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Content analysis
Qualitative data. You pre-select categories and search for examples of these categories in your document. Then you collect it into your categories. Once completed, you count how many are in each category or compare the content in each.
Documents
Any written text e.g. diaries, blogs, extended also to sounds and images
Official statistics
Collected by Government. E.g. Census or other official bodies e.g. OFSTED
Census
Happens every 10 years. Gives us a picture of all the people and households in England and Wales. Collects demographic info.
Why is ethnicity important when carrying out a Census?
To inform policy development and equality monitoring. Additionally, help organisations meet their statutory obligations under the Equality Act 2010.
Non-participant observation
The researcher is not involved in what is going on.
Participant observation
The researcher is involved in what is going on.
Overt observation
Participants know they are being observed.
Covert observation
Participants do not know they are being observed.
Interpretivism
-Humans have free will and choice. Behaviour is not caused by external forces, so it cannot be explained in terms of cause and effect.
-Our actions should be understood in terms of choices we freely make based of the meanings we give to events. Field experiments are therefore inappropriate for studying human behaviour.
-Allows us to understand HOW people act but not WHY they act that way.
-Prefer qualitative data.
-Subjective.
Positivism
-Patterns that exist in society have an influence over members of society, systemically sharing their behaviour in various ways.
-Quantitative methods are the best for uncovering and explaining patterns of behaviour that exist in society.
-Field experiments are preferred. The best way to study human beings is to isolate variables to establish cause and effect.
-Objective.
Hawthorne Effect
The tendency for people to behave differently when they know they are being observed.
What to Interpretivists think of the Census and official statistics?
Stats are socially constructed- mainly represent labels some people give to the behaviour of others (Atkinson 1971). Do not represent social facts that exist in the world.
What do Positivists think of the Census and official statistics?
Reject official stats. Fails to achieve validity.
Favour official state-> reliable, shows trends over time, quant. Data representative due to large scale (Durkheim, 1971)
How to gain access and what does the researcher have to undergo?
-Permission and informed consent need to be obtained from local education authorities, governors, head teachers and parents.
-By law the researcher will also have to undergo a Disclosure and Barring service (DBS) to check their suitability if the researcher spends one-to-one time with students.
How to sample?
- Schools have ready made sampling frames which might include lists or registers of present day students divided into year group , subjects and exam entry.
-list of past students and last known addresses and subdivided by gender and ethnicity.
Practical issues in researching schools
Some school data may be unavaliable due to condidentiality. e.g. relating to 'students at risk' or with special needs.
Practical and Theoretical issues in researching parents
Practical: Parental addresses may be supplied by the school; the sample selected may be unrepresentative because such lists are unlikely to identify their social class, ethnicity and so on.
Theoretical: Some parents may attempt to manage the impression the researchers have of them by exaggerating their support or interest.
Ethical and Theoretical Issues in researching teachers
Ethical: Essential to assure teachers of confideniality because they may be anxious that managers may use the data against them.
Theoretical: Teachers who volunteer or who are selected by the headteacher to take part in the research may be unrepresentative of the school.
Practical and Theoretical Issues when researching classrooms
Practical: The teacher's awareness of the observation may mean their interaction with students become less natural.
Ethical: If doing a covert observation, no informed consent can be given.
Theoretical: Student behaviour may be unrepresentative as some may be subdued by the presence of a stranger, whilst others may be tempted to 'play up' to the researcher's presence (Hawthorne effect)
Practical issues in researching students
Children may be reluctant to admit to behaviour (e.g. bullying or racist lang) because they associate the researchers with authority.
Ethical issues in researching children
Children lack power and may find it difficult to turn down a request from an adult researcher, therefore undermining informed consent.
Practical and Theoretical issues of student questionnaires
Practical: Closed questions with tick-box responses are student friendly because they do not require much effort.
Theoretical: Some students may fear that written responses may be used against them and so be partial with the truth.
Theoretical issues of parent questionnaires
Theoretrical: Parents may view questionnaires as judgemental and react defensively by exaggerating or misleading researchers about the levels of support they give to their children.
Some questionnaires can suffer from the imposition problem. Means the researchers have already decided upon the questions and pre-set answers, but these may not represent the experience of either parents or students. Can undermine the validity of the data collected.
Theoretical and Ethical evaluation of non-pp observation
Theoretical: Naturalistic- studied first-hand the everyday environment of students and teachers.
Ethical: Access- some social settings in schools are off-limits to observers, for e.g., staffroom, meetings with parents etc.
Practical and Ethical evaluation of using official statistics
Practical: Accessibility- most DfE statistics are easily accessible via the internet and involve little or no cost.
