Positivism

Science?

• Sociology = science

  • Should follow model of natural aciences

    • Objective knowledge!

Does society actually exist?

• Society has an objective, factual reality and exists like the physical world

Approach to society

• Macro, top-down approach to society

What they look for

• Laws of cause and effect that explain patterns in behaviour caused by social forces

How they go about their research

• Test hypothesis

Humans and society

• Society exerts influence over its members

Actions of humans

• Affected by society

Type of data

• Quantitative

3 features of methods they like and why

• Representativeness

  • To make generalisations

• Reliability

  • To repeat the experiment to establish cause and effect relationships

• Objectivity

1 feature of a method they don’t care about

• Validity

3 methods they like

• Questionnaires

• Structured interviews

• Experiments

1 secondary source they like and why

• Official statistics

  • Are reliable, objective social facts

Use of data

• In order to discover objective scientific laws that determine behaviour they…

  • Use facts laws and rules to..

    • Look for patterns of cause and effect

    • Make generalisations