Research Methods
- Created by: Lucia Incerti
- Created on: 20-05-14 08:19
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- Research Methods
- Types of Data
- Primary
- Information collected first hand
- Methods
- Social surveys
- Participant Observation
- Experiments
- Advantages
- Collect precise data
- Interpret the results
- Disadvantages
- Costly
- Time consuming
- Might need a lot of resources
- Secondary
- Data collected by someone else
- Sources
- Official statistics
- Documents
- Advantages
- Quick
- Cheap / free
- Easy to access
- Disadvantages
- May not be relevant
- May be biasis
- Qualitative
- Opinionated data
- E.g. Participant Observation
- Quantitative
- Numerical data
- E.g. Official Statistics
- Primary
- Factors Influencing Choice of Methods
- Pratical Issues
- Time and Money
- Requirements of funding bodies
- Personal Skills
- Subject Matter
- Research Opportunity
- Theoretical Issues
- Validity
- One that produces a genuine picture
- Reliability
- When repeated it gives the same result
- Representiveness
- Methodological
- Positivists
- Quantitative Data
- Seek to discover patterns of behaviour
- Sociology is a science
- Interpretivists
- Positivists
- Validity
- Pratical Issues
- Experiments
- Experimental group
- Change the variables
- Control Group
- Keep vairables
- Reliablilty
- Can be replicated
- Lab experiment is highley reliable
- Methodological
- Positivists
- Favour lab experiments
- Interpretivists
- Reject lab experiments
- Positivists
- Practical problems
- Impossible to control all variables
- Cannot be used to study the past
- Can only use small scale samples
- Ethical Problems
- Needs Informed consent
- Hawthorne effect
- May Mislead
- Milgram
- Electric shocks
- Milgram
- Free will
- Field Experiment
- Rosenthal and Jacobson
- Interpretivists prefer field
- Don't control variables
- Advantages
- High Validity
- Lessens Hawthorne Effeft
- Small Scale
- No Volunteer bias
- Disadvantages
- Cannot control variables
- Unreliable
- Ethics: decent and harm
- Small scale
- Cant quantify
- Comparative method
- Created by positivists
- Study of multiple data sets
- Similar except for one variable
- Usually uses official statistics
- Durkheim
- 'Le suicide'used method
- Advantages
- Avoids artificial
- Historical references
- Lessens ethics
- Disadvantages
- Cant control variables
- Invalidity
- Needs to be interpreted
- Experimental group
- Social Surveys
- Types of question
- Close - ended
- Limited answers
- "Yes" or "No"
- Pre-coded
- Easy to quantify
- Limited answers
- Open- ended
- Free to answer
- Pilot study
- Formulate a hypotesis
- Close - ended
- Sampling
- Random
- Simplest method
- Sected at random
- Quasi- random
- Random
- Chosen every tenth or hundreth
- Random
- Stratified
- Diving the population by gender
- Then taking a percentage of each gender
- Equal numbers
- Quota
- Similar to stratified
- Researcher goes and finds participants
- Practical issues
- Impossible to a sample that was an exact cross section of the population
- Impossible to create a sampling frame
- Respondents may refuse to participate
- Theoretical issues
- Interpretivists
- It is more important to gain valid data
- Than to discover general laws of behaviour
- It is more important to gain valid data
- Interpretivists
- Random
- Types of question
- Questionnaires
- Practical advantages
- Quick and cheap
- Large scale
- No need to recruit interviewers
- Easy to quantify
- Positivists
- Favour questionnaires
- Reliable
- Can replicate data
- Large scale
- Disadvantages
- Practical advantages
- Types of Data
- Covert research
- Ethical Issues
- Informed Consent
- Confidentiality
- Effects on research participants
- Vulnerable groups
- Ethical Issues
- Qualitative data
- Interpretivists
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