Research Methods Key Studies

• Importance of methodological pluralism/ triangulation through taking a realist approach

The idea of 'these two sociologies' (positivism + interpretivism) is a 'methodological myth'. He says it gives a false idea of theory and research methods compared to reality, in which you pick the best methods for the study.

Ray Pawson - the methodological myth

• Surveys

• Questionnaires.

A study surrounding feminism and intimate details of women’s sexuality. 100,000 women were sampled, aged 14 to 78 (representative and generalisable). She used anonymous questionnaires (very valid)

Shere Hite - The Hite Report

• Surveys

• Questionnaires

• Interviews

Explored relative deprivation. Data was collected from 3200 households and 10,000 individuals using a 39-page questionnaire (via structured interviews). The use of only 25 interviewers increased reliability (less variety in how questions were asked)

Peter Townsend - Poverty in the UK

• Surveys

• Questionnaires (using closed questions)

• Triangulation/ methodological pluralism

• Interviews (semi-structured and were highly personal)

Investigated the reasons behind people joining a religious cult (the Moonies). The Press claimed that the Moonies brainwashed prospective members.

Eileen Barker - The Making of a Moonie

• Used focus groups

• Participant observation

• Sampling - purposive

  personal documents such as diaries to study the lives of working class 'lads' and their attitudes towards school, finding that they didn’t participate in school as they believed no matter their effort, they would only end up in a factory like their fathers. He found that the methods used were highly valid but it was difficult to ensure reliability. He also found it hard to maintain the trust of the lads.

Paul Willis - Learning to Labour

• Semi-structured interviews

• case studies

• ethnography

• sampling - random

• interviews

  researched conjugal roles in the family to understand the experience of housewives, finding that many of them felt alienated by housework and adopted similar coping mechanisms to factory workers. Instead of adopting a sense of ‘sisterhood’, the women often competed against each other to be good housewives.

Ann Oakley - Housewife

• Questionnaires (disadvantage)

• interviews

• content analysis

  was used to discover the ambitions of young girls. She started with questionnaires but they lacked detail, so she moved to interviews which gave a more "three-dimensional" view. Found that girl’s ambitions changed from a focus on family, marriage and children to having a stable career, being independent and then having children after this.

Sue Sharpe - Just Like a Girl

• Ethnography

• participant observation

• verstehen

• case studies

  He temporarily changed his skin colour from white to black to be able to study the oppression faced by a Black people. This researcher possessed Verstehen as he wanted to understand the situation from their perspective, aiming to avoid ignorance.

John Howard Griffin - Black Like Me

Secondary Sources. He used the 2011 Census to research the different languages used across the UK. 4 million out of 63 million people’s primary language living in the UK at the time was not English or Welsh

Guy Lansley - What Is Your Main Language?

Content analysis. They researched how the Falklands War was portrayed in the media. The study found biased reporting; the BBC and ITV completely supported and never questioned the government.

The Glasgow University Media Group - War and Peace News

Official statistics. He used official suicide statistics from several countries over several years to research suicide trends. He found that stats remained stable; different societies had different rates; within societies, rates varied between social groups; and when rates did change, it coincided with other big social changes.

Emile Durkheim - Le Suicide

• Personal documents.

• Secondary sources

  Used secondary statistical data used to build a picture of the 'typical' migrant. Then, semi-structured interviews' qualitative data - to develop and challenge this 'typical' image. They showed that the typical Polish migrant was willing to learn English and had generally a good level of social skills.

Thomas and Znaniecki - 'The Polish Peasant in Europe and America'

Personal documents. She wanted to study the friendships of girls in schools. Looked at the notes written by girls found in the bin at the end of class and found that the girls mostly communicated (90% of notes) about their relations with each other.

Valerie Hey

Conducted observation at the Hawthorne plant and found that worker productivity increased whenever the workers were being watched. From this study, the sociological term ‘the Hawthorne effect’ arose, which describes a change in behaviour when individuals know that they are being watched.

Elton Mayo - study of worker productivity

• Observation

• Sampling - snowball

Joined a gang in Glasgow (using gatekeeper access from Tim Allen who he used to teach). He conducted his research to study the often violent behaviour of the teenagers in a gang in Glasgow. Concluded the boys were ‘afraid of fighting other gangs but more afraid of not fighting them’.

James Patrick - A Glasgow Gang Observed

• Verstehen/ethnography

conducted a study of young men from an Italian community in Boston, USA. He used participant observation (using an ethnographic approach). He found that his acceptance in the district depended on the personal relationships he developed rather than the explanations he could give

William Whyte - Street Corner Society

• Interviews

• Triangulation/ methodological pluralism

• Questionnaires

• Ethnography

Conducted an ethnographic study of the goth subculture and delved into the group’s identity, practices and values by examining elements such as fashion, music preferences and the use of media.

Paul Hodkinson - Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture

• Triangulation/ methodological pluralism

This research aimed to understand fear and risk in urban areas in Northern England by examining the experiences of people who lived, worked, and went to school there. It highlighted how individuals constructed their responses to crime and fear, and how their relationships with their local community influenced their perceptions of safety

Sandra Walklate - Study of the fear of crime in two high crime urban areas in northern England

• Surveys

• Sampling - mass systematic sampling

Is conducted every 10 years and sends out 25 million questionnaire to the British population to gain quantitative data on family diversity and size. Birth rate, ageing population, ethnicity in Britain.