Ethical: Some headteachers may deliberately manipulate or distort some statistics to either secure funding or for marketing purposes. E.g. they may not accurately record absences or truancy.
Practical and Theoretical evaluation of using public documents
Practical: Saves time, effort and money- Public documents are readily avaliable to researchers at little or no cost. Gerwirtz (1995) used school brochures and prospectuses to study how schools marketed themselves.
Theoretical: Positivists prefer public documents because they are based on evidence that has been systematically collected in a standardised, objective and reliable way.
Practical and Theoretical Issues with using experimental research
Practical: If teachers know they are a part of a scientific experiment to show them unfairly labelling students, they are unlikely to behave unprofessionally in front of students.
Theoretical: What counts as a positive or negative teacher action or label is a matter of interpretation- not all researchers are going to interpret these in the same way.
Inter-interviewer reliability
The extent to which two interviewers produce the same outcome from an interview.
Structured interview
Fixed set of questions asked.
Unstructured interview
Non-fixed set of questions asked.
Semi structured interviews
The interviewer follows a guide, but is able to be flexible
Focus group
A gathering of selected people who participate in a planned discussion that is intended to gather research about a particular topic or area of interest. The interviewer explores how people respond to each others views in the groups.
Group interview
Researcher interviews a number of people at the same time. It covers several areas, themes or topics. It is usually associated with qualitative rather than quantitative research.
Structured interview strengths and weaknesses
S: Easier to investigate more people- quicker, more efficient, cheaper. More rep if larger sample.
W: If respondents do not understand a question (vague), it cannot be explained in an effective way.
Unstructured interview strengths and weaknesses
S: Qualitiative- high validity- more insight. Flexible--> interviewer is not restricted to a fixed set of questions in advance, but can explore whatever seems interesting or relevant.
W: Time consuming- need skilled interviewer. Cannot be replicated.
Semi-structured interview strengths and weaknesses
S: More flexibilie- can ask follow up Qs- can go down intresting tangents.
W: Time consuming for interviewer and respondent. Harder t analyse data in terms of patterns.
Group interview strengths and weaknesses
S: Peers comfortable around each other- open up. Stimulate each other's thinking. Insight
W: 1 or 2 might dominate, peer pressure. SDB and Hawthorne effect. Smaller sample.
Practical and Theoretical Issues with interviewing teachers
Practical: Fitting interviews into teachers' busy timetables and workloads. Teachers may be reluctant to give up their precious free time to take part in long interviews.
Theoretical: Head teachers may only allow interviews with staff who share their vision of how the school should be run. The data collected from these teachers may lack validity because of their bias.
Practical and Theoretical Issues with interviewing parents
Practical: It can be difficult for interviewers to judge the social class of parents without asking intrusive and unwelcome questions about income, which some parents may not wish to answer.
Theoretical: Some parents may experience an 'interviewer effect'- they may feel 'threatened' by the status of the interviewer. E.g. when Bhatti (1999) interviewed Asian parents, for example, she deliberately employed Asian female interviewers who could speak and interview parents in Urdu or Punjabi in order to make them feel more comfortable and trusting of the interviewers, thus increasing the validity of the data collected.
Theoretical and Ethical evaluation of group interviewers
Theoretical: Some students may feel safe, more comfortable or confident within a small group environment rather than in a one-to-one interview with an adult who may be interpreted as an authority figure. For example, Willis (1977) used group interviews to question non-academic working-class boys about their attitudes towards school and boys in the top sets.
Ethical: May not welcome group interviewers with students that invite criticism about teachers or school rules because they do not view students as competent enough.
Ethical and Theoretical Issues with using one-to-one interviewers
Ethical: They require informed consent from parents and head teachers. They may refuse permission if they feel the research will reflect badly on the image of the school.
Theoretical: Children may associate adult interviewers with authority figures (e.g. teachers). So some students may be less willing to cooperate with interviews if they had a negative experience of education.
Teachers: power and status
-Have more power and status due to age, experience, responsibility in school and legal responsibility.
-Classrooms reinforce teachers power
-Heads, Governors, parents and pupils constrain what teachers can do
Teachers: Impression management?
-Teachers used to being observed e.g. Ofsted/ observations so may be more willing to participate
-May manipulate the impression the researcher has of them
-May be more valid to study teachers in staff rooms- however, may be difficult to access
-Heads may influence staff selection for research- hand picking teachers who give a more favourable impression of the school
pupils: power and status
-Schools are hierarchical→ Children and young adults have less power and status so they may not state attitudes and views openly
-Teachers may influence student selection- by hand-picking students who give a more favourable impression of the school
-Students attitudes towards power and status differences can influence research- e.g. less likely to cooperate
-But, research may empower students
which methods can researchers use that may reinforce power?
structured interviews/ questionnaires reinforce power differences- no freedom for students to choose their questions
group interviews- can help balance power
pupils: ability and understanding
-Pupils' vocab, powers of self-expression, thinking skills and confidence are limited
-Researchers need to be mindful of the research question- especially for abstract concepts
-Gaining informed consent can be difficult
-Lang differences- pupils may express themselves differently
-Memory issues- pupil's ability to recall may be limited
-However- age, class, gender & ethnicity differences must be taken into account
so which experiment can be appropriate for ability and understanding and vulnerability/ethical issues?
