Essential Sociology Webinar: Research Methods and Methods in Context

hello and welcome to the next webinar for essential sociology getting ready for paper one and three for research methods and methods in context so in today&#39;s webinar what we&#39;re trying to aim for is to discuss some of the areas of concern and some of the difficult research methods that some of us find a bit difficult to get our heads around and also to go through the debate between interpretivism and positivism alongside this we&#39;re going to understand the types of questions that can come up regarding research methods and methods in context and then lastly we are going to explore a writing framework for these essays by which most of you might be familiar with now positive interpretivism tends to be an area by which most of us seem to have some hang ups about now the reason behind this is because they are theoretical perspectives and what we have to recognize is they are associated with specific types of research methods but often when we try to marry the two up that&#39;s where we often find struggling tends to occur now this is often because students can over complicate the two perspectives so what i&#39;m going to try aim to do right now is break them down and give the give a definitive meaning and identity identify the methods associated with each one of these types of theoretical perspectives so it&#39;s about taking a quick snapshot and trying to understand them at a very detailed level okay this is the table by which we&#39;re going to use to try to understand positivism and interpretivism at a really detailed level now you can see i&#39;ve got some main ideas as to what we&#39;re going to be looking at for each one of these theoretical perspectives so the first one is key concepts and ideas so when we&#39;re looking at this we&#39;re trying to understand what each one of these perspectives actually mean and what they really want to promote as a theoretical perspective as well then we&#39;re going to be looking at primary methods so if we&#39;re going to relate to anything it&#39;s a bit like primary data so this is a method that the researcher actually uses themselves to collect the data and what are their preferred methods in terms of collecting this original form of data then we&#39;re going to be looking at secondary methods now again if you&#39;re going to liken that to anything it&#39;s like secondary data in a sense so this is data or publications or methods that are using already existing material to try to analyze and try to gain an insight in human behavior and in the last point we&#39;re going to be looking at the actual theoretical perspective itself so is it a micro or macro theory and what are their views in terms of how society influences the individual [Music] so if we focus first down on positivism&#39;s key concepts and ideas so what we&#39;ve got here it&#39;s scientific so obviously for this method here it believes that sociology in itself should be treated as a science which means things like objectivity and value freedom should be reinforced now when we talk about value freedom what we&#39;re actually stating here is the research should not have any of the researchers own biases or prejudices influencing the research and the way it&#39;s conducted now this may means the way in which the research conducts and how evidence is interpreted would be considered value-free because the researchers biases and prejudices will not be brought into the over overall way that the research is done now there is a huge emphasis on reliability within positivism this simply means that there is a focus on making sure that the research has got the ability to be replicated and repeated and this in itself can link to other areas such if we&#39;re going to look at popper in terms of falsification because we have got the ability to actually test the hypothesis and the theory by which we have created in addition to this they prefer to use representative sampling methods the reason being for this is so that it allows for us to generalize the results so instead of us having a snapshot of very unique individual or collective we have got data that is worthwhile and is beneficial towards society because we&#39;ve taken the time to use methods such as stratified sampling to enable us to have a mini population created in our sample so therefore we know that this is how everyone within our society behaves always expected to behave and then lastly in terms of a key concept and idea the data generally that is used is quantitative in nature and obviously this fitting quite relatively well with the objective idea here because you can only pick up objectively with numbers or statistics what the actual trend of the data is all about in addition to this all of the idea of terms of research it is structured so what we are seeing here is every single piece of data that we are using and research method that we have started to use for research will be extremely structured or have standardized procedures and instructions by which the research will be expected to follow and obviously by doing so this again feeds into the idea of that reliability because we&#39;ll be able to repeat that time and time again now for interpretivism is slightly different now if you look at this it is subjective in nature so this is about us taking the time and trying to understand what we believe is the meaning behind an individual&#39;s behavior now what we do argue here is it will be value-laden so the researchers own ideas and concepts and meanings we brought into the research trying to give us a greater understanding of how and why people feel and behave the way that they do now interpretivists argue that in terms of allow for value-laden research it allows you to have first-aid now the reason behind for staying is that it&#39;s the idea of putting yourself in another person&#39;s shoes as it were this allows you to show empathy in terms of why and how they behave so what you&#39;re really getting into here is understanding the individual&#39;s world view at a very finite level so you&#39;ll be able to completely understand why and how they feel and behave in that particular way now the type of data that is generally generated for interpretivism is qualitative data so this obviously means that this is the thoughts feelings emotions and opinions of the actual research individual that is being promoted throughout so what we&#39;re seeing here is we&#39;re going to see quite a lot of subjective interpretation of this data as well so we&#39;re going to read that out in our own individual ways to try and understand how and why people feel and behave the way that do as a result of this type of method that is used generally everything would be unstructured in nature by allowing us to have a greater freedom to gain a deeper insight of individuals and their behavior overall now in terms of primary methods preferred by positivists are the following so we&#39;ve got the survey now the survey allows us to collect a huge amount of quantitative data for us to then generalize about the wider population so if we take an example here as the census so if we were going to generate and create our own version of the census we would therefore be allowed to create a wealth of information and data which then can be generalized about the wider population then we can use techniques such as self-report questionnaires which are obviously