive topics may be falsified by schools to create a good image.

• They may also downplay incidents of racism and bullying.

• Official statistics on examination performances should be treated with care as we don’t fully know how schools are obtaining those exam results.

How do laws impact researchers when studying schools?

• The law requires pupils to attend school so that they are education.

• Having such a captive population can be an advantage as you know where all your participants should be.

• However, headteachers and teachers may see research as interfering with the purpose of schools - to educate.

• Schools legal duty to collect information on things such as attendance and achievement can be beneficial to the researcher.

• However their legal duty of care to pupils means that they may not grant the researcher access to this information.

How do gatekeepers impact researchers when studying schools?

• Headteachers and governors are gatekeepers who may deny the researcher access to their school.

• Meighan and Harber (2007): witnessed the negative attitudes headteachers had towards researching education, including:

• They believed it was dangerous to involve pupils in commenting on their teachers. ‘

• It would have an adverse effect on discipline.

• It would be bad for classroom relationships.

• Children are not competent to judge teachers.

How can the school's organisation impact researchers when studying schools?

• Schools are formal institutions with hierarchies and researchers may be seen as part of that hierarchy.

• Students may view them as teachers, whilst teachers may view them as inspectors.

• There are many single-sex schools which may create problems when the sociologists is of a different gender to the pupils, e.g. drawing attention to themselves.

• Schools are large, complex institutions, which may impact when the researcher can conduct research, e.g. term times and exam periods.

• The size and complexity of schools can make it difficult for researchers to understand everything.

How can access to parents impact researchers when studying parents? [3]

• There is little opportunity to observe parent-child interactions as it happens at home, and that is a private setting closed to researchers.

• Schools tend to have a list of parents’ contact details but it’s unlikely that they would give them out to a researcher.

• Schools may be happy to use other research methods, e.g. sending questionnaires home with pupils.

How can researcher's own experience of education impact them when studying education?

• Researchers can draw on their own experiences of education when formulating a hypothesis or interpreting data.

• Sociologists may be overly familiar with an educational setting may lead to them taking for granted how different educational environments are to other social settings.

• Researchers tend to have been successful in education and may lack empathy for failing students who are part of an anti-school subculture.

• Class, gender and ethnic differences may also hinder researchers when researching pupils.

What are the research characteristics of pupils?

• They have little power and status.

• They lack ability and understanding.

• They are more vulnerable to harm.

• There are safeguarding laws in place to protect them.

What are the research characteristics of teachers?

• They have more power and status.

• They are likely to carry out impression management.

What are the research characteristics of classrooms?

• They are a closed social setting that is highly controlled and easy to observe.

• Impression management is performed by several members of the classroom.

• There are several gatekeepers.

• Peer groups may influence the behaviour of students.

What are the research characteristics of parents?

• Differences in CAGED factors affect participation rates.

• Parental consent for pupils is unlikely when researching sensitive topics.

• Likely to carry out impression management.

• Hard to access.

What are the research characteristics of schools?

• Time is limited due to their structure.'

• Schools are data-rich.

• The law requires pupils to attend school.

• There are several gatekeepers.

• They are highly organised.

• They are hierarchical.

What are the three types of experiments?

• Laboratory experiments

• Field experiments

• The comparative method

What are the two groups in a laboratory experiment?

Experimental and Control

What are laboratory experiments good for identifying?

Cause-and-effect relationships

Why are laboratory experiments high in reliability?

• The original experimenter can state exactly the steps that were followed in the original experiments.

• It’s a highly detached methods → the researcher’s personal feelings have no effect on the outcomes.

Which sociologists prefer laboratory experiments?

Positivists

What are the practical issues with laboratory experiments? [4]

• Society is very complex so it would be impossible to identify and control all the variables that influence a person’s behaviour.

• They can’t be used to study the past.

• They can only study small samples → difficult to study large-scale social phenomena, e.g. religion.

• This also lowers the representativeness.

What are the ethical issues with laboratory experiments?

• Informed consent may be difficult to obtain from vulnerable groups who may struggle to understand the nature of an experiment.

• Deception - it’s generally considered wrong to mislead people, although this may be a core part of some research.

• Harm - experiments are likely to cause harm.

AO2: What's an example of an experiment that had ethical issues?

• Milgram (1974): deceived his participants in his study by telling them that they were administering electric shocks to learners, although this was not true and rather a test to see people’s willingness to obey authority.

• In Milgram’s experiment, some participants were even reported to have seizures.

What is the Hawthorne effect?

When people are aware that they are being studied this alters their behaviour.

Why does the Hawthorne effect occur?

The artificial setting of the experiment and the fact that the participants are aware they are being studied.

How does the Hawthorne effect impact the data?

