Comparative Methods

Comparative Methods

* Alternative to an experiment 

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* It’s known as a thought experiment as no experiment actually takes place

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* Sociologist collects evidence about different societies or social contexts as they are found in the real world

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* They identify similarities and differences between them

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* They will then attempt to draw patterns or conclusions from this comparison

Durkheim’s Study of Suicide

Durkheim applied the Positivist thinking to his study of Suicide Levels of integration within society -  refers to a feeling of belonging to a group

Levels of regulation - The level of regulation refers to the level of control a society has over its members.

Using the comparative method, he looked for casual relationships between the statistics to see what factors lead to suicide 

He found that there were higher rates of suicide amongst different groups

Wanted to see what was happening in society to raise suicide rates

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Advantages

* avoids artificiality
* can be used to study past
* poses no ethical problems such as harming objects

Disadvantages

* gives researcher even less control variable than field experiments
* so we can be less certain whether a thought experiment really has discovered the cause of something

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Comparative Method

* existing research may be biased
* only certain research is published
* due to teacher labelling and stereotypes things like predicted grades and reports are heavily biased