Case studies (copy)

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.