Positivism

• Positivism


  Sees society as shaping the individual and believes that social facts shape individual action
• Positivist approach


  • Methods and scientific principles that are applied to the natural sciences should be applied to sociological research
  • Objectivity, generalisability, reliability and a value free approach should be used when conducting sociological research
• Quantitative methods preferred by positivists

  • Social surveys
  • Structured questionnaires
  • Official statistics
  • Structured interviews
• Quantitative methods


  Provide high reliability and validity
• Positivist approach


  • Prefer to identify cause and effect relationships between 2 variables
  • Aim for the research to reduce explanations of a limited number of causes of a specific social relationship or event
• Social facts (Durkheim)


  Concepts and institutions in society that are objectively and scientifically verifiable
• Examples of social facts

  • Social institutions
  • Statuses
  • Roles
  • Laws
  • Beliefs
  • Population
  • Distribution
  • Urbanisation
• Induction (Durkheim's study of suicide)

  Gathering of a large sample of statistics with the aim of finding trends and patterns that illustrate the impact of particular social facts upon society
• Hypo-deductive model (Durkheim's study of suicide)


  Researcher starts with a hypothesis they wish to prove correct
• Durkheim's hypothesis was that if suicide can be explained by social facts then so can other social events</b>
• Auguste Comte


  • Argued that social events can be studied in the same way as physical events
  • Applied methods of natural sciences to the social sciences
  • Believed society could be explained with scientific principles like objectivity, reliability and generalisability
• Objectivity


  The researcher must remove all personal bias and opinions from their sociological research
• Value free


  Sociology should be completely value free, own personal views and bias should not enter research at any stage
• When scientific principles are upheld the research gains credibility
• Positivists


  Prefer data to be representative
• Representative data


  Can be generalised to the wider target population
• Data collected from the research sample can be applied to everyone else in the target population
• Most researchers would not be able to conduct census research
• Researchers can apply their findings from a smaller sample of people to a larger group