Theory & Methods: Quantitative Research Methods

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  • Created by: Ashley2K
  • Created on: 21-04-17 19:45
What are the five practical considerations of research methods?
1. Time & money 2. The requirements of funding bodies 3. The personal skills and characteristics of researchers 4. The subject matter of the study 5. Research opportunity
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What are the five ethical considerations of research methods?
1. Informed consent 2. Confidentiality & privacy 3. Harmful effects 4. Vulnerable groups 5. Covert methods
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What are the three theoretical considerations of research methods?
1. Reliability 2. Validity 3. Representativeness
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Which type of research method do interpretivists prefer?
Interpretivists prefer qualitative data because it gives us a 'feel' of what something is like. These methods include unstructured interviews, participant observations and analysis of personal documents.
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Which type of research method do positivists prefer?
Positivists prefer quantitative data that yields information in numerical or statistical form.
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What areas do positivists believe sociology should model its research methods on?
Natural sciences such as physics and chemistry. In their view, this wil produce an objective, true, scientific knowledge of society.
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What can laboratory experiments be used to discover?
Cause and effect, by using an experimental group and a control group.
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Give 3 practical issues of laboratory experiments.
1. The Hawthorne effect 2. Small samples 3. The expectancy effect
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What is the expectancy effect?
Where a researcher is either consciously or unconsciously treating the subjects in such a way that it influences how they respond and produces the result the experimenter expected i.e. researcher bias.
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Give 2 ethical issues of laboratory experiments.
1. Informed consent 2. Harm to subjects
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Why are laboratory experiments generally considered to be more reliable?
They produce quantitative data so can be re-tested against this numerical data and the experimenter can control variables that may make the data unreliable.
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Which type of validity do laboratory experiments lack?
They lack external validity, as we cannot be certain the results yielded in the lab can be applied to the larger population. This is due to their small samples.
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Why might laboratory experiments lack internal validity?
Due to the Hawthorne effect, subjects may react differently because they are being studied, yielding invalid results.
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Why do interpretivists argue laboratory experiments are unsuccessful?
They argue that humans are different from plants, rocks and other natural phenomena that the natural sciences study, they argue humans have free will and that our behaviour cannot be explained by cause-effect statements.
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What are the two types of questions used in questionnaires?
1. Closed-ended questions are questions in which respondents must choose from a limited range of possible answers that the researcher has selected 2. Open ended questions let respondents answer freely and in their own words.
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Give 3 practical advantages of questionnaires.
1. They are a quick and cheap way to gather large amounts of quantitative data 2. There is no need to recruit and train interviewers 3. Data is usually easy to quantify, especially when pre-determined quesitons are used.
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What are 3 practical issues of questionnaires?
1. Data is often limited and superficial because people feel they have to be brief 2. Very low response rates are a major problem 3. It may be necessary to offer incentives to persuade respondants to complete a questionnaire.
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How do positivists view questionnaires?
Positivists believe questionnaires achieve the main goals of scientific sociology and create reliable, objective and detached quantitative data.
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How do interpretivists view questionnaires?
They reject the use of questionnaires mostly as they believe it cannot yield valid data about the meanings of social actors.
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What are the three types of interview?
1. Structured: each interview is conducted in the same standardised way 2. Unstructured: informal or discovery interviews in the form of a guided conversation 3. Semi-structured: interviews have the same set of questions, but with more expansion
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What are the 3 practical advantages of structured interviews?
1. They can cover quite large numbers of people because they are quick and fairly cheap to administer 2. They are suitable for gathering straightforward information such as age, job, religion 3. Easily quantifable because they are closed questions.
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How do positivists view structured interviews?
As they can achieve the main goals of scientific science positivists believe they are reliable, objective and detached methods.
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How do feminists view structured interviews?
Feminists reject survey methods such as structured interviews and questionnaires, they argue that these methods are male-stream.
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Are statistics a qualitative or quantitative method?
Quantitative.
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What are the three sources for information that is used to create official statistics?
1. Registration: e.g. registering a birth 2. Official surveys 3. Administrative records: e.g. number of truancies at a school.
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Give 2 practical advantages of using official statistics.
1. They are a huge free source of quantitative data 2. As quantitative data they allow us to identify correlations and patterns
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Give 1 practical disadvantage of using official statistics.
The government creates statistics for its own purposes and therefore the topic they research may not be of any benefit to sociologists.
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Why do Marxists and Feminists reject the use of official statistics?
They regard them as performing an ideological function.
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Why do positivists support the use of official statistics?
As a quantitative method, positivists see the method as reliable, objective and representative.
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Why do interpretivists reject the positivist claim that official statistics are reliable?
Interpretivists suggest that statistics are merely social constructs that represent the labels that officials attach to people. They believe we should treat these statistics as a topic in themselves and investigate how they are socially constructed.
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What are soft statistics?
Soft statistics give a much less valid picture of reality than hard statistics, often compiled from administrative records such as the education system. These statistics may show a recorded number but not the actual number.
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What are hard statistics?
Hard statistics provide a much more valid picture, for example, they include statistics on the amount of deaths, marriages and divorces, essentially data we can still put a large amount of trust in.
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Card 2

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What are the five ethical considerations of research methods?

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1. Informed consent 2. Confidentiality & privacy 3. Harmful effects 4. Vulnerable groups 5. Covert methods

Card 3

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What are the three theoretical considerations of research methods?

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Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

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Which type of research method do interpretivists prefer?

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Card 5

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Which type of research method do positivists prefer?

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