Topic 3: applied methods of social enquiry

• Primary data


  Data that the sociologist collects themselves
• Secondary data


  Data produced by someone else that the sociologist uses
• Quantitative data


  Data that can be converted into numbers and statistics
• Qualitative data


  Data that is not numerical, such as words, pictures, feelings
• Aim


  The purpose of a research project
• Hypothesis


  A statement that can be tested as true or false
• Sample


  The people who are part of the research
• Response rate


  The extent to which people respond to the research
• Closed question


  A question with a limited set of answers
• Open question


  A question that allows for more detailed responses
• Reliability


  The extent to which research can be repeated and get the same results
• Validity


  How truthful, trustworthy or true to life the data is
• Primary research methods


  • Questionnaires
  • Interviews (structured, semi-structured, unstructured, group)
  • Observation (covert, overt, participant, non-participant)
  • Focus groups
• Secondary research methods


  • Official statistics
  • Documents (personal, historical, media)
• Practical factors


  • Time
  • Cost
  • Access
• Ethical factors


  • Avoiding harm
  • Informed consent
  • Anonymity
  • Confidentiality
  • No deception
• Theoretical factors


  • Reliability
  • Validity
  • Representativeness
  • Quantitative vs qualitative data
• Quantitative methods (questionnaires, structured interviews, official statistics)

  Tend to be reliable and representative due to standardised questions and large sample sizes
• Quantitative data


  Allows measurement of patterns and trends over time
• Quantitative methods


  Tend to be practically cheap and quick to conduct
• Researchers doing the research will be asking the same stuff in the same order in the same way of everybody and that doesn't change and that's like a big benefit to this type of data
• Standardized questions


  Questions that are the same and don't change depending on who you speak to or who's interviewing
• Researchers using standardized questions


  • They are at arm's length from the people, they can't ask them to elaborate on their answers, they just ask a question, get the answer, write it down, ask another question
• Quantitative methods


  Chosen a lot because they tend to be practically quite cheap and quite quick to do, which means you get a really big sample size
• The bigger your sample size, the more likely it's going to be to be representative of the broader population
• Ethically there are very few things that can go wrong with quantitative methods, all you've got to do is get the informed consent
• If you have high reliability


  You are likely to have low validity
• Low validity


  The questions asked through things like questionnaires and structured interviews tend not to actually reveal the truth or get to the heart of an issue
• Quantitative data provides patterns and trends, but doesn't provide any qualitative data to understand how or why something happens
• Quantitative methods can have access issues getting to the right people, and tend to have very poor response rates
• Qualitative methods


  • Have high validity but low reliability
• Qualitative sample sizes


  Tend to be smaller, but provide a lot more depth and detail
• Strengths of qualitative methods

  • Theoretical: Help understand issues in depth, Practical: Very flexible, can probe and identify new things
• Weaknesses of qualitative methods


  • Unreliable, not representative, very time-consuming and expensive
• Ethical issues with qualitative methods include deception and not getting informed consent, especially with covert observation
• Observation as a research method can be overt (participant) or covert (non-participant)
• Strengths of observation


  • Highly valid, provides detailed qualitative data, can involve participation for better understanding
• Weaknesses of observation


  • Low reliability, difficult to repeat, ethical issues around informed consent and potential harm
• Qualitative methods like observation are often used to study 'hard to reach' groups in society