Quantitative Research Methods
- Created by: 11pyoung
- Created on: 28-01-18 15:35
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- Quantitative Research Methods
- Surveys
- Social Surveys
- Information obtained through questionnaires/interviews
- Used to find out 'facts' about the population
- Used to uncover differences in beliefs, values and attitudes
- Explain aspects of social life
- Only provides a 'snapshot' of social life
- Sampling
- Types of sampling: techniques of obtaining a representative sample
- Random
- Each person has an equal chance of being selected
- Systemic
- Every nth person is chosen
- Stratified random
- Population being studied is divided according to known criteria
- Quota
- The amount of people in the sample with particular characteristics are already chosen and then a selection are found
- Non-representative
- Snowball
- Used when research groups are particularly hard to get hold of
- Theoretical
- Studies involving non-typical people
- Snowball
- Random
- Types of sampling: techniques of obtaining a representative sample
- Longitudinal survey
- Studying the same group of people over a long period of time
- Provides us with a clear, moving image of changes in attitudes and actions over time.
- Expensive and time-consuming
- Cannot collect retrospective information
- People might change their behaviour as a result of taking part in a survey
- Studying the same group of people over a long period of time
- Social Surveys
- Case Studies
- Extremely detailed and provide in-depth information not usually available
- Useful when first developing theories
- Experiments
- Closely controlled variables
- Can be replicated to find the reliability of findings
- Impossible to recreate normal life in the artificial environment of an environment
- Ethical problems in performing experiments on people
- Possibility of the experimenter effect
- The awareness of being in an experiment alters the behaviour of the participants
- Cannot be used to study long-term or major social change
- Comparative Research
- Possible to identify a particular social practice or value that is the key factor in determining that issue
- Uses the same logic as experiments
- Focuses on what has actually happened rather than artificial settings set up by the sociologist
- Can't always control what information is available
- Yields very valuable and quite convincing evidence to support or contradict particular theories
- Experimental research in the context of education
- Practical Problems
- Lab experiments are difficult to conduct
- Problems gaining consent to conducts experiments involving children
- Lab experiments are difficult to conduct
- Ethical Problems
- Theoretical Problems
- Involves the creation of artificial situations which may lead to a lack of validity
- Practical Problems
- Surveys
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