Sociology Revision – Research Methods

Soyful Alam

Start

Research Method’s content page -

Introduction

Validity

Represent

Positivism

Extraneous

Questionnaires

Interviews

Types of interviews

Sampling

Types of data

Reliability

Generalise

Interpretivists

Ethical issues

ObservationsEthnographic

What is research methods?

• Sociologists use many different designs and methods to study society and social behaviour. Most sociological research involves ethnography, or “field work” designed to represent the characteristics of a population as fully as possible.

• In simple terms methodology can be defined as, it is used to give a clear cut idea on what the researcher is carrying out his or her research.

There are 2 main types of research data…

Primary –• This form of research refers

to investigation conducted by an individual for the first time. It is the information collected by sociologist themselves for their own purpose.

Secondary – • Information that has been

collected or created by someone else for their own purpose, but which sociologist can then use.

Questionnaires Questionnaires consist of a set of questions gathered and compiled by a researcher; completed by a group of respondents. Questionnaires are often a form of primary research. There are several different types of questionnaires with different ways of presenting questions:• Closed questionnaires – also known as fixed choice questions, where the

respondents have predetermined answers from which they choose from; usually by ticking the box. These types of questionnaire generate and gather quantitative data, and sometimes known as structured questionnaires.

• Some questionnaires use measurement scales; this gauges the respondents opinion on an issue.

• Open ended questionnaires – a space is left after the question for the respondent to write down their own response. This type of questionnaire can generate qualitative data.

ADV DIS

Ways of administrating questionnaires

• Post – Quick to reach a large sample, yet slow respondent rates.

• Internet – Cheaper than posts, yet unsure who is providing the answers and low response rate.

• Doorstep – Target appropriate sample, yet ethical issues (privacy)

• Street – More representative, yet those who agree to stop may be unrepresentative to the target population.

Advantages of questionnaires

• There are many practical advantages of using questionnaires for example, they are a quick method of gathering data, often from a wide geographical area. This can be linked to representativeness, the larger number of people, the more representative it is likely to be. Another advantage is that, postal and internet questionnaires are cheaper than recruiting and training interviewers. Also the data are easy to quantify particularly where closed questions are used.

• Questionnaires are more reliable than interviews as, each respondent is given identical set of questions, in the same order with the same wording. More over there is no researcher effect, as no interviewer is present. Any differences in answers will therefore reflect real differences in respondents rather than being a reflection of a non trustworthy data collection instrument.

• There is no contact with the researcher and respondent therefore extraneous variables are minimised.

Disadvantages of questionnaires

• There are many disadvantages of questionnaires for example, the data collected is likely to be limited in detail as participants are restricted to brief responses, most times, just a tick of a box or a check list. To contribute to this, questionnaires are essentially snapshots as they only give a picture of social reality at the moment when respondents answer the question. Therefore they fail to capture changes in peoples attitude and opinions. Another advantage of questionnaires is that they may have low response rates which can affect representativeness and generalisability. Those who do respondent are likely to be those with strong views on the subject, which may lead to biased results; from which generalizability's cannot be established. In addition to this, according to interpretivists, data from questionnaires lack validity due to the fact that they do not allow the researcher to ‘get inside’ the persons head and share their meanings. It is therefore impossible to create a sense of empathy. As well as this, interpretivists argue that questionnaires are likely to impose the meanings of the researcher as, the researcher designed the questions, with closed questions a range of questions are chosen by the researcher etc. an ethical issue may also occur as the researcher is not available to protect the respondents to make them feel at ease or to reassure them. Extraneous variables may occur (social bias, Hawthorne effect etc.) respondents may not understand the question or may lie.

Interviews • Similarly with questionnaires, interviews involve asking questions.

The main difference is that questionnaires are completed by a respondent whereas with interviews, questions are asked by an interviewer and so involve social interaction between the researcher and respondent. This interaction that takes place brings along many advantages and disadvantages.

