Sociology - Unit 2 (part 2): Research methods

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Types of data
   1. primary and secondary sources of data
   2. quantitative and qualitative data
2. Factors influencing the choice of methods
   1. practical issues
   2. ethical issues
   3. theoretical issues
   4. choice of topic

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Researching education
   1. researching pupils
   2. researching teachers
   3. researching classrooms
   4. researching schools
   5. researching parents

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Types of interview
2. Structured interivews
3. Unstructured interviews
   1. advantages of unstructured interviews
   2. disadvantages of unstructured interviews
4. The interview as a social interaction
   1. improving the validity of interviews

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Advantages of questionnaires
2. Disadvantages if questionnaires

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Preparing to conduct a survey
   1. choosing a topic
   2. formulating an aim or a hypothesis
   3. operationalising concepts
   4. the pilot study
   5. sampling

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Types of observation
2. Conducting a participant observation study
   1. getting in
   2. staying in
   3. getting out
   4. overt observation
   5. covert observation
3. Advantages of participant observation
4. Disadvantages of participant observations

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Official statistics
2. Documents
   1. public and personal documents
   2. historical documents
   3. content analysis

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. case studies
2. longitudinal studies
3. life histories
4. triangulation

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• Sociologists that you can use for this section: 

1. Laboratory experiments
   1. reliability
   2. practical problems
   3. ethical issues
   4. the hawethorne effect
   5. free will
2. Two alternatives of laboratory experiments
   1. field experiments
   2. the comparative method