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research methods - Coggle Diagram
research methods
Positivism
- see human behaviour as a product of social laws/facts
- these laws arise out of the way society is organised (social structure)
- we should treat people as objects whose behaviour can be directly observed + measured
- society kid more important than the inidividual as social forces control individual behaviour; individuals are 'puppets of society'
- people act in predictable ways, with their behaviour following patterns +trends
- cause +effect
-prefferd by structuralists (functionlaists +marxists) who are interested in macro processes
- argue sociologists should adopt scientific +objective research methods
- aim to achieve value freedom (objectivity); not letting personal values to bias research
- focus on realibility
- aim for data to be representative in order to make genrealisations
- goverment tends to favour positivists research as it can be generalised
- BSA ethical guidelines support positivists research
Positivism - Durkheim (1897)
- Studied 19th century sucide statistics across europe
- observed that rates remained constant over time, between societies, between social groups within same society
- concluded that sucide rate was not the result of individuals using free will + choosing to kill themselves, but that sucide is a social fact
- sucidal nature is shaped by the nature of the society to which the individual belonged specifically its level of social intergtation + moral regulation (organisation)
- main type of suicide was 'egoistic', which was caused by too much indicuaulsim- failure of society to intergaret people
Interprestvism
- individual is more impoortant than society
- people are active, conscious beings, with free will, who make choice on how to behave (Weber)- vs subject matter of natural sciences such as elements
- society is a product of individuals interacting with each other in social groups
- human behaviour is unpredictible
- people chose to come together to interact in social groups (e.g live in families, work together)
- people have shared meanings + interpretations of the social world (otherwise social interaction wouldn't be possible)
- emphasise the importance of vurstehn (weber); understanding + emphasising with research subjects
- focus on validility over readability (as trusting relationship built between researcher + subject is unique)
- rapport should be devloped with researcher subjects
- aim to achieve reflexivity, whereby self-evaluation by researchers reflects on how they organised the research process +how certain things may have influenced validity (e.g research diary)
- prefer qualatitive + ethnographic methoods
- belive that researchers should be aware of how their presence infulences subject behaviour (researcher imposition)
interpretvism- Atkinson (1978)
- criticised durkheims use of official sucide statistics as he fails to appreciate that they are socially contsructed
- social construction occurs via cornors, who interpret + categorise deaths using subjective expiernce of past deaths
- more coroners interact with friends + relative in order to work out frame of mind of deceased person
- these social interactions construct official statistics
Questionaires
- list of asked/given to respondents
- can be filled out through self-completition
- positivism- closed questions, detailed andwers, attitudinal (agree/disagree)
- +cheap
- +reach large samples (post); representative
- +high repeatability of questions objective
- +anonymity + confidentianiltly ensured
- -low resp0nse rates (50% via post)
- -certain people may be more likely to respond
- -limited categories may decrease validity (imposition problem)
- -lack of trust with researcher may cause people to lie
- -questions may diffciult to undertand without researcher explaining, leading to misinterpretations
Gomm (2004)
- demand characteristics are a key disadvantage of interviews
- people may respond artificially due to how they interpret researchers motives +aims
- some subjects wish to impress researcher
- people may over report desirable behaviour (social desirability effect)
- people may under report deviant/immoral behaviour
Qualitative data
- data expressed as words or quotes
- subjective
- descriptions, feelings, opinions, interpretations
- highly detailed
- preferred by interptivists
Qualitative data
- data expressed in numerical form
- objective
- statistics, percentages
- can be compared to find correlations (used to establish cause +effect relationships in order to decude 'facts' about human behaviour)
- preferred by psoitivists
validity
- truthfulness of data
- whether research findings give a true picture of what is being studied
- difficult to achieve as subjects may not be aware of their behaviours
relability
- relibicability of data collection +outcomes
- research could be repeated and same results would be obtained, verifying original research
- some research methods more repeatable than others (ethnography vs questionnaire)
representaivness
- the degree to which research sample/cross sections is similar to (so represnets) the larger population
- people who take part in research should have characteristics typical of research population
- full count provides highest represetaviness
generalisability
- the extent to which results of a study represent the whole population
- important for research that leads to social policy
hypothesis
- informes guess/hunch that the researcher thinks might be true
- can be tested by breaking it down inti aims + objectives
- based on sociological knowledge
- some sociologists prefer to begin with a general aim, allowing the hypothesis to develop as data is collected (grounded theory)
literate review
- reading what others have published on the subject
main functions
- researcher can avoid repeating research already done
- provides the researcher with ideas on the direction of their researcher
- ideas can be shaped into a hypothesis
- researcher may chose to criticise/disprove previous researcher
operationalism
- breaking down the hypothesis/aim into things that can be observed + measured
- precise measurement of social phenomena cannot occur without it
-
- noble and davis (2009)
- operationalised the concept of cultural by asking questions based on 3 main aread
- educational +occpational backgrounds of parents
- extent to which parents encouraged children to take an interest in certain cultural pursuits
structured interviews
- reponses to questions asked by researcher recorded
- closed questions + strict interview schedule
- interviews passive + robotic
- responses converted into quantitave data
- +easily repeated
- +results can be compared
- +interviewer can explain misundertanding
- +good response rate as interviewer can return if not home
- -time consuming
- -age,gender,ethnicity, etc of interviewer may influence responses
- -demand characteristics (e.g children want to please/impress interviewer); Gomm sees this as major issue
- people my not feel comfortable enough to tell the truth, decreasing validity (as they are not a normal part of everyday reality- interpretivist)
unstructured interviews -guided conversation between interviewer + repsondent
- interviewer plays an active role in following leads+ keeping conversation on topic of research
- no interview schedule, juts abroad idea of topic
- informal conversation
- ethnographic if carried out in natural setting of repsondent
- +rapport established, increasing validity
- +issued seen as important by respondent focused on
- +provides insightful qualatiive data
- +Prefferd b intepretivists as peoples expiernces +
meanings explored
- -more time consuming that structures
- -cricised by positivists as subjects not explored to same questions, reducing realibility
- success depends on interviewer
- -reseracher must be selective of what parts of the interviewer to publish, leading to bias
- -volume of material collected makes analysis + comparison difficult
- people unaware they act in certain ways
- -smaller sample reduces represntaivnesps, so generalisation difficult
- -expensive due to training of interviewer + time taken
semi-structured interviews
- mix of structured +unstructured
- closed + open questions
- researcher may intervene by asking follow up
questions, jogging memories, asking for examples , clarifying vague answers
- every interview is different as some require more probing than others 9difficult to compare results )
longitudinal studies
- study the same group over a long period of time
- +research carried out at certain check points
- +provides information on changes in attitudes/behaviours (e.g. NCDS)
- -respondents may drop out, decreasing representativeness
- -view of those who remain in sample may differ from those who drop out
- -researcher Amy become too friendly with respondents so lose their ability to be objective
- -expensive
content anyaliss
- contant anyasis of media products analysed
- analysis schedule used to identitify what to look for
- frequency +nature of content
- media portrays attitudes/concerns of society
- +cheap
- +data easily compared over time (longitudinal)
- +high reliability as media products can be cross- checked
- -time consuming (especially if longitudinal)
- -subjective to researchers opinions of issues
- -meida products may be taken out of context
- -debatable whether meida portrays attitudes of society, as they may only inform us to beliefs of media workers
- -media effects on audience debated