• Advantages:• The presence of an interviewer can help since they are there to

clarify any confusion or misunderstanding of questions. • A higher response rate is more likely as it is harder to ignore a

interviewer that ignore a questionnaire form that has arrived through internet or post etc.

• Disadvantages: • Interviews can be highly expensive and very time consuming• Through the interaction/presence of authority, many extraneous

variables may intervene.

Types of interviews • The types of interviews differ in their level of

structure. At one extreme, there is such an unstructured interview, sometimes called a informal interview; which resembles an ordinary conversation, without any pre set questions. Whereas on the other side of the spectrum, a totally structured interview will involve a interviewer simply reading a set of pre fixed closed questions and noting the answer. In this case, the data collected will be quantitative. Often, a semi structured interview is also the case; here an interview is often on schedule, but the interviewer is encouraged to allow the respondent to explain and develop their answer.

More on interviews

Structured interviews• This form of interview is most common in sociology; it

is also known as formal interviews and they are widely used in surveys. The interviewers are trained to take respondents through a set of standardised questions on a interview schedule; ensuring that every question is asked in the same way to every respondent. This type of interview is likely to be composed of closed questions and fixed choice responses. The interviewer is trained to be objective and maintain distance between themselves and the respondents. The uniformity of questioning aims to create reliable data so that respondents answers can be compared, usually statistically, to produce quantitative data.

Adv + Dis

Advantages and disadvantages for

structured interviews• Along with structured interviews comes many advantages and

disadvantages:• Advantages:• Quick and easy to administer; therefore sample size can be large. • Representative results due to high response rates.• Produce comparable results as not all respondents answer the same.• Less bias than unstructured • Preferred by positivists; produce quantitative data; reliable and verifiable. • Disadvantages:• to train the interviewer, it costs• May produce unrepresentative data as the people who are willing to be

interviewed may be untypical.• Fail to capture the dynamic nature of social life ; only snapshots at one

moment in time.• Low in validity; closed questionnaires may restrict all possible answers. • Presence of authority may produce extraneous variables.

The 4 main concepts• In order for a piece of research to be regarded as

being highly efficacious and worthwhile, it must be high in validity, reliability, generalisability and representativeness.

Validity There are 2 types of validity, these are:Internal validity – This form of validity refers to the meaning of whether the study has tested what it set out to test; the degree to which the observed effect was due to experimental manipulation rather than extraneous variables. External validity – External validity refers to the degree to which a research finding can be generalised; to other settings, to other people, over time.In order for a test to be highly valid; both internal and external validity must be highly met.However, there are few issues for validity and not all findings can be highly valid as, an example of one issue which may occur is:• The respondents may not act or speak normally because they

are aware they are being researched (extraneous variables may occur).

Reliability • Reliability is the extent to which a test or procedure

produces similar results under consistent condition. In order for data to be reliable, a different researcher, or same researcher at a different time, uses the same method of a piece of research and still obtain the same results.

• However, in sociology it is difficult to get reliable and consistent results; simply due to the fact that people inconsistent and unreliable. Furthermore, participant observation, a researching technique used by many researchers, also produce unreliable results as they are virtually impossible to replicate.

Representativeness/ Generalisability

• Representativeness and generalisability are two concepts in sociology which are closely related; they are often linked with the process of sampling and the target population; how typical of the research population it is. If the findings is highly representativeness then the results can be generalised.

Positivists • Positivist argue that society should be studied as

a social science; it should involve repeating research to generate statistics, numbers, trends and ratios, which could be then compared with high reliability and objectiveness. Society can therefore be understood, predicted and controlled.

• Positivists favour all forms of quantitative data. Their research focuses on measurements and collection of numerical data that reflects their belief in a scientific approach.

Interpretivists • Interpretivists, also known as anti – positivists, argue that the

study of society as a science is not possible since the all people are not the same and therefore cannot be treated the same; to assume that they all behave in a similar manner, like lab animals or certain chemicals is fundamentally wrong.

