Choosing a Research Method

Types of data
1. Primary + Secondary sources of data
  1. Primary-collected by sociologist, Eg social surveys, participant observation
  2. Secondary-collected by someone else Eg official stats, documents (quick, cheap but may not provide the exact info needed)
2. Quantitative + Qualitative
Factors influencing choice of method
1. Practical issues
  1. Time + money
  2. Requirements of funding bodies-the sociologist needs to collect the data the funding body has asked for
  3. Personal skills and characteristics (P observation) = unrepresentative
  4. Subject matter (questionnaire for people who can't read)
  5. Research opportunity
2. Ethical issues
  1. Informed consent
  2. Confidentiality and privacy
  3. Effects on research participants- illegal activity/psych harm
  4. Vulnerable groups
  5. Covert research= deception, social desirability
3. Theoretical issues
  1. Validity-qualitative method
  2. Reliability-quantitative method
  3. Representativeness
  4. Methodological perspective
    1. Positivists-prefer quantitative, seek patterns of behaviour,
    2. Interpretivists-prefer qualitative data, seek meanings, reject the view that sociology is a science
4. Choice of topic
  1. Theoretical perspective (feminist, etc)
  2. Society's values (society's affect on the sociologist)
  3. Funding bodies
  4. Practical factors-inaccessibility to situations

Resumen del Recurso

	Creado por Ellie hace más de 11 años