Positivism VS Interpretivism

• Positivism

  • Focus on quantitive data e.g. official stats
  • High in reliability and representation but low in validity
  • Inform social policy
  • Accused of only using data to reflect personal biases, rather than developing rapport with participants
  • Objective
• Interpretivism

  • Focus on qualitative data
  • High in validity, low in reliability and representation
  • Inform sociological policy
  • Accused of producing unreliable data as it's hard to check research which depend on researcher's view on what they observed. Also believed to encourage Hawthorne effect
  • Subjective