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METHODS IN CONTEXT - Coggle Diagram
METHODS IN CONTEXT
INTERVIEWS
PRACTICAL ISSUES
- young peoples linguistic & inetellectual skills are less develped than those of adults and this may pose practical; problems for interviewers
- young interviewees may:
- be less articulate & more reluctant to talk
- not understand long, complex questions
- have limited vocabulary, use slang
- have shorter attention span, poorer memory
- these factors may lead to a misunderstanding and incorrect /incomplete answers, undermining the validity or data obtained
- such communication difficulties also mean unstructured interviews may be more suitable since they allow interviewer to clear up misunderstandings by re-wording questions
- However children may also have more difficulty keeping to the point , especially in unstructured interviews
- POWBEY & WATTS note young children tend to be more literal-minded and pay attention to unexpected details in questions , and may use different logic to adult interviewers
- training therefore needs to be more through fo someone interviewing children which adds to the cost of the research
- However given that young people tend to have better verbal than literacy skills so interviewers may be more successful than written questionnaires to get valid answers
- another practical problem is that schools have active informal communication channels
- this means the content of the interview , possibly an inaccurate account, may get around to pupils & teahcers
- this may later influence their responses , reducing validity
- the location of the interview can also be problamatic
- if they're conducted on school premises, it will affect how comfortable the pupil or parent will feel
- the school & classroom represents higher authority , which some may find off-putting
- teachers may be put off by the fear of colleagues or head teacher overhearing , especially if the questions are of a sensitive nature
- unstructured interviews can take hours or more to conduct
- with the time constraints most teachers work under, interviews with them would have to take place outside school hurs
- if the interviews are conducted during school time there are likely to be interruptions and other distractions
- parents aslo have busy work & parenting schedules and may only cooperate in lengthy interviews if they can see some benefit to their children education
- For children mainly, there is the ethical issue that they may be unsettled by strange situations such as an interview
- researchers will need to take care that the interview doesnt distress them
- RELIABILITY & VALIDITY:
- Structured interviews produce more reliable data because each is conducted in precisely the same way , with the same questions, in the same order, with the same tone
- however structured interviews may not produce valid data since young people are unlikely to respond to such a formal style (makes interviewer appear too much like a teacher)
- BENTLEY Began each interview by joking & fooling around , maintaining a relaxed atmosphere y smiling & making eye contact
- however this personal interviewing style cannot easily be standardised
- ACCESS & RESPONSE RATE:
- Schools are hierarchal institutions which can cause problems seeking to interview teachers or pupils
- POWNEY & WATTS: the lower down in the hierarchy the interviewee is, the more approvals that have to be obtained
- e.g pupils have to have consent from parents & teachers
- Schools may be reluctant to conduct interviews during lesson time because of the disruption it causes, or due to sensitive topic
- may be difficulty conducting interviews after school hours, whether on School premises or in pupils homes
- parental permission may be requires to interview children (the likelihood of this being granted varies according to research subject)
- however if research can obtain official support for the study, the hierarchal nature of the school may work in their favour e.g heads can instruct teachers to release pupils from class for interviews (increasing response rate)
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QUESTIONNAIRES
- OPERATIONALISIMG CONCEPTS:
- involves turning abstract ideas into a measurable form
- this can be difficult when creating a questionnaire for pupils
- this is because their grasp of abstract concepts is less than that of adults
- therefore its more difficult to turn sociological ideas such as 'cultural capital' into language pupils will understand
- this may produce answers that are based on the respondents misunderstanding of what the question means
- alternately there's a danger the sociologist will have to over0-simplifythe questions so much they cease to have any sociological value
ACCESS & RESPONSE RATES
- Response rates for questionnaires is often low
- schools may be reluctant to allow sociologists to distribute them because of disruption to lessons that may be casues, or because of the teachers research topic
- e.g underage sexual activity
- However when questionnaires are conducted in schools, response rates may be higher than in other areas
- this is bcus once the head has given their consent to the research, teachers & pupils may be under pressure to participate
- similarly the head may authorise time out of lesson so the questionnaire can be completed
- the higher response rate mat produce more representative data where generalisations can be performed
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PRACTICAL ISSUES
- Questionnaires vert useful for gathering large quantities of basic factual educational info very quick and cheaply
- RUTTER used questionnaires to collect large qualities of Dara from 12 inner-london secondary schools
- from this he was able to correlate achievement, attendance and behaviour with work variables such as school size, class size & staff number
- it would have been difficult to do this with labour-intensive methods e.g interviews or observations
- HOWEVER data generated by questionnaires is often limited & superficial
- E.G no explanation was provided between the correlations in RUTTERS study
- There are problems in using questionnaires to study childern
- written questionnaires involve participants being able to read and understand the questions
- therefore there unsuitable for those who cant read e.g children, those with learning difficulties
- Children have shorter attention span than adults, so questionnaires need to be relitevly tried to be completed
- this limits the amount of info that can be gathered
- childrens life experiences are narrower & recall differently than adult this means pupils may not actually 'know the answers'
- Schools have very active informal communicational channels so word of the researchers presence may rapidly spread
- if the questionnaires delivered class by classics questions may become known throughout the school long before all pupils or teachers have been given it
- this may affect the responses given by later participants and so recuse validity
- Teachers are well-educated professionals who will have experience of completing questionnares
- they may be able to analyse patterns of questioning and recognise the researchers intentions
- they may then adjust their answers accordingly, resulting in invalid data
- teachers= busy professionals so may not have time to complete if questionnaire is lengthy
ANONYMITY & DETACHMENT
- Questionnaires can be useful when researching sensitive educational issues e.g bullying, where their anonymity may overcome pupils embarrassment or fear of retribution from bullies
- As a result response rates may be higher
- pupils may be more likely to reveal details of their experience of being bullied
- this will provide more valid data than a face-to-face interview would
- howver much depends on whether pupils are reassured their anonymity will be safeguarded
- yet this reassurance may be difficult to achieve as questionnaires is a detached method , where there is no/little contact with the researcher
- Interpretivist sociologists emphasise the importance of developing RAPPORT with research participants so they reject questionnaires as a means of researching pupils
- because of the lack of contact with participants makes rapport hard to establish, young people may be less likely to give full and honest responeses
- compared with face-to-face forms of research e.g interview, its easy to make questionnaires anonymous
- as a result teachers may feel able to set aside concerns about their careers so they give more honest answers to sensitive questions about issues such as their attitudes to pupils
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