• In order to gain a true understanding of human behaviour and their experiences a in-depth enquiry as to ‘why’ they behave as they do is required.

• They argue that the real aim of sociological research should be to experience the social world of people that are being studied; develop empathy with them and to put yourself in their shoes.

• Anti – positivists favour the qualitative methods simply due to the fact that that their research focuses on interpreting meanings and feelings; which is best expressed in words rather than numerical form.

More information

Overview

Ethical issues • Ethics refers to moral issues of right and wrong.

Sociologists aim to be ethical in the way they study people. Consequently BSA – the British Sociological Association set out guidelines on how sociologists should conduct their research ethically.

• The BSA have guidelines which a sociologist must meet in order to be able to class his/her research as highly ethical. Click on the macros to find out more on a few of the ethical issues.

ConsentDeception/Debrief

Privacy Withdraw Protection

Informed Consent• This refers to the meaning that participants have the right to be

given comprehensive information concerning the nature and the purpose of the research and their roles in it; in order that they can make an informed decision about whether to participate.

• This is also a basic human right; established after the second world war.

• However, even if the researcher have sought and obtained consent does not always mean that the participants know what they have let themselves in for. Epstien and Lasagna found with their study in 1969, that only a third of participants really know what they have let themselves in for.

• Researchers do not always want to gain this as it may lead P’s to start to guess the aims of the study; producing invalid results.

Deception and Debrief• Deception refers to the extent where a participant

is not told the true aims of a study (what participation will involve) and thus cannot give truly informed consent.

• Participants must be fully debriefed at the end of a study. They must be given a general idea of what the researcher was investigating and why, and their part in their research should be explained. They must be told if they have been deceived and be given reasons why. They must be asked if they have any questions which should be answered as truthful and honest as possible.

Privacy and Confidentiality

• Participants and the data gained from them must be kept anonymous unless they give their full consent. No names must be used in research reports.

• Privacy refers to the meaning of a person’s right to control the flow of information about themselves. A researcher may guarantee anonymity but even then it may still be obvious who is participating in the study.

• The data protection act makes confidentiality a legal right; it is only available for personal data to be recorded if the data are not made available in a form in which the participants are identified.

Right to Withdraw• Participants should have the right to withdraw

from participating in a study if they feel uncomfortable in any way, and should also have the right to refuse permission for the researcher to use any data they produce.

• Before the research is conducted; participants must be aware that they have this option of withdrawing; ensuring that they feel safe, secure and comfortable.

Protection • During the research, participants should not

experience any negative physical or psychological effects, such as physical injury, lowered self esteem or embarrassment.

• It is considered acceptable if the risk of harm is no greater than ordinary life.

• Participants should be in the same state as they were before they entered the research unless they had given consent to be treated otherwise.

Extraneous variables Extraneous variables are factors of a experiment which may negatively effect the final findings of a study. There are three main aspects of this variable as a whole; Participant variable, Situational Variables and the Participant effect. • Participant variable: is any characteristic of individual participants. Examples

of these characteristics are: age, motivation, experience, gender etc.)• Situational variable: are those features of a research situation that may

influence participant behaviour and thus act as an EV’S. One example of a situational example is ‘order effect’. This is a EV arising from the order in which conditions are presented. Other examples are those such as time, temperature, noise etc. in sociology, the 2 main situation variables are investigator effects and demand characteristics. An investigator effect is anything that the experimenter does which has an effect on the performance of the participant. This includes a indirect effect (as a consequence of the investigator designing the experiment) or direct effect (investigator interacting with the participants). A demand characteristic are the actual cues in place; participants are aware of what the researcher expects to find, or how they are to behave; therefore alter their performance to conform the expectations.

