Research methods

• Primary data

  Information collected by the sociologist themselves for their own purpose.
• Methods for gathering primary data

  Social surveys

  Participant observation

  Experiment
• Advantage of using primary data is that sociologists may be able to gather precisely the information they need to test their hypothesis
• Downfall with primary data

  Can often be costly and time consuming
• Secondary data is information that has already been collected or created by someone else foe theor own purposes but the sociologists can use it
• Sources of secondary data include

  Official statistics

  Documents
• Advantage of using secondary data it is cheap and quick as someone else has already gathered the information
• Disadvantage of secondary data those who have produced the data may not be interested in the same question as the sociologist so it may not produced the exact infoinformation they need
• Factors influencing choice of research methods

  • Practical issues
  • Ethical issues
  • Theoretical issues
• Practical issues

  • Time and money
  • Researcher's access to sources
  • Requirements of funding bodies
  • Personal skills and characteristics
  • Subject matter
  • Research opportunity
• Different methods require different amounts of time and money
• Large-scale surveys may employ dozens of interviewers and data-inputting staff and cost a great deal of money, while a small scale project involving a lone researcher using participant observation may be cheaper but take several years to complete
• A well-known professor will probably have access to more research funds than a young student
• Funding bodies may require the results to be in a particular form, e.g. quantitative data to measure targets
• Personal skills and characteristics of the sociologist can affect their ability to use different methods
• It may be much harder to study a particular group by one method than by another, e.g. a male sociologist studying an all-female group through participant observation
• Sometimes the research opportunity arises unexpectedly, limiting the choice of methods
• Ethical issues

  • Informed consent
  • Confidentiality and privacy
  • Harm to research participants
  • Vulnerable groups
  • Covert research
• Participants should be offered the right to refuse to be involved and be informed about all relevant aspects of the research
• Researchers should keep the identity of participants secret and respect their privacy
• Researchers need to be aware of and try to prevent possible harm to those they study, such as social exclusion or psychological damage
• Special care should be taken when studying vulnerable groups like children
• Covert research where the researcher's identity and purpose are hidden raises serious ethical problems
• Theoretical issues

  • Validity
  • Reliability
  • Representativeness
  • Methodological perspective
• Validity


  Whether a method produces a true or genuine picture of what something is really like
• Reliability

  Whether a method, when repeated by another researcher, gives the same results
• Representativeness


  Whether the people studied are a typical cross-section of the group of interest
• Methodological perspective


  The sociologist's view of what society is like and how it should be studied, e.g. positivism vs interpretivism
• Positivists prefer quantitative data and see sociology as a science, while interpretivists prefer qualitative data and reject the view that sociology can model itself on the natural sciences
• Practical and ethical factors usually limit the choice of methods, even if a sociologist prefers a particular method
• Chance may sometimes determine the method used, e.g. a researcher unexpectedly finding themselves in a research opportunity
• Factors influencing choice of topic
• Doing which method to use

  1. Sociological perspective

  2. Theoretical perspective

  3. Society's values

  4. Practical factors
• The sociologist's perspective is a major influence on choice of research topic
• A New Right sociologist may study the effects of welfare benefits on parent families, since the idea of welfare is central to their standpoint
• A teacher may choose to study violence as opposition to gender oppression less from the feminist perspective
• Sociologists themselves are part of the society they study and are faced by its values
• The rise of feminism in the 1950s led to a focus on gender inequality and today's environmental concerns have generated interest in 'green' topics such as toxic waste dumping
• Practical factors, such as the inaccessibility of certain situations, may also restrict what topic they are able to study
• Although sociologists may wish to study the way in which global corporations make their decisions, this may not be possible because these are made in secret