It makes the data less valid

What is an example of the Hawthorne effect taking place?

• Mayo (1927): first noted this when researching factors affecting workers’ productivity at Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne plant.

• With every variable Mayo changed, the workers’ productivity improved, even when their conditions were being worsened.

• Mayo concluded that the workers weren’t actually responding to the variables, but they were simply responding in a way they thought would please the researcher.

How do interpretivists criticise experiments?

• Interpretivists would argue that sociologists can’t study humans the way scientists study things because we have free will.

• This means that we can’t explain our behaviour through cause-and-affect relationships.

What makes field experiments different from laboratory experiments?

• It takes place in the participants’ natural surroundings.

• The subjects are not aware that they are part of an experiment

AO2: What is a real life example of a field experiment?

• Rosenhan (1973): in his pseudo-patient experiment, researchers presented themselves to different mental hospitals, claiming that they had been hearing voices.

• Each was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed and schizophrenic. Once admitted, they stopped complaining about the voices, but were still treated as though they were mentally ill.

• This suggested that it was actually the label of schizophrenic that led to treatment, not because they were actually sick.

How do researchers carry out thought experiments?

• Identify two groups of people who are similar in all major aspects except for the one that you’re interested in.

• Compare the two groups to see if that one difference between them has an effect.

AO2: What is a real life example of a thought experiment?

• Durkheim (1987): used a thought experiment when studying suicide.

• His hypothesis was that the low amount of social solidarity and integration among certain groups → higher rates of suicide.

• He believed that Catholics had higher rates of integration than Protestants, meaning that Protestants had higher rates of suicide.

• He then tested his prediction by comparing the suicide rates of both groups who were similar in all other important aspects (e.g. where they lived, marital status).

• Official statistics supported his prediction as Catholics had the lower suicide rates.

What are the advantages of thought experiments?

• It avoids artificiality

• It can study past events

• Doesn’t have any ethical issues

What is a disadvantage of thought experiments?

The researcher has no control over the variables.

AO2: Who conducted a laboratory experiment to see if teachers had different notions of pupils of different classes?

Harvey and Slatin (1976)

Outline and explain Harvey and Slatin's (1976) experiment?

• They examined whether teachers had preconceived notions about pupils of different classes.

• They used a sample of 96 teachers and showed them different photos of children of different social class backgrounds. The teachers were asked to rate their pupils on things such as achievement, aspirations etc.

• They found that working-class pupils were rated less favourably.

• This study showed that teachers do label pupils based on their social class.

AO2: Who conducted a laboratory experiment to see if teachers' expectations affected non-verbal communication?

Charkin et al. (1975)

Outline and explain Charkin et al. (1975) laboratory experiment?

• They used a sample of 48 university students who were told to teach a lesson to a ten-year-old boy.

• One group were told that the boy was intelligent and highly motivated.

• One group were told that he was poorly motivated and had a low IQ.

• One group were given no information.

• They recorded the lesson and found that the high expectancy group made more eye contact and gave more encouraging body language than the other group.

What are the ethical issues of using laboratory experiments in education?

• When a lab experiment doesn’t involve a real pupil there are less ethical issues (like in Harvey and Slatin’s study).

• But when real pupils are used this can harm them as their limited ability and vulnerability → deception, lack of consent and psychological damage are bigger issues.

• This is why experiments are rarely used in education.

How does the narrow focus of laboratory experiments impact research?

• These experiments only focused on one aspect of teachers expectation.

• This means that they can study this one aspect in great depth.

• It also means that you can’t understand teacher expectations within the wider process of labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy etc.

• E.g. Charkin et al. (1975) didn’t look at how the different body languages displayed by teachers may affect pupils.

What are the practical issues of laboratory experiments in education? [3]

• Schools are large complex institutions that have many variables that impact teacher expectations.

• It would be impossible to identify and control every single variable, e.g. class size, streaming, school type etc.

• You can’t study the impact of large scale processes and factors, such as educational policies, in small-scale laboratory settings.

What are some examples of the artificiality of laboratory experiments?

• Charkin et al. used university students instead of teachers - the university pupils are unlikely to behave like real teachers.

• Harvey and Slatin used photographs rather than real pupils - teachers’ expectations are based on more than just appearance.

AO2: Who conducted a field experiment to see how teachers' expectations led to a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968)

Outline and explain Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) field experiment?

• Pupils completed an IQ test and the researchers used that to identify pupils who were likely to “spurt” in the next year.

• However, this was not the case and the pupils were selected at random.

• By planting these expectations in the minds of the teachers, this became the independent variable.

• The pupils were re-tested later and the “spurters” were the ones who gained more IQ points than normal.

• They found that the greatest improvement was amongst the youngest group of pupils.