Sociology: Research Methods

Sociology: Research Methods

1. PROCESSES OF RESEARCH:

   • HYPOTHESIS: a question to start the piece of research, if it's false you have to discard it
   • OPERATIONALISING CONCEPTS: key terms are made "operational"
   • PILOT STUDY: small survey carried out before the main study to make sure everything is correct
   • SAMPLES/SAMPLING: finding the correct people to be studied to make a generalisable sample
   • SAMPLING TECHNIQUES: different types, each with different ways of selecting people for a sample

2. SAMPLING:

   • RANDOM: everybody in the population has the equal chance of being selected, eg. names out of a hat
   • SYSTEMATIC: selected from a list using a system, eg. every 10th person on a list
   • STRATIFIED RANDOM: dividing the population into subgroups then getting the sample from it
   • QUOTA: each interview has to interview an exact number of people
   • SNOWBALL: participants have to bring people along to participate in the research until sample size is achieved
   • MULTISTAGE: broken down into smaller groups, eg. school, year, then class

3. P.E.T.

   • PRACTICAL: money and time, personal skills/characteristics, funding bodies, subject matter, research opportunities
   • ETHICAL: covert research, informed consent, harm to participants, confidentiality, vulnerable groups
   • THEORETICAL: validity, reliability, representativeness

4. THEORIES OF RESEARCH METHODS:

   • POSITIVISM: quantitative data, likes questionnaires and official statistics, studies patterns of behaviour, says sociology is a science, macro scale
     • SOCIAL CONTROL: 2 types (formal and informal), rewards and punishments are used to make people do whats expected of them, uses sanctions to monitor behaviour
   • INTERPRETIVISM: qualitative data, experiments and observations, says sociology isn't a science, likes natural scientific data, micro scale
     • VERSTEHEN: the idea of understanding human behaviour by putting yourself in the situation of those being studied and trying to see things through their point of view, the main goal is validity