Research and Methods
- Created by: geburdon99
- Created on: 12-04-16 10:08
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- Research and methods
- Sociologists have three aims when collecting and using data
- Try to make their research reliable and valid
- Sociologists try to make their samples representative
- Sociologists aim to be objective, and avoid bias
- Primary data is collected first hand
- Interviews, questionnaireobservations, experiments
- Doesn't rely on another sociologists research
- Brand new and up to date
- Expensive and time consuming
- Research can be put in a dangerous situation
- Some research methods may be unethical
- Researcher can be bias
- Hard to gain access to certain groups
- Secondary data is existing information
- Official statistics, diaries, letters, memoirs, emails, TV documentary, newspapers
- Quick and easy to collect secondary data
- Easily use secondary data to compare different societies
- You can compare past and present
- Don't have to worry about informed consent
- You don't know the skills and abilities of the researcher, existing data may not be reliable or valid
- Official statistics may be biased
- The original researcher may have had different aims and objectives, so you might not find the specific information that you're after
- Researcher's values might have ruined the validity of the original research
- Your personal values can effect the way you analyse the data
- Quantitative data can be reliable but not very valid
- Number and statistics
- Easy to put into a graph or chart
- Test your hypothesis and look for cause and effect relationships
- Can compare your statistics and look for trends over time and between societies
- Easy to analyse tables, charts and graphs
- Repeat questionnaire and structured interviews to test reliability
- Quantitative methods allow large samples, so findings can represent the general population
- Statistics can hide reality. Categories in interviews and questionnaire can distort the truth
- Statistics don't offer any information about feelings and reasons for why things occur
- No insight into social interaction
- Statistics can be politically biased, the method may have been chosen in order to get the "right data"
- Number and statistics
- Qualitative data can be valid but not very reliable
- Gives a detailed picture of what people do, think and feel
- It's subjective - involves meanings, opinions and interpretations
- Difficult to convert data into numbers or graphs
- Gives insight into social interaction
- Detailed description of social behaviour
- Find meanings and motives behind behaviour
- Don't have to force people into artificial categories like questionnaire
- Let's you build up trust and research sensitive topics
- Difficult to repeat, not very reliable
- Research is often small-scale, can't be representative
- Positvits say qualitive results lack credibility, because they're subjective and open to interpretation
- Researcher ca get the "wrong end of the stick" and misinterpret the group or individual and what they're saying
- Sociologists have three aims when collecting and using data
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