Research methods

• Sociological research methods

  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
• Primary data


  Information collected by sociologists themselves for their own purposes
• Methods for gathering primary data

  • Social surveys
  • Participant observation
  • Experiments
• Advantage of primary data

  Sociologists may be able to gather precisely the information they need to test their hypotheses
• Disadvantage of primary data

  Doing so can often be costly and time consuming
• Secondary data


  Information that has been collected or created by someone else for their own purposes, but which the sociologist can then use
• Sources of secondary data

  • Official statistics
  • Documents (letters, emails, diaries, photographs, official reports, novels, newspapers, the internet and television broadcasts)
• Advantage of secondary data

  Quick and cheap way of doing research, since someone else has already produced the information
• Disadvantage of secondary data

  Those who produce it may not be interested in the same questions as sociologists, and so secondary sources may not provide exactly the information that sociologists need
• Quantitative data

  Information in a numerical form
• Examples of quantitative data


  • Official statistics on how many girls passed five or more GCSEs
  • Percentage of marriages ending in divorce
  • Number of people who are unemployed
  • Proportion of the electorate intending to vote for a particular party
  • How many people take holidays abroad
• Qualitative data

  Gives a 'feel' for what something is like
• Examples of qualitative data


  • What it feels like to get good GCSE results
  • What it feels like for one's marriage to end in divorce
  • What it feels like to be a member of a particular group
• Types of data

  • Quantitative
  • Qualitative
• Practical issues


  • Time and money
  • Requirements of funding bodies
  • Personal skills and characteristics
  • Subject matter
  • Research opportunity
• Ethical issues

  Moral issues of right and wrong that the methods sociologists use to study people may raise
• Ethical principles

  • Informed consent
  • Confidentiality and privacy
  • Harm to research participants
  • Vulnerable groups
  • Covert research
• Validity

  A valid method is one that produces a true or genuine picture of what something is really like
• Reliability

  A reliable method is one which, when repeated by another researcher, gives the same results
• Representativeness

  Whether or not the people we study are a typical cross-section of the group we are interested in
• Methodological perspectives

  • Positivism
  • Interpretivism
• Positivists

  Prefer quantitative data, seek to discover patterns of behaviour and see sociology as a science
• Interpretivists

  Prefer qualitative data, seek to understand social actors' meanings and reject the view that sociology can model itself on the natural sciences
• The sociologist's theoretical perspective is usually the most important factor when choosing which method to use
• Practical and ethical factors usually limit the choice of research method
• Sociologists are influenced by the values of the society they study and thus are influenced by its values. As these values change, so does the focus of research. The rise of feminism in the 1960s led to a focus on gender inequality and today's environmentalist concerns have generated interest in 'green crimes' such as toxic waste dumping.
• Practical factors

  • Inaccessibility of certain situations to the researcher may restrict what topic they are able to study. For example, although sociologists may wish to study the ways in which global corporations make their decisions, this may not be possible because these are made in secret.
• The process of research

  1. Formulate an aim or hypothesis

  2. Obtain funding

  3. Operationalise concepts

  4. Conduct a pilot study

  5. Select a sample
• Hypothesis

  A possible explanation that can be tested by collecting evidence to prove it true or false
• Aim

  More general than a hypothesis, it identifies what we intend to study and hope to achieve through the research
• Positivists favour a hypothesis as the starting point for research, while interpretivists often favour a broad aim rather than a hypothesis
• Operationalising concepts

  The process of converting a sociological concept into something that can be measured
• Different sociologists may operationalise the same concept differently, making it hard to compare the findings of different pieces of research
• Pilot study


  A small-scale trial of the research methods to be used in the main study, to iron out any problems and refine the methods
• Sampling

  The process of selecting a smaller sub-group (the sample) from the wider group (the research population) that the researcher is interested in
• Sampling frame

  • A list of all the members of the population the researcher is interested in studying
• Sampling techniques

  • Random sampling
  • Quasi-random or systematic sampling
  • Stratified random sampling
  • Quota sampling
• Snowball sampling


  Collecting a sample by contacting a number of key individuals, who are asked to suggest others who might be interviewed, and so on, adding to the sample 'snowball' fashion
• Opportunity sampling


  Choosing from those individuals who are easiest to access, such as passers-by in the street or a captive audience like a class of pupils
• Interpretivists are less concerned to make generalisations, so they have less need for representative samples