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Approaches to Sociological Research - Coggle Diagram
Approaches to Sociological Research
Positivist
The scientific approach
Methods of natural sciences can be applied to the study of society.
Favour 'hard' quantitative data.
Believes behaviours can be directly observed and quantified - can be measured.
Society consists of 'social facts' which exercise coercive control over individuals.
Point of research is to uncover the laws that govern human behaviour.
Quantitative method allows researcher to be detached from respondents.
Methods
More likely involves macro research.
Social surveys.
Structured questionnaires.
Structured interviews.
Official statistics.
Experiments.
Interpretivist
An empathetic understanding.
Individuals are complex with different experiences and understanding to the same objective reality.
Point of research is to gain in-depth insight into respondent's lives.
Close interaction with respondents.
To understand behaviour, meanings and motives need to be discovered - verstehen.
Emphasises that peoples' behaviours are produced through their personal beliefs, values and interpretations - people don't respond to external forces.
Favours qualitative data.
Methods
More likely to involve micro research, often of individual or small groups.
Observations.
Unstructured interviews.
Open-ended questionnaires.
Personal documents.
Case students.
Triangulation
Using more than one method to collect data, often involves using both qualitative and quantitative methods for the same study.
Allows data to be compared that looks into different things of the research topic such as observations and questionnaires,
Realism
Criticises positivism because research can't exactly mimic the approach of natural sciences.
Both interpretivists and positivists are useful, realists choose methods that are the most suitable for the issue being studied.
Humans are reflexive but there are also trends and patterns in social behaviour that can be observed and measured.