Quantitative / qualitative methods

Topics 1 + 2

Topic 1+2: What is Primary Data?

Topic 1+2: What is Primary Data?

Data that the researcher has collected themselves

Topic 1+2: What is Secondary Data?

Information that has been collected or created by someone other than the researcher.

Topic 1+2: What is Quantitative Data?

Information in a numerical form

Topic 1+2: What is Qualitative Data?

Information that is in more of a worded form and in sentences.

Topic 1+2: What are the three factors that sociological researcher have to consider when choosing a research method?

• Practicality

• Ethics

• Theoretics

Topic 1+2: What issues are considered to be Practical Factors?

1. Time and Money

2. Research opportunity

3. Requirements of funding bodies

4. Personal Skills and characteristics

Topic 1+2: What issues would be considered as Ethical Factors?

1. Confidentiality and Privacy

2. Harm to Participants

3. Informed Consent

4. Covert Research

5. Subject Matter

6. vulnerable Groups

7. Consent.

Topic 1+2: What issues would be considered as Methodological issues?

1. Methodological Perspective

2. Validity

3. Reliability

4. Representativeness

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Experiments?

1. Can only be used to study closed systems

2. Individuals are unique and so they cannot be sorted into control and experimental groups

3. Cannot be used to study the past

4. They are only useful in small sample sizes

5. The Hawthorne effect can confound the results.

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using Experiments?

1. Informed consent is required

2. Harm to Subjects should be minimised

3. Treating Subjects Fairly According to their Rights should be kept throughout the procedure.

Topic 1+2: What are the theoretical issues of using Experiments?

1. Reliability

2. Representativeness

3. Interpretivism and free will

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Questionnaires?

1. Quick and cheap, provides a large soruce of data

2. No training or hirring required

3. Data is easy to quantify

4. May require financial incentive to gain responses from respondants

5. Low response rate

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using Questionnaires?

1. Overall fairly ethical

2. Confidentiality is guaranteed

3. Parental consent may be required

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues of using Questionnaires?

1. Reliable

2. Representative

3. Low validity

4. Keeps the researcher detached and objective - Positvists would suit this

5. However, imposes the researchers meaning through deciding what questions to ask

6. Possible that the respondents lied when answering questions

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using a Structured Interview?

1. Quick, cheap

2. Gathers factual informatiomn

3. Closed ended questions with pre-coded answers - easy to quantify

4. Higher response rates than questionnaires

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using structured interviews?

1. Not appropriate to be used when asking questions on sensitive topics

2. Interviewers may feel pressure to answer

3. Informed consent is necessary - cannot continue without it

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues of using a Structured Interview?

1. Reliable

2. Representative

3. Littel freedom to expand on answers - does not suit interpretivists

4. Ann Oakley states that it is a possiblly masculine approach to research and ignores the interests of the individual being interviewed

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Unstructured Interviews?

1. Training is required - possibly expensive

2. Interpersonal skills are required

3. Likely to be time consuming as they take a long time

4. Produces a large amount of data - difficult to quantify

5. Interviewee gets to decide what is important - suits interpretivists

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using Unstructured Interviews?

1. Interviewee is likely to feel more comfort as it is informal which allows a rapport to be built between the interviewer and interviewee.

2. More likely to cover sensitive topics

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues of using Unstructured Interviews?

1. Open ended questions so there is a wide range for elaboration of answers - interpretvists approve

2. Lacks reliability - does not suit positivists

3. Lacks representativeness

4. The interviewee also gets to decide what it is important during the discussion, which will suit interpretivists.

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Official Statistics?

1. Free to access

2. Collected at regular intervals

3. May not be researching the exact same topic the researcher is researching

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues using Official Statistics?

1. Rperesentative

2. Reliable

3. Interpretivists may argue that they are social constructs

4. Feminists may argue that they are created bby the state to maintain patriarchal oprression

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Observations

1. With Participant observations, they provide an insight into the participants life - Verstehen

2. Very time consuming

3. Training is needed, likely to be expensive

4. Powerful groups may limit access

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using Observations?

1. With Covert observations (participant or non-participant), deception is an issue that may have to be disclosed at the end of the research

2. Informed consent is not gained

3. It is possible that the researcher may witness or participate in illegal activity whilst in a covert observation.

4. The researcher may over identify with the participants and so lose objectvity, the results of the research may then be biased.

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues of using Observations?

1. High in validity through involvement with the participant

2. Lacks representativeness as it is likely that participant observations may only be in small groups

3. Lacks reliability as the exact same events and conclusions may not happen or be reached again

4. Valuable to interactionists who want to examine interactions of individual people (actors).

5. Ignores structural forces

Topic 1+2: What are the Practical issues of using Documents?

1. May be only source of data when studying historical events

2. Quick, cheap soruce of data, especially if online

3. Accessing the sources may be an issue

4. Created for individual or organisational intentions, not sociological intentions.

Topic 1+2: What are the Ethical issues of using Documents?

1. Informed Consent is not possible to achieve, the individual who produced the document is not able to give consent for their document to be used in research.

2. There may be a number of people or organisations, in which consent will need to be gained from.

Topic 1+2: What are the Theoretical issues of using Documents?

1. The validity of some documents can be questioned e.g Hitler diaries were found to be fake.

2. Likely to be authentic, the individual produced the source likely not with the thought in mind of a sociological researcher examining it.

3. Lacks representativeness

4. Lacks reliability

What research methods are favored by positivists?

Quantitative research methods

• Laboratory experiments

• Questionnaires

• Structured interviews

• Statistics

what research methods are favored by interpretivists?

Qualitative research methods

• Unstructured Interviews

• Participant observation

• Personal documents

• Historical documents

• Field experiments

Topic 3: What does ‘Verstehen’ mean to Interpretivists?

This is a sociological term which means to put yourself in another individual’s perspective, and interpretivists believe that in order to understand the meaning’s of others, this is what should be done.

Topic 7: Explain the Radical Feminist view that the ‘Personal is Political’

This is the view that patriachal oppression is direct and personal, due to it appearing in the public sphere of politics, but also in the private sphere of the family. They believe that men exploit their patriachal power through sexual and physical violence, or the threat of it.

Topic 9: What does Beck focus on?

The decisions of whole societies and governments

Topic 10: Explain the New Right view on policy.

They believe that the state should have minimal involvement in society and they believe that if the state has over involvement within society then this causes problems. They state that policy should restore the responsibilities of the individual as they believe that welfare benefits act as a perverse incentive that weakens the families self reliance.

Topic 10: What policy would the New Right be in favour of?

Reduction in state funding of welfare, marriage preparation class, parenting classes