Case studies (copy)

Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim

• structuralist

• study on suicide published 100 years ago

aim: wanted to show suicide as linked to the way society is organised and how it is not affected by private troubles

• observation: suicide rates in a country every year didn’t change much however there was significant difference between countries

• He tried to show social forces varying between different countries led to these suicide rates. For ex: connection between individuals, families and religious organizations.

• suicide rates show us something about the society, not the individual and how strong connections led to lower suicide rates and weak connections lead to higher rates.

• Durkheim worked with the positivist framework.

• Like other structuralists he looked at correlation (when two variables are related to eachother) and causation (where a strict link can be proved) between variables.

the UK census survey

• the UK holds a census to gather statistical information about everyone living there

• carried out every 10 years

• every household has to answer many pages of questions on a range of subjects such as ages of people, ethnic backgrounds, religion and how people travel to work.

Why social surveys are not valid?

• 1980’s research

• Finding out how many unsuitable films have children watched, they were horror films known as ‘video nasties’

• there was no concern for media

• children who watched these were heavily influenced

• Surveys showed that many children have seen the films

• To check the valdity of research, several films were mentioned which did not exist

• Children claimed to watch these films to impress their peers or try to look matured and grown than they were.

hard labour (caroline gatrell)

• 2004

• studied how women in top professional jobs combined work and motherhood

• Gatrell caried 20 in-depth unstructured interviews with women

• 18 interviews with male partners

• women all had one baby/preschool child

• Gatrell asked questions related around being a parent, housework, conflict between motherhood and work

• women faced far more problems than men in combining being a parent with paid work, laws, discrimination, and balance

• gatrell won their trust so women talked freely - validity

• small sample - not representative due to common high status

bandura and the bobo dolls

• lab experiment - 1960s

• link between watching violent acts and imitating them

• set up with 4 groups of preschool children

  • group 1 - saw real life adult men and women attacking a self-righting inflatable doll with mallets

  • group 2 - saw a film of adult men and women attacking a self-righting inflatable doll with mallets

  • group 3 - saw TV film of cartoon characters attacking a self-righting inflatable doll with mallets

  • group 4 - control. saw nothing

• each chold was mildly frustrated in being put ina. room with toys but being told they were reserved for other children

• children were put in rooms with similar dolls as shown and each child spent 20 minutes

• observed by judges seated behind a one-way mirror

• first 3 groups were equally aggressive towards dolls and more aggressive than the control group

• problems with this research:

  • meaning of violence and aggression - no one was hurt

  • children don’t normally watch TV in a lab with researchers watching

  • slow drip effect with the way media affects people

pygmalion in the classroom - rosenthal and jacobson

• field experiment - 1968

• researchers went to a primary school in USA and claimed to have a new IQ test predicting which children would become ‘high attainers’ in the future

• teachers were told that 20% would fall into ‘very able children’ and invited to administer tests

• researchers chose names at random and told teachers

• reseachers went to the school randomly over the next 18 months and found the named pupils had made significant progress due to increased teacher expectations

affluent worker - goldthorpe and lockwood

• 1968

• famous case study

• investigated whether car factory workers in the UK started to behave like middle class people because they were paid well compared to other workers

• only one factory was researched where workers were paid the most

• researchers didn’t know whether embourgeoisement was happening at other factories

NCDS - national child development study

• longitudinal panel research

• followed lives of 17000 children in the UK born in one week in march 1958

• eight follow up surveys at ages: 7, 11, 16, 23, 33, 42, 46, 50

  • data collected helped to understand the importance CAGE and education and other personal factors.

  • using NCDs: sons of professional fathers are more likely to get professional jobs than working-class parents

  • people who leave with A-level qualifications are more likely to climb up the social mobility than people who leave with GCSES.

7 up

• british tv series

• Good example of a panel survey

• In 1964 20, 7 year olds from different backgrounds were shown to talking to eachother with different things.

• every 7 years the same group of 20 children are visited and interviewed about their progress in life

• 7 up has showed dramatic life histories and insights into careers, family choices and aging in modern Britain.

gang leader for a day - sudhir venkatesh

• participant observation

• chicago, USA

• researched the lives of people living in a poor area in the city

  • social problems such as:

  • high crime rate

  • drug use

  • poor quality housing

• people: african-americans living in poverty

• People at his university though it’s foolish to visit a dangerous place like that

• venkatesh won the support of the leader of the black kings gang and showed him the gang and social life

  • this was very different from what might have been expected from media and other accounts by outsiders

• gang played an important part in the life of the area

  • provides support to the most needy

  • punished those whose actions harmed the community

viewing the world (2000)

• content analysis

• commissioned by UK government’s Department for International Development

• researched into the way that developing countries were reported on British television

• researcher recorded all the main news programmes on the five main terrestrial television channels for three months and then analysed theme: counting the number of lengths of news stories mentioned developing countries and the tone of the story and what impression it gave

• analysed the content of some non-news programmes that had some coverage or mention of the developing world

• developing world was underreported

• coverage was overwhelmingly negative (war and death)

• Nearly 137 developing countries weren’t mentioned in this Time period

• differences in coverage between the channels. For ex: channel 4 more information on developing countries and portrayed less negatively.