Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Research methods - Coggle Diagram
Research methods
Questionnaires
Advantages
Validity: There is no researcher effect, as no interviewer is present, therefore the anonymity of the responses should encourage honesty in respondents
Positivists, questionnaires are more valid than interviews because they are a detached and objective form of research, where the researcher has little or no involvement with respondents
Reliability: Each respondent is given an identical set of questions, order and wording; this is known as a standardized procedure and make the method very easy to replicate
Representativeness – this would depend on the sample in the source material. A large sample over a geographically diverse area would give a representative sample
Ethics: Where there is no contact between the researcher and researched, ethical issues are kept to a minimum
Disadvantages
Validity
Interpretivists, data from questionnaires lack validity as they do not allow the researcher to 'get inside a person's head' and share their meanings
Lack of truthfulness: Respondents are more likely to lie in a questionnaire, or not understand the questions. They may give answers they feel they ought to give, rather than tell the truth.
Researcher imposition: Interpretivists argue that questionnaires are more likely to impose the meanings of the researcher because:
It is impossible to create a sense of verstehen using a questionnaire as there is no direct contact between researcher and researched.
Ethics: The researcher is not present to enable the respondent to feel at ease or to reassure them.
Practical issues: The data collected is likely to be limited in detail as respondents are restricted to brief responses, sometimes just a tick-box or check-list
-
Structural interviews
Advantages
Validity - Less interview bias than in unstructured interview as more formal (less social interaction)
Representative + Generalisable - Have a higher response rate than questionnaires, which helps to produce a more representative result
Practical
Training interviewers is relatively straightforward and inexpensive since all they do is follow a set of standardized instruction
Quick and easy to administer, therefore sample size can potentially be large
Useful for gathering straightforward, factual information about a person (for example, their occupation)
Training interviewers is relatively straightforward and inexpensive since all they do is follow a set of standardized instructions
Reliability
-
Preferred by positivists as these types of standardized interviews are reliable and verifiable, and because they generate quantitative data
Disadvantages
Validity
Inflexible nature of interview schedule means that respondents have a framework imposed on their answers and interviewers have little freedom to explain questions
Interpretivists, pre-coded answers devalue the experience of the respondent
Closed questions restrict respondents' choices and people may lie or exaggerate, which will produce false (invalid) data.
Presence of an interviewer may affect the way a respondent answers (interviewer effect - social desirability)
Representativeness
Snapshots taken at one moment in time, so fail to capture the dynamic nature of social life.
People willing and available to be interviewed may be untypical, which may make for unrepresentative data
-
Interviewer may have to make several call-backs to a respondent, which will increase cost
Content analysis
Advantages
Reliability
Favoured by positivists as it generates quantitative data from studying the frequency of images or ideas
This allows for comparisons, patterns and trends to be established
It follows systematic procedures and is therefore seen as reliable. As long as two researchers use the same content frames and codes, they should be able to produce the same set of results
Practical: It is a relatively cheap and straightforward method - mass media reports are readily available and accessible
No ethical concerns - It is a non-reactive and non-intrusive method. That is, the document is not affected by the fact that you are using it, nor is any human sample directly involved in the research
Disadvantages
Lack of validity
Interpretivists use content analysis may therefore miss the significance and underlying meanings of the text. This means that it lacks validity.
Content analysis could be accused of analysing text out of context of the overall media report and reducing it to a set of statistics
Lack of usefulness: Analysing media reports tells us very little about the effect on audiences - just because a message is promoted frequently, does not mean to say that the audience takes any notice of it
Lack of reliability: The coding system may not be very reliable because it is the end-product of personal interpretation, which may be the result of researcher bias. Other researchers might classify data quite differently
Participant observation
Advantages
-
-
Allows for the collection of more in-depth, valid qualitative data than other research methods
Produces more valid data because there is less chance of the researcher being misled than with other methods
Gains in-depth insights into the meanings that a social activity has for those involved by seeing through their eyes (Verstehen)
May be the only valid methods for researching closed groups such as criminal gangs and religious sects
Allows for the study of people in their normal everyday lives over a period of time, rather than a ‘snapshot’
Disadvantages
-
Theoretical
-
Validity: participant observation assumes that what the researcher recalls and how they have interpreted the situation is accurate, positivists would argue that this unlikely to be the case
Ethics
From an ethical perspective, an overt role is more acceptable, as it allows people to be aware that they are being studied and to provide informed consent
Other
Risk of researchers ‘going native’, that is, becoming so involved that they lose objectivity
Only a small group is studied, so may not be representative
-
-
Ethnography
Advantages
Validity
Detailed and rich data can be collected overtime, increasing validity
there is strong in ecological (application to real life) validity, as the data is collected by someone experiencing the situation
-
Disadvantages
-
-
Access issues - Insider knowledge/status may be required for access and can lead to problems in gaining objective data
-
-
Statistical data
Disadvantages
Lack of validity - official crime statistics many not include unreported crime or crime that is not successfully prosecuted. E.g. someone who is raped may not report this to the police or the rapist may not be successfully prosecuted
Data reflect the definitions and terms of the government, which maybe different to sociologist's definitions
Interpretivists argue that statistics are socially constructed - they emerge from interaction between the person that labels an act and the meaning intended by the respondent. How one person interprets an act will be different to another individual's view.
Advantages
Reliable: comparison over time periods can be made because the data is collected on a fortnightly, monthly, annual or 10 year basis
-
Representative: Sample sizes often very large, which increases the representativeness of the data
Generalisable: Positivists like large-scale statistics because this enables them to generalize about the population as a whole.
-