• Participant effect: these effects occur when participants actively seek cues about how to behave. Examples of this effect are the ‘Hawthorne effect’ and ‘Social desirability bias’. The Hawthorne effect is the tendency to which participants alter their behaviour merely due to the fact that they are being observed. Social desirable bias is the tendency for participants to alter their behaviour in order to be shown in the best possible light.

Sampling • A research population, also known as a target group refers to all those

people who could be included in a survey. To make the sample quick and cheap, the researcher must choose a sample. This has to be representative to the target group; so that what it true of the sample is true to the target population. In sociology, the two main sampling techniques used as random and stratified.

Sampling Technique

Definition Strengths Weaknesses

Random sample Every member of the population has an equal chance of selection for the same (taking names out of a hat)

No researcher influence

No bias in selection

Chance that the sample obtained may not be truly representative to the target population (more females than males etc.)

Stratified sample Target population divided according to the numbers of people with the social characteristics required. Sample selected reflect the proportions of these characteristics.

Increases the chances of attaining a representative sample.

More complicated and time consuming.

Ethnographic • The purpose of ethnography is to describe the

culture and lifestyle of the group. It is a descriptive account of social life and culture in a particular social system based on detailed observations of what people actually do. It is a research method that I used by sociologists often when studying groups. Weber called this ‘verstehen’ which refers to the word ‘understand’ in German.

• Through ethnographic research a researcher can sketch a clear picture of how social group behave; he can empathise with them and understand the why particular groups act in such a way.

Observations • Observations refers to the meaning of simply looking at

what is being studied and recording data. Interpretivists use observations for observing normal social life.

• This involves the researcher inserting themselves into a natural setting of the social group being studied about participating in and observing their daily activities.

• Positivists also see observations as essential, but they tend to use it more in the context of observing the results of experiments; they are much less likely to use participant observations then interpretivists.

• Participant observation involves the researcher joining in with the group being studied. The researcher has to decide whether to be open or secretive. It is criticised by positivists for being highly subjective and unscientific.

Covert Overt+ - of P’s

observations

Covert • A covert observation refers to the extent of a observation that is not open,

acknowledged or displayed. It is hidden and kept covered from participants; they are therefore not aware that they are being studied on.

• It in contrast with the ethnographic approach as the researcher can sketch out a full picture, describe the culture and life style of people being studied in the way they see themselves.

• A covert observation leads to highly valid results due to the minimal extraneous variables, as participants are not aware that they are being studied; therefore will not alter their behaviour in any form. More over, the researcher can enter forbidden areas and can be fully accepted and trusted, they can immerse themselves totally in the group being studied. This can generate a real sense of understanding of the views of the group. However, there are also many disadvantages of this form of observation; one of which is that there are many ethical issues. The researcher may be in danger if his or her role is uncovered, it may place the researcher in danger, especially is studying a deviant group. Further more, it is morally wrong studying a group without their consent and therefore they have been deceived to. Finally, if the group engages in illegal activities, the researcher may have to engage into these.

Overt • Overt observation refers to the form of observation in

which the researcher being open about the reason for their presence in the field of study since the researcher is given permission by the group. It is not hidden and kept covered from participants; therefore they are aware that being studied on.

• Alongside this form of observation comes many advantages and disadvantages. An advantage this is that the researcher can ask questions without the participants getting suspicious; the researcher does not have to lie and there are minimal ethical issues. However, the observer may influence the behaviour of the participant; extraneous variable may occur (social bias/Hawthorn effect etc.)

Advantages and disadvantages of participant observation

• Advantages: • this type of research can sometimes be conducted by a single

research; without much preparation and therefore make the initial costs low.

• It is difficult for participants to lie or mislead• Researcher can understand the subject better they experience

some of the same things.• Provides in depth studies. • Disadvantages: • Can be much more time consuming then questionnaires etc. • Researchers lives may be disrupted (engaging in illegal activities

etc.) • Practical difficulties in recording data (covert)• Interpretations may be subjective as the researcher has to be

very selective about what is being reported.