quantitative.

• quantitative;

  • favoured by positivists
  • produces objective and numerical data, which can then be cross-examined for patterns, trend and correlations between two variables
  • generalisations can be derived from this type of data
  • eg, laboratory and field experiments, questionnaires, official statistics and structured interviews
• ✅laboratory experiments

  • highly reliable, the original experiment can precisely specify what steps were taken
  • easy to identity cause and effect relationships
• ❌laboratory experiments

  • artificiality, carried out in highly controlled & artificial environment, this may not give a true reflection of how individuals may act in the real world
  • Hawthorne Effect- a lab is a formal and unnatural place, people may alter their behaviour as they are under surveillance
  • may be difficult to obtain informed consent
  • unrepresentative, lab experiments are small-scale and so it is difficult to control all variables that may exert an influence on certain social issues
• ✅field experiments

  • less artificiality, as they are set in real-world situations
  • highly valid as people are unaware of the experimental situation and are in a regular social setting, this eliminates the possibility of Hawthorne Effect taking place
• ❌field experiments

  • unethical to experiment on people without their awareness and informed consent
  • less control over variables than in a lab
  • they can only be applied to a limited number of social situations
• ✅questionnaires

  • cheap and quick way of producing quantifiable data
  • highly representative
  • highly reliable as questions are pre-set and so the questionnaire can easily be repeated
  • limited ethical issues, the respondent is under no obligation to answer
• ❌questionnaires

  • postal questionnaires have very low response rates, this may interfere with the representativity of the results
  • low validity, nobody is there to reinforce a question, so people are more likely to lie
  • no interviewer to clarify or ask follow-up questions
• ✅structured interviews;

  • training interviewers is cheap and easy
  • it is representative and can reach a geographically wide sample size
  • results are easily quantifiable due to the use of close-ended questions
  • highly reliable, its a structured process that provides a high degree of reproducibility
• ❌structured interviews;

  • there is limited scope, as questions tend to be close-ended and leave little to no room for nuance
  • limited flexibility, even if a question is ambiguous or poorly worded, it still has to be presented to the participants
  • the rigid nature of the interview allows no room for a rapport to be built
• ✅official statistics

  • easy and cheap to obtain
  • saves time
  • you are able to cross-examine and derive cause and effect relationships
  • collected at regular intervals, so trends can be compared over time
  • reliable, they must be provided by law
• ❌official statistics

  • census coders may make mistakes, or people may fill them out incorrectly
  • unreliable, data is collected for the government’s own benefit, not research purposes, and so a researcher may not find what they are looking for
  • data may obscure the reality of various social phenomena, for example, high afro-Caribbean exclusion rates may not account for behavioural issues, but instead, cases of institutional racism
• official statistics secondary data collected and compiled by either the government or private research organisations
• schools are a ready-made sampling frame
• in order to interview children at a school, researched must undertake a DBS check, which can be costly and time-consuming
• schools have a duty of care to their pupils, as they are seen as vulnerable minors
• qualitative research in schools are largely condemned by qualitative researchers, as they believe it reduces the existence of social phenomena and complex interactions within a school to just mere statistical figures, without an explanation to their findings
• secondary data cannot not always reach a researcher’s specific area of interest
• qualitative data does not appreciate the complexities of a particular social issue / interaction
• quantitative data is more reliable than qualitative data because there is less chance of human error when collecting numerical data
• ignores the rationale behind social phenomena, instead paints a shallow picture of general trends