Section A - Methods

• Patterns


  recurring behaviour seen in society
• trends


  Patterns of change in society over time
• Objectivity


  remaining neutral / no bias
• value freedom


  Staying open-minded
• Quantitative data 


  Numerical data
• Interpretivism


  method of research where an event is analyzed based on beliefs, norms, and values of the culture of the society in which it takes place
• Meanings & experiences


  lived events & understanding of individuals
• Verstehen


  understanding behaviour by putting yourself in their shoes
• Rapport


  relationships established through mutual understanding
• Subjectivity


  personal feelings/ opinions influences understanding
• Researcher imposition


  Influence researchers values/ beliefs can have on research process + outcome
• Reflexivity


  researches being aware on how their values can influence their research
• Qualitative data 


  in-depth information: not expressed in numbers
• Validity


  how authentic data/research is
• reliability 


  if the research can be repeated to check accuracy
• Representativeness 


  represents entire population
• generalisability


  can data be applied to whole population
• practical


  applying ideas to the real world
• ethical


  principles researchers follow to respect participants involved
• Theoretical


  Idead/concepts thought up
• Aims


  Overall goals of investigation
• hypothesis 


  prediction/educated guess of experiments outcome
• Primary data


  data collected by the researcher themselves
• Secondary data


  pre-existing data researchers use to validate their research
• Operationalisation


  defining abstract concepts in measurable terms
• Pilot Study

  initial smaller study to test methods will work --> trial run
• Data collection

  gathering & analysing data
• Respondent validation


  researcher shares findings with participants involved
• Longitudinal study 


  study done over long periods of time to observe changes
• Interpretation of data


  Understanding data & drawing conclusions
• Social problems


  problems in society which need addressing
• Sociological problems


  Problems sociologists aim to address through their research
• Access


  ability for researcher to conduct research
• gatekeeping


  control of information: limiting the access
• random sampling


  each individual have an equal chance of being selected for a sample
• systematic sampling 


  every 'nth' person selected from target population
• stratified sampling 


  Dividing population into subgroups and selecting samples from each proportionally
• snowball sampling


  one participant recruits others to participate in study
• Volunteer sampling


  sample gathered by participants putting themselves forward to be studied
• Opportunity sampling

  researcher uses people available at the time