preferred to use the method of closed questions now by doing so we&#39;ll be allowing to create quick forms of data again by which we send out a huge amount of these questionnaires and we could potentially get a more generalizable results then we prefer to use structured interviews now structured interviews mean simply that the researcher will go in with a set of pre-coded questions now this means that the researcher or the interviewer will not stray from these pre-coded questions they will be expected to stay with them and it doesn&#39;t allow for them to probe any deeper below a individual&#39;s response so this feeds into the idea that there&#39;s easy reliability overall now lab experiments are also preferred now for the simple reason that we can say that all variables are controlled for so that there&#39;s not something else that is influencing the overall results so when we&#39;re looking at reliability we&#39;ve got a good standardized set of research methods that are being used here meanwhile for interpretivism there&#39;s a slightly different angle which is being covered here we&#39;ve got covert and overt participant observations now for us both of which will generate quite a lot of value-laden research overall and because if we go covert or overt it&#39;s going to be the observer&#39;s own integration within the group that would influence their interpretation of what&#39;s happening now what we do have with unstructured interviews is they do not go in with a set of pre-coded questions they may have one or two set questions to get them going in terms of the interview but they will not have a clear guideline as to we&#39;re going to ask this question next and this one afterwards now the reason behind that is it does allow for greater validity overall because what we&#39;re seeing here this is a true to real life picture that is being generated now they also prefer to use field experiments now a field experiment is simply a test carried out within a natural environment and this can mean that we can try to establish cause and effect between identified variables now the only reason why interpreters prefer to use this is it does allow us to un uncover those hidden meanings within naturalistic settings however what we do need to realize is other variables can influence the overall results here now lastly for these secondary methods by which we&#39;re going to be looking at so what we can see for these secondary methods they prefer to use things like official statistics which we collect by charities or governmental agencies that are objective in their nature public documents so again this will be things that are readily available for them to look at so this again could be reports published by the local authority about housing situations as an example then we will have historical data such as parish records would be preferable to use because this will give us a snapshot about the population at the time now they do like to use content analysis [Music] now positivists prefer to use a formal or statistical content analysis now what formal content analysis is that it allows for quantitative data to be generated now this is done by using a systematic sample of text so ensuring that you&#39;ve got a wide range that is collected so therefore you&#39;re not jeopardizing your generalizability here and then a classification system is created now this means that we&#39;ll be looking for themes within the text that emerge as well now once those different themes are all identified what you see with the research is they then count them and then they start to pick up any interesting trends that are occurring with the type types of data or records that they are analyzing meanwhile for secondary methods for interpretivism they prefer to use methods that are a lot more inwardly focused as it were so what we can see there is they prefer to use personal documents such as diaries now this allows us to have greater stay in because for the simple reason we can understand how that person is generally feeling at that moment of time so we can start say actually this is how and why people react and behave that they did within that point we can use public documents now when referring to public documents this can be things such as governmental reports about a scenario event that has occurred in addition to this we can use things like historical documents now we talk about historical data or documents we&#39;re talking about previous reports or information that has been generated for us to look at in addition to this you can use personal documents so this would be a focus on those diaries those photo albums those letters by which we can also begin to analyze about how a person was feeling then they prefer to use a different type of content analysis analysis here which is semiology and now what we&#39;ll talk about semiotic content analysis this means that we&#39;re going to actually try to examine the themes that occur within a text and by doing so we can start to understand why people might be reporting particularly events in the way that they are now as a result of that what we do have we have got greater validity and for staying because we&#39;ve got a true to real life picture happening and uncovering those hidden meanings whilst also understanding why and how people felt at that moment of time now the last part that we&#39;re looking at here is the theoretical perspective so what we see for positivists they take more of a macro approach so what they want to see is actually how society influences individual action so what functions or features have occurred within society that have resulted in people behaving that their way that they have meanwhile interpretivists take more of a micro approach so they want to see how the individual action influences society so this wants to understand actually how individual movements or particular views on scenarios would influence how society reacts and bet becomes the way it does now that we&#39;ve looked at the main ideas behind positivism and interpretivism i&#39;m hoping that you are feeling a little bit more stable in terms of what they actually mean now there are a couple tricky methods out there by which most of us do struggle with and what i&#39;ve tried to do is try to pick on the main ones throughout this as well now documents seems to always be seen as one of the trickier methods as you need to establish if it&#39;s an official document or a personal document and then by doing so and as what we know from the previous slide this will determine the theoretical perspective that would prefer them as well so that will allow you to write your next part the paragraph a little bit easier so for example parish records are statistical data about the community which are intended for analysis this is obviously preferred by positivists as a result whilst diaries and letters will be preferred by interpretivists as they allow for the researcher to uncover the hidden meaning behind data and individuals behavior now what you can see here is the document section actually has quite a lot of crossover in terms of advantages and disadvantages so what we can see is an advantage usually quick easy and free to access due to them being secondary data now this means someone else has already done all the hard work for the researcher so they can access it and do a huge amount of analysis over a range of different documents in addition to this there are