05
- Created by: Iqra
- Created on: 12-12-12 19:52
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- Assess the relative importance of the different factors that affect sociologists choice of research methods and of topics to investigate.
- Questionnaires
- Practical Issues
- Gather large quantities of data quickly and cheaply
- Ethical issues
- Some crimes are extremely sensitive and therefore a questionnaire is unlikely to create an empathetic situation
- Reliablity
- People could easily lie
- Validity
- Victim studies require them to recall of traumatic events, creating distorted memory in relation to being the victim of crime
- Representativeness
- Easy to gain sampling frame for prison officers or prisoners but harder for victims of domestic violence.
- Response rates change depending on who is carrying out the questionnaire.
- Barristers/ Law Breaking
- Theoretical
- Positivists prefer quantifiable data
- Practical Issues
- Structured interviews
- Practical
- Quick, cheap and good large number of people
- Response rates are higher due to face to face questions
- Training is cheap and easy, no new leads can be followed up, easy to quantify.
- Quick, cheap and good large number of people
- Ethical Issues
- May feel under pressure, need to gain consent, guarantee confidentiality and make it clear that they don't have to answer.
- Reliablity
- Easy to replicate, so large scale patterns can be identified {gender and offending}
- Validity
- Young people have better verbal skills than literacy skills, therefore interviews may be better written in order to gain better results from young offenders and victims
- Practical
- Unstructured interviews
- Practical
- Rapport is created, allowing better results through trust
- Training needs to be more thorough
- Takes longer
- Large amounts of data, categorisationis more difficult
- Theoretical
- Interpretivists, prefer them because they produce valid data
- Positivists reject is as being unscientific, lacking objectivity and representativess.
- Validity
- Researcher can ask slang related questions
- Researcher can learn as they go
- Reliablity
- Maintain a relaxed atmosphere, but this cannot be standardized so different interviewers may obtain different results, reducing the reliability of their findings.
- Practical
- Documents
- Practical
- CJS run by the state
- Ethical Issues
- Some sensitive material may not be made public
- Greater need to anonymity because of potential consequences.
- Reliablity
- Can draw direct comparisons from the information recieved.
- However human errors reduce reliablity
- Representativeness
- Likely to be representativeness, but very time consuming to analyse
- Personal documents produced by offenders or police offers are less representative
- Validity
- Important insight into the meanings held by those involved in the CJS and therefore can be high in validity
- Open to different interpretations
- Not knowing what the author has kept hidden
- Practical
- Official Statistics
- Practical
- Government provides: saves money and time and allows them to make comparisons ethic, gender
- Examine trends over the years
- Official definitions may be different, social class
- Representative
- Some are highly representative- all police forces are required to keep records of their activities.
- Interpretivists argue that due to the social processes involved in crime and policing their is a 'dark figure' of unreported and unrecorded crimes
- Some are highly representative- all police forces are required to keep records of their activities.
- Reliablity
- The government use standard definitions and categories in the collection of crime stats. #
- The same collection process is usually carried out each year, allowing direct comparisons
- However governments may change the def, cat, and rules for recording offences.
- Validity
- Interpretivists challenge the validity. seeing them as socially constructed
- Victim surveys and self report studies may produce more valid stats than those told to the police.
- Practical
- Questionnaires
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