Types of research

Why do we need social research?

Without it, our knowledge of the social world is limited to our immediate and limited life-experiences. Without it there would be no sociology. research, you simply do not
know with any degree of certainty,
what is going on in the world.

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Subjective knowledge

is knowledge based purely on the opinions of
the individual, reflecting their values and biases, their point of view

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Objective knowledge

is knowledge which is free of the biases,
opinions and values of the researcher, it reflects what is really ‘out there’ in the social world.

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Quantitative research methods

Refers to information that appears in numerical form, or in the form of statistics.

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What do positivists think about research types

Positivists believe that sociology can and should model its research methods of the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry, so they are in favour of quantitively methods. See society as on objective reality made up of ‘social facts’

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According to positivists why do we have patterns in society

We have patterns in society, because society exerts an influence over its members, systemically shaping their behaviour

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What methods do positives prefer?

Experiments, questionnaires, structured interviews, official statistics.

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Qualative research methods

refers to information that appears in written, visual or audio form, such as transcripts of interviews, newspapers and web sites. (It is possible to analyse qualitative data and display features of it numerically!)

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Who are interprevists?

Interpretivists reject the idea that sociology should model itself on the natural sciences. This is an inappropriate approach to study humans

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What do they believe

society is subjective- people have subjective meanings about the social world and we can only understand society by interpreting the meanings people give to their actions.

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Interpretivists preferred methods

unstructured interviews, participant observation and the analysis of personal documents

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Primary data

data collected first-hand by the researcher themselves

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Secondary data

data that has been collected by previous researchers or organisations such as the government data?

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Get Revising

Types of research

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