Research Methods

• Positivists attempt to research with scientific methods to obtain quantitative data and objective facts
• Positivists focus on how structures in society shape individuals
• Positivism is a macro perspective
• Positivist methods use both controlled and field experiments. They also look at statistics and conduct surveys
• Non-participant observation is when the researcher does not get involved with the group being studied
• Quantitative data is helpful for finding cause and effect relationships. It is reliable and allows the government to make generalisations that can inform policy
• Positivism struggles to answer the why behind people's actions. It is also inflexible and may not represent the diverse range of behaviours in modern or postmodern society
• Durkheim's suicide study was a positive approach that examined social facts
• Interpretivists focus on individual actions and behaviours, favouring qualitative data
• Verstehen is the idea of forming empathy with your subjects to obtain more valid data
• Interpretivists say individuals have free will, and that their choices are unique based on personal factors and cannot be studied scientifically
• Interpretivists may use participant observation to be immersed in a group to understand their behaviour
• Interpretevist research is more unstructured and values personal accounts and opinions
• Interpretivist research can provide insight into groups that are underrepresented or hard to research otherwise
• Interpretivism is valid but not reliable. It operates on a small scale so it is difficult to generalise. It may lack objectivity or be hard to falsify so is less useful for governments
• There are practical, ethical and theoretical issues when choosing how to conduct research
• Practical issues relate to the logistics of research - how will this be carried out?
• Ethical issues concern the morality of the research and its implications on the subjects
• Theoretical issues are the biases towards the researcher's preferences, but also how appropriate methods are for a particular subject
• Research must be funded, and the overall cost and source of the funding can influence what research is done and how it is performed
• Different methods will take different amounts of time
• Some groups are easier to access than others, and access can be determined by a researcher's individual attributes and skills
• Research proposals must be submitted to the British Sociological Association to be assessed for ethics
• Data gathered must comply with GDPR guidelines and remain private
• Participants must remain anonymous and the study should be confidential - this allows for more honest answers which leads to more valid data
• Some research deceives the participants by being dishonest about the study or by not disclosing it at all
• Informed consent is where a participant consents while understanding the contents and purposes of the study
• Participants should never be harmed physically or psychologically for the purposes of a study
• A method may be chosen for validity or reliability, the type of data needed, and based on whether generalisations should be made from it