The Census - Office for National Statistics

A victim survey used by the Government to evaluate and develop crime reduction policies as well as providing vital information about the changing levels of crime over the last 30 years. 50,000 people sample.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

An annual survey with a sample of 3000 that asks what it is like to live in Britain, asking questions on a wide range of topics, such as health, welfare, taxation and the monarchy.

The British Social Attitudes Survey

• Experiments

• Case studies

The aim of the research was to isolate and measure the effect of high teacher expectation on the educational performance of pupils, such as the effect of labelling. They concluded that when teachers were told certain students were likely to ‘spurt’ academically in the next year (these students were randomly selected), this would lead to students being positively labelled, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy and these students excelling.

Rosenthal and Jacobson - Pygmalion in the Classroom

• Experiments

• Case studies

• Sampling - volunteer

• Ethical issues

To investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison.

Ethical issues: no protection from harm, lack of informed consent, no right of withdrawal.

Zimbardo - The Stanford Prison Experiment

• Experiments

• Ethical issues

The participant and confederate were separated into separate rooms in which the participant believed the learner was hooked up to an electric shock machine. A “scientist” asked the participant to give electric shocks to the learner if they got the list of words wrong.

Ethical issues - right of withdrawal, deception and little protection from harm

Milgram - study on obediance

• Longitudinal study

Films that have followed the lives of 14 British children since the 1960s, when they were seven years old.

Representing a range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the hypothesis that each child's social class predetermines their future. Filming takes place every seven years.

The Up Series - Michael Apted

• Longitudinal study

Child of Our Time is a landmark BBC One series that has followed the development of a group of 25 children from a range of genetic, social, geographical and ethnic backgrounds since their birth in 2000.

Child of Our Time - BBC

• Longitudinal study

It tracks the lives of over 17,000 individuals born in England, Scotland, and Wales during a single week of that year. The study collects data on various aspects of participants' lives, including their health, education, employment, family life, and social attitudes.

The National Child Development Survey

• Ethical issues

Laud Humphreys recorded the sex lives of over 100 men who had homosexual sex in public toilets of city parks. A year later (after recording their licence plate and found their addresses) he changed his appearance and interviewed 50 participants, asking them for private information such as sexual orientation and occupation.

Ethical issues: deception, no informed consent, invasion of privacy, sensitivity.

Laud Humphrey’s - Tearoom Trade

• Focus groups

Unstructured interviews on 270 rioters which aimed to understand the motivations, attitudes and experiences of those involved in the riots. Focus groups allowed the researchers to analyse their perspectives and experiences, helping researchers gather qualitative insights into the social and political factors that contributed to the riots.

London School of Economics - Reading the Riots

Peter Mackie's research on street-trading children focused on understanding the roles and experiences of children involved in informal trade, particularly in urban settings.

• Snowball sampling - was used to reach hard-to-access populations, such as child street traders. Children would then refer Mackie to their friends.

• Random sampling - used to ensure a representative subset of the children in Peru

Peter Mackie - Research on Street-trading children in Peru

• Paul Hodkinson

• Eileen Barker

• Paul Willis

• Sue Sharpe

• Ann Oakley

• Townsend

which sociological studies can be used as an example of interviews?

• Rosenthal and Jacobson

• Zimbardo

• Milgram

which sociological studies can be used as an example of experiments?

• The Hite Report

• Peter Townsend

• Eileen Barker

• Paul Hodkinson

• Sue Sharpe (weakness)

which sociological studies can be used as an example of questionnaires?

• Elton Mayo

• James Patrick

• William Whyte

which sociological studies can be used as an example of observation?

• The Census

• Crime Survey for England and Wales

• British Social Attitudes Survey

• Eileen Barker

• Peter Townsend

• The Hite Report

which sociological studies can be used as an example of surveys?

• Oakley

• Zimbardo

• Griffin

• Rosenthal and Jacobson

which sociological studies can be used as an example of case studies?

• Paul Willis

• London School of Economics

which sociological studies can be used as an example of focus groups?

• Guy Lansley

• Thomas and Znaniecki

which sociological studies can be used as an example of secondary sources?

• The UP series

• Child of Our Time

• National Child Development Survey

which sociological studies can be used as an example of longitudinal studies?

• Ray Pawson

• Paul Hodkinson

• Sandra Walklate

• Eileen Barker

which sociological studies can be used as an example of triangulation/methodological pluralism?

• Peter Mackie - random sampling and snowball sampling

• Paul Willis - purposive

• Ann Oakley - random

• Zimbardo - volunteer

• Census - mass systematic sampling

• Sudhir Venkatesh and James Patrick - snowball sampling

which sociological studies can be used as an example of sampling?

• Zimbardo

• Milgram

• Humphreys

which sociological studies can be used as an example of ethical issues?

• Thomas and Znaniecki

• Valerie Hey

• Paul Willis

which sociological studies can be used as an example of personal documents?

• GUMG

• Sue Sharpe

which sociological studies can be used as an example of content analysis?

• Oakley

• William Whyte

• John Howard Griffin

• Paul Hodkinson

which sociological studies can be used as an example of ethnography/ verstehen?