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