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Qauntitative research methods - Coggle Diagram
Qauntitative research methods
LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS- (primary) adapted by positivists
controlled environment
experimental group- exposed to iv
control group: not exposed to iv but conditions remain constant
PRACTICAL ISSUES : - KEAT & URRY - Lab experiments are only suitable for studying closed systems- society is an open system making it impossible for researcher to control all variables
Studying the past - Lab exps cannot be used to study an event in the past, since we cannot control variables that were acting in the past rather than the present
ETHICAL ISSUES:
Informed consent - Researcher needs agreement of participants in order for them to be part of the study so participants may act differently if they know the true purpose
harm to subjects -However some argue that minor or temporary harm may be justified ethically if the results yield social benefits.
THEORETICAL ISSUES:
reliable because original experimenter can control the conditions and specify steps, so easily repeated
lacks external validity- only can be done in small samples so might not be representative cross-section of the public
-lacks internal validity- artificial lab environment, Hawthorne effect as its a different environment
interpretivists- argue humans aren't like plants/other natural phenomenas as we have free will. it cannot be explained in terms of cause & effect
FIELD EXPERIMENTS (primary)
Takes place in natural setting,
those involved dont know they r part of experiment
researchers isolate and manipulate one or more of the variables to discover the effect it has
E.G, Rosenthal and Jacobson manipulated teachers’ expectations about pupils by giving them misleading information about the pupils’ abilities in order to discover what effect this had on the childrens’ academic achievement
PRACTICAL ISSUES:
Larger scale settings – you can do field experiments in schools or workplaces, so you can observe large scale social processes, which isn’t possible with laboratory experiments.
a researcher can ‘set up’ a field experiment and let it run for a year, and then come back later- access is likely to be more of a problem with lab experiments
THEORETICAL ISSUES:
generally have better validity than lab experiments because they take place in real life settings
Better external validity – because they take place in normally occurring, real-world social settings
not possible to control variables as closely as with laboratory experiments – because it’s impossible to observe respondents 100% of the time
ETHICAL ISSUES:
it is often possible to not inform people that an experiment is taking place in order for them to act naturally, so the issues of deception and lack of informed consent apply here too, as does the issue of harm.
QUESTIONNAIRES: (primary)
require people to give answers to pre-set, written questions which can be either, close ended(set, particular responses) or open ended( as much detail)
PRACTICAL ISSUES:
Quick and cheap way to gather large amounts of information from wide numbers of people, widely spread geographically
no need to recruit/train interviewers- respondents complete questions themselves
data may be limited as questionnaires need to be fairly brief- people unlikely to complete long, time consuming ones
postal/email/web questionnaires we can never be sure if completed themselves
low response rate
ETHICAL ISSUES:
questions may be sensitive and cause distress
informed consent given by completing
respondents may only give consent if anonymity is maintained
may disclose responses that are immoral or require reporting
THEORETICAL ISSUES:
RELIABLE- when we repeat someones research we can use an identical questionnaire to the original.( standardised measuring instrument)
representativeness- they are representative as they are large scale
Questionnaires are attractive to positivists because it enables them to test hypotheses and identify cause and effect relationships between different variables
participants may lie
STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS (primary)
involve asking a fixed set of questions
questions are read out and the answers are filled in by a trained interviewer which means they involve a social interaction
PRACTICAL ISSUES:
allow researcher to build rapport with participants
can cover large numbers of people as they are quick and fairly cheap to administer
inflexible due to questions being draw up in advance- difficult to pursue any interesting leads
ETHICAL ISSUES:
social interaction may make interviewee feel under pressure to answer some questions
questions may cause harm if its of a sensitive nature
feminists argue structured interviews oppress women interviewees
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THEORETICAL ISSUES:
Reliable (standardised measuring instrument) -interviewers can be trained to conduct each interview in precisely the same way
representitiveness- Quick and cheap to conduct so large numbers can be surveyed.
validity- Cultural differences may lead to misunderstandings when different meanings are given to words. , most socially desirable answers
INTERPRETIVISM- structured interviews create a 'false picture':
➔ They use close ended questions which forces the interviewees to choose from a limited number of answers. If none of these fits what the interviewer really wants to say, the data produced will be invalid.
➔People may lie or exaggerate producing invalid data
OFFICIAL STATISTICS (secondary)
numerical data produced by government or government agencies
PRACTICAL ISSUES:
cost : free source of huge information, when published by the state they can be accessed by sociologists
no problem of non-response eg parents required by law to register births
because they are collected bat regular intervals, they show trends & patterns over certain times
Government create statistics for own purpose and not for the benefit of sociologists so there may be none available on the topic we are interested in
ETHICAL ISSUES:
the use of an organisation's unpublished statistics may raise ethical issues. For example, if a researcher made public a school's confidential statistics on bullying it could harm the schools reputation
THEORETICAL ISSUES`:
Reliable because they are compiled by trained staff who use standardised categories and collection techniques, and follow set procedures that can be easily replicated by others
Provides a representative sample than surveys because they are large scale