AS Education and methods: Unit 2

Validity: how true data is i.e how close the fit is between the data and reality.

Reliability: data is reliable if another researcher using identical methods would produce the same result.

Generalisation: how reasonable it is to make statements about a wider population on the basis of a particular sample.

Ethical issues: factors concerned with morality.

Practical issues: a factor in research to do with time, money or access as opposed to ethical or theoretical issues.

Theoretical: factors concerned with the quality of information produced in research.

Representative: how typical data is of a wider population.

Positivism: a philosophy of social research based upon scientific ideas of objectivity.

Interpretivism: interpretivists focus on how we construct our social worlds through the meanings we create and attach to events, actions and situations.

Objectivity: making truthful statements about the world, which are not influenced by personal opinion of preferences.

Hawthorne effect: when people being observed in observational research change their behaviour because they are aware that they are being monitored.

Sampling methods: type of sample you use (e.g. snowball, stratified sampling)

Operationalising concepts: defining a concept in a form that can be measured, usually by identifying a series of incidents.

Social surveys: any research method that involves systematically collecting information  from a group of people by asking them questions.

Questionnaires: a written list of questions.

Interviews: a research method where one or more people asking questions to a group or individual.

Experiments: an artificial situation set up by a researcher in order ro test a hypothesis.

Observation: a research method in which one or more researchers watch individuals or social groups and record data.

Overt: when the researcher is open about the fact that they are conducting research.

Covert: where the researcher does not reveal that they are conducting research to the people being observed.

Secondary data: existing data used by sociologists rather than data derived from their own research.

Triangulation: the use of several different research methods in one study.

Content analysis: research in which the content of the mass media is analysed.

Official statistics: nummerical data produced by government agancies.

Quantitative data: data that takes a nummerical form.

Qualitative data: data that takes a non-nummerical form.

Hypothesis: a statement to be tested through research.

Sampling frame: a list of individual sampling units from which a sample is drawn.