-questionnaires may be inappropriate
-unstructured interviews: The researcher can build rapport which can help in terms of consent.
Pupils: Vulnerability and ethical issues
-Children are vulnerable to harm- so cost/ benefit analysis is needed in research
-Informed consent is not enough, students must understand what the research entails
-Child protection issues- data must be kept anonymous
Stress must be reduced- e.g. not questioning pupils for long periods
-More 'gatekeeping'- makes it more difficult to access pupils
Pupils: Law and guidelines
-Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, 2006
-Researchers must have Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check
-Unicef, Barnardos & National Children's Bureau have developed special codes of practice for working with children
-BSA have further guidelines
Classroom: Validity
Closed social setting
Controlled setting
Behaviour observed may not be valid
Classroom: Gatekeeping
Many gatekeepers - heads, teachers, child protection laws
Access difficulties
Classrooms: Peer groups
Young people may be insecure about their identity & status
In school-based groups (classes & friendship groups) students may be more sensitive to conformity - impacting their responses to research
Pupils may need to be supervised while completing questionnaires to prevent peers influencing answers
Interviews - true attitudes of individuals may be overshadowed by the dominant attitudes of the peer group
Schools: Schools own data
Schools are 'data rich' - Education is closely scrutinised - so there is a great deal of secondary data publicly available produced by the school themselves
However - confidential info may not be accessible
Schools may falsify data - e.g. truancy figures/ racism figures
Exam data should be treated with care - schools may change the curriculum to create the image that the school is performing well
RM: Official statistics
Schools: The law
It is a legal requirement to attend school - leads to a 'captive population'
Positive
Schools have a legal responsibility to keep certain data
So, all Heads will know where all teachers and pupils are at any given time
Negative
Schools have a legal responsibility to educate students
Heads may see research as interfering with the education process
Schools: Gatekeepers
Head teachers can refuse access into schools, may interfere with the work of the school, or may undermine teachers
Heads may steer researchers away from socially sensitive topics
Meighan & Harber (2007) - heads sometimes view research negatively
Some situations and school settings are off limits to researchers e.g. parent-teacher meetings
Schools: School organisations
Researchers as the 'enemy' - Researchers may become thought of as part of the school hierarchy e.g. pupils may see them as teachers/ teachers may see them as inspectors
Single-sex schools - Researchers of a different gender may have problems keeping a low profile
Schools are large-scale, complex & highly organised social institutions
May impact when research can be carried out (e.g. school hols)
May be difficult for researchers to get used to the setting
May cause difficulty with unstructured interviews/ participant observation
Parents
Parents influence education - how they bring up their children; involvement in school; marketisation policies
Not a homogenous group - willingness to participate depends on class, age, ethnicity -
Parental permission - less likely with socially sensitive research & research that doesn't benefit their child
Impression management - parents may lie to researchers to seem better
Middle-class parents more willing than working-class to return questionnaires
Parents: Access to parents
Homes are private setting and are often closed for researchers
Parents can be difficult to contact
Parents details are kept by schools, but are not freely accessible to researchers
Schools may be open to allowing researchers to send questionnaires home
However - questionnaires sent home may not be received by parents
Researchers own experience
Researcher experience of education may influence their hypothesis or interpretation of data
Researchers need to be aware that their own experiences may dull their perception of education
Researchers need to be aware that their own success in education may cause a lack of empathy for underachieving pupils/ anti-school subcultures
Researchers should be aware that their research may be used for political agendas
public document examples
-produced by organisations such as gov departments, schools, welfare, charities etc
- includes Ofsted reports of school inspections, published company accounts and records of parliamentary debates
e.g. black report 1980--> Inequalities in health
personal document examples
- first-person accounts of social events and personal experiences incl personal feelings and attitudes
- e.g. Thomas and Znaniecki 1919 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America- study of migration and change, polish immigrant letters
historical document examples
- produced in past
- e.g. Laslett used Parish records to study family structures in pre-industrial England; Anderson used parliamentary reports on child labour
statistic of women responses in questionnaires
a 2015 paper looking at self-report bias in psychological studies found that the use of the generic masculine in questionnaires affected women's responses, potentially distorting 'the meaning of test scores'.
