Research Methods

Research Methods

1. Positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods

   • Positivism
     • Society can be studies using similar scientific techniques to those used in the natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry and biology.
   • Interpretivism
     • Emphasising that people have consciousness involving personal beliefs, values and interpretations, and these influence the way they act.

2. Key issues in social research

   • Reliability
     • Whether another researcher, if repeating research using the same method for the same research on the same or a similar group, would achieve the same results
   • Validity
     • Concerned with notions of truth: how far the findings of research actually provide a true, genuine or authentic picture of what is being studied

3. Primary and secondary data

   • Public documents
     • (Usually) private documents for a person's own use, which record part of a person's life
   • Public documents
     • Documents which are produced for public knowledge