QUANTITATIVE METHODS

• LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

  Favoured by Positivists, lab experiments test hypotheses in a controlled environment where the researcher changes the independent variable and measures the effect on the dependent variable.
• ADVANTAGES- LAB EXPERIMENTS

  • Highly reliable - can be replicated and the original experiment can specify precisely what steps were followed in the original experiment.
  • Can easily identify cause and effect relationships.
• DISADVANTAGES OF LAB EXPERIMENTS

  • Artificiality - lab experiments are carried out in a highly artificial environment and may not reveal how people act in the real world
  • Hawthorne effect - a lab is not a formal or natural environment, if people know they're being studied; they may act differently
• ETHICAL ISSUES- LAB EXPERIMENTS

  • Researcher needs informed consent of the participants, which may be hard to obtain
  • Research may show elements of deception in order to find out the cause and effects
• EXAMPLES OF UNETHICAL LAB EXPERIMENTS

  • Stanford Prison Project (participants wasn't fully informed of the nature)
  • Milgram's electric shock experiment
• DISADVANTAGES OF LAB EXPERIMENTS

  • Unrepresentative - the small-scale nature of the lab reduces the representativeness
• QUESTIONNAIRES

  • Favoured by Positivists, written or self-completed questionnaires are a form of social survey and can be distributed in a range of ways - notably, via post, email or handed out in person.
  • Questionnaires are typically a list of pre-set questions that are closed-end questions with pre-coded answers.
• ADVANTAGES- QUESTIONNAIRES

  • Practical - questionnaires are cheap and quick.
  • Representative - can reach a geographical widespread research sample
  • Reliable - can be easily replicated due to how the questions are pre-set.
  • Limited ethical issues - the respondent is under no obligation to answer the question.
• DISADVANTAGES- QUESTIONNAIRES

  • Response rate - postal questionnaires in particular obtain a low response rate, which may hinder the representativity
  • Low validity - People may be more willing to lie.
  • Unrepresentative - You are likely to get a certain group of people who would be more willing to answer the questionnaire.
  • Structured questionnaires aren’t qualitative.
• STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

  • Involve face-to-face or over-the-phone delivery of a questionnaire. In turn, they use a list of pre-set questions designed by the researcher and asked of all interviewees in the same way.
• ADVANTAGES- STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

  • Practical - training interviewers and administration is easy and cheap.
  • Representative can reach a geographically wide research sample
  • Results are easily quantifiable because they use closed-ended questions with coded answers.
  • Reliable the structured process provides a ‘recipe’ for reproducibility

  Researchers don’t require a set amount of interpersonal skills.
• DISADVANTAGES- STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS

  • Lack of validity - People may lie or exaggerate
  • May be time consuming to organise.
• OFFICIAL STATISTICS


  Quantitative data collected by government bodies. Date is quick, cheap and easy to access and it covers a wide range of social issues.
• OFFICIAL STATISTICS- ADVANTAGES

  • Practical - Cheap and easy to obtain.
  • Practical Easy to access.
  • Can easily identify and cross-examine cause and effect relationships.
  • Representative - often cover large groups of people.

  Reliable - have to be filled out by law (e.g consensus).
• OFFICAL STATISTICS- DISADVANTAGES

  • The government collects these for its own benefits, misinterpreted by sociologists. Could have a hidden agenda or miss key information.
  • Definitions may be different.
  • Unreliable - census coders may make errors, or people may fill them out incorrectly.
  • Doesn’t reveal the reasons why the statistics are the way they are.