Flashcards
Sociological Research Methods
Cards in this deck (11)
- 1LABORATORY EXPERIMENTSAdvantages:
- can replicate it
- reliable for producing same results
Disadvantages:
- impossible to control the variables
- small scale so may not be representative
- can't be used to study the past
- ethical objections to experiments on humans
- Hawthorne Effect (unnatural behaviour) - 2FIELD EXPERIMENTSAdvantages:
- natural and realistic
Disadvantages:
- more realistic, less control over the variables
- unethical since carry out experiments on subjects without their consent/knowledge - 3COMPARATIVE METHODAdvantages:
- avoids artificiality
- used to study past events
- no ethical problems
Disadvantages:
- less control over variables than the field experiements - 4QUESTIONNAIRESAdvantages:
- quick and cheap
- no recruiting
- easy to quantify
- reliable
-allow comparisons
- useful to test hypotheses
- objective
- representative
- fewer ethical issues
Disadvantages:
- data limited and superficial
- low response rate
- inflexible
- snapshots
- lack validity, not give true picture
- impose researchers' meanings - 5STRUCTURED INTERVIEWSAdvantages:
- training straightforward and cheap
- suitable for gathering factual info
- results easily quantified
- representative
- high response rate
- reliable
Disadvantages:
- certain people have more time to do the interview, unrepresentative and undermine validity
- false picture of subjects being studied as use closed q's
- false data from those who lie
- inflexible
- feminists argue SIs are patriarchal and distort women's experience - 6UNSTRUCTURED INTERVIEWSAdvantages:
- develop rapport, useful with sensitive subjects
- interviewee have opportunity to give their opinions
- able to explain meanings
- flexible
- open-ended and exploratory
Disadvantages:
- time consuming
- small sample
- not representative, harder to make valid generalisations
- not reliable, not standardised
- answers not pre-coded, difficult to quantify numbers - 7OVERT OBSERVATIONAdvantages:
- avoids ethical problem when gathering info
- able to ask naive, important questions as an outsider
- can openly take notes
- use interview methods to check insights from observations
Disadvantages:
- group may refuse permission or not give a full view
- risk of Hawthorne Effect - 8COVERT OBSERVATIONAdvantages:
- reduce risk of altered behaviour, valid info
Disadvantages:
- keep up an act
- can't take notes, no questions, new member can change group's behaviour
- ethical issues as immoral to deceive people, lie about reason for leaving - 9PARTICIPANT OBSERVATIONAdvantages:
- qualitative data, valid
- verstehen, authentic data
- flexible,open minded
- build rapport
Disadvantages:
- time consuming
- stressful and demanding
- ethical issues as deceiving people and partaking in immoral/illegal activities
- small sample, not able to make generalisations
- difficult to compare with studies, not able to produce reliable data
- lack of objectivity
- biased in favour of subjects
- Marxists and functionalists argue it doesn't look at wider structural forces which shape our behaviour - 10OFFICIAL STATISTICSAdvantages:
- free
- Census used which saves time
allow comparison between groups
- collected at regular intervals, show patterns and trends
- representative, able to make generalisations
- reliable
Disadvantages:
- only collected to benefit gov. so may not have info available for certain topics
- different definitions from the gov. to sociologists
- definitions change over time, comparisons difficult to make
- some stats less representative than others
- dark figure - 11DOCUMENTSAdvantages:
- personal documents enable to give insight to actors reality
- sometimes only source of info from past
- able to check primary method results
- cheap
- saves time
Disadvantages:
- researcher may need special skill to understand document
- not all documents survive or obtainable
- credibility
- authenticity