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Positivism VS Interpretivism - Coggle Diagram
Positivism VS Interpretivism
Positivism
Preferred research methods
Quantitative
Official Statistics, Survey's questionnaire's
Allows them to remain
detached
from their participants
Want to be
valid, reliable and representativeness
overview of society as a whole and to uncover
Social trends
Durkheim's study of suicide
Investigated suicide
Examined nineteenth-century suicide statistics, observing
three trends
: that
suicide rates remain constant and predictable over time, that they remain constant between societies and that they remain constant between social groups within the same society
Concluded that the suicide rate was
not the result of individuals using their free will
and choosing to kill themselves
Hypothesised that the suicide rate was a
social fact
that is, suicidal behaviour was
shaped by the nature of the society
to which the individual belonged, and specifically by its
level of social integration and moral regulation
Main type of suicide,
‘egoistic' suicide, caused by too much individualism
Society had f
ailed to integrate particular individuals into society
Religion as playing a big role
in whether individuals were sufficiently integrated or not
For example, he argued that the
Catholic sense of community was more powerful
than that encouraged by Protestant religions and therefore Catholics had a
stronger sense of belonging
to society and were subject to stricter community controls
Protestants
were
more likely to kill themselves
because Catholic society provided more community protection against suicide
In contrast,
Protestant
religion's failure to
impose a strong sense of community
on its followers led to people believing that they were more important than the group hence
egoism,
and suicidal actions
General Focus of social research
Uncover
laws
that govern behaviour
Relationship between society and the individual
Society shapes Individual
People’s actions can generally by explained by the social norms they have been exposed to through their socialisation
‘Society consists of
social facts
which exercise coercive control over individuals’- Durkheim
Puppets of society
- react to external forces
Look for
correlations
Interpretivism
General Focus of social research
In depth insight into the lives of respondents, to gain an emphatic understanding of why they act in the way they do-
versahn
Prefer
qualitative methods
which allow for close interaction with respondents
Preferred research methods
Qualitative
Allows them to become attached to participants
Prepared to sacrifice reliability and representativeness for
greater validity
Unstructured interviews or participant observation
Relationship between society and the individual
Individuals shape society
Individuals have
consciousness
and are not just
puppets of society
who react to external social forces as positives believe
Individuals are
intricate and complex
and different people experience and understand the same objective reality in different ways
Paul Willis- Study of the lads
Studied an all-boys school in Birmingham, focusing on working-class boys
Lads
, saw themselves as school failures, although this turned out to be a good thing
Disliked and even bullied the
‘earholes
, who they saw as weak and not ‘macho’
These boys spent most of their time at school
‘having a laff’
- mucking around and being cheeky
Knew getting
job's in local factories
so did not share the
school’s value on education
, since they did
not see it as necessary
Follow up study in factory
Little changes, spent their time
messing around
, finding ways to entertain themselves and get one over on the supervisor in their boring jobs
Wills
- the school had prepared them perfectly for work
Key Terms
Quantitative
Reliable
Representativeness
Validity
Social facts
Social norms
Laws
Puppets of society
Correlation
Comparative method
Generalisable
Official Statistics
Cross national comparisons
Questionnaire's
Key terms
Qualitative
Validity
Participant observation
Respondent Led
In-depth data
Humanistic
Subjective
Interaction
Involvement
Versahn
Consciousness