Research methods (sociology)

Research methods (sociology)

1. Official statistics - figures that are collected and published by governments

   • The home office publish crime statistics
   • These are able to provide data about employment, demography, exam results, marriage and divorces, poverty and suicide
   • Evaluations
     • They are often from a whole nation = more representative data then just from an individual
     • comparisons are easily made between different groups, periods of history to places
     • They can generally be accessed
     • they are also compiled by experts and so are unlikely to have errors
     • The government may want to paint a certain picture of society and so publish things such as low levels of crime
     • Statistics may not be available for certain topics
     • statistics that relate to a certain topic may have inherent weaknesses - crime figures are all dependent on the public being aware of crime

2. Triangulation -

3. Secondary methods

   • Historical Documents
     • Church records - church record names of people who have been married, baptised or had a funeral
       • These are able to show roughly how many people lived in the past and how long they lived
       • They are one of the few sauces of demographic information about the past - but some have been damaged and lost
     • Wills - are able to tell us about family size and structure + what goods people valued and how many servants they had
       • Wills are less likely to be preserved over time - the ones remaining may not be representative
     • Creative expression - novels for example are sometimes analysed by sociologists in order to learn about the past
       • It is important to analysis a sufficient number of examples to gain representative data
         • It is likely that some works are more dramatic or exaggerated
   • Personal documents
     • Diaries - they can provide an insight into the aspects of daily life from periods that no one is able to recall
       • Many are able to provide rich qualitative data but some of the allusions may be unclear