generally no ethical issues but obviously what we need to be very much aware of that might change with personal documents now personal documents such as diaries are high in validity as they are not written with an audience in mind so what you do have what you have got here is a document that is really telling us about how an individual group of people lived and how they functioned within society that moment of time and that that&#39;d be quite magical for a researcher because we could start to understand the semiotic nature of society as it were in addition to this historical documents may be the only way of studying behavior overall because we might be looking at a particular thing which might have been outlawed in past society but it&#39;s no longer illegal within our modern society which means we&#39;re going to struggle to try and investigate this subcultural deviant act if it&#39;s legal within our current modern society so those historical documents can render a lot of useful information for us because we can have that snapshot of that moment of time which we are unable to do as modern researchers meanwhile there is a couple of disadvantages with documents overall so there may be legal restrictions in using these public documents so governments or local educational authorities or local authorities might put restrictions on actually how much information you can use from these documents this is obviously because they also want to have vested interest in themselves they don&#39;t want themselves to be painted in a bad picture in terms of how a researcher might be analyzing them as these documents are not designed for the purpose of the research this may cause application issues because what we&#39;re talking about here is they were not created for this sociological research in mind they were created because the government or the local authority wanted to understand their population and their makeup of their population which means that you might have a bit of difficulty in terms of applying some of the data and some of the information to the wider context because it doesn&#39;t quite fit in addition to this personal documents such as diaries and letters may require consent because again they weren&#39;t written with an audience in mind but they weren&#39;t also written for the fact of sociological research so you would have to go speak to those people and ask would it be okay for me to use your diary or your lessons to analyze and understand human behavior in addition to this personal documents can lack validity now the main reason behind that is it can encounter quite a lot of exaggeration or lying about their experiences because what we&#39;ve got to take into account here is there might be a little bit of social desirability going on they might not want to look bad to the person that they&#39;re writing to or sharing information with so therefore we&#39;re not getting a true to real life picture and the last disadvantage here is historical documents lack the ability to check the validity of the original research because a if it&#39;s about a piece of behavior which we cannot we cannot investigate in our modern world we won&#39;t be able to go back and check the validity of the research methods that we used within those historical documents which means we&#39;re going to have a huge amount of issue in terms of validity because we don&#39;t actually know if this is really giving us a true to real life picture of society overall now let&#39;s start talking about some of the exam questions that could emerge overall here now obviously today&#39;s webinar is about paper one and three and now we&#39;re talking about just the questions that could potentially come up with research methods in mind so we&#39;ll look at paper one now you&#39;re very lucky you are going to be given a methods in context question now this is 20 minutes in total so the time that you&#39;ll spend on this particular question is 30 minutes now you will come up with they&#39;ll come up with an item for you to use and this item will give you hints as to what are possible problems with the research in addition to this what you have to be very much aware of is with this item it will also give you contextual information by which you will be expected to use within your answer now all of the ao skills will be present so a01 knowledge and understanding ao2 application will be seen through the use of your sociological knowledge as well as your use of the item and ao3 skills will be used here so this is evaluation and analysis of the research method overall now paper three what we do see here is theory and or methods questions can emerge now this one&#39;s a little bit trickier for us because it can see that it&#39;s an either or type question that could occur within that last particular question area now the time would be about 15 minutes now that you&#39;ll be used to use this overall now what you do are expected to do is outline explain two advantages or disadvantages of using dot dot in sociological research so what you have to do here is provide a very clear and structured approach to this now what we do see here is again all of the assessment objectives will be used and be expected to be seen present and be quite visible within your answer overall now with the use of the methods in context questions you have got two ways in which you could try to deal with the questions overall now one of the ways i will teach today the other ways which you can do but it is a lot of steps to obviously writing your paragraphs overall as well now the first way is obviously the pet model here so this is where you look at the practical issues that arise in the research the ethical issues that arise in the research and then the theoretical issues that arise from the research now we&#39;re going to look through a cheat sheet in a second which will help you through each one of those meanwhile you can also use the pervert model which is what practical issues are there with using this method the ethical issues arising from using this method the reliability of the information that is collected can it be replicated then you question the validity of the information is this a true to real life picture and then you look at examples from research of your own understanding to demonstrate the knowledge of the method so this would be looking at and using examples throughout the whole of your your answer so for example if you get given a study which is talking about covert observations then you&#39;ll be expected to linking lord humphreys research overall as well about the tea room trade and then lastly you&#39;ll be expected to cover the theoretical issues which are the views on positivism interpretivism overall now this little cheat sheet that i&#39;ve created here is just giving you a rough idea as the different things that you look for in your pet model now as we&#39;ve said you are very lucky you get given an item so make sure you&#39;re looking at that item because it will deliver and give you some cues by which you can use so let&#39;s look at some of the practical issues so you&#39;ve got issues such as time and funding and they are big ones because is the method going to take you for too long are you going to get funding from researchers um if you are going to getting funding from a research institution then you&#39;ve got to make sure that it&#39;s not going to be costing them too much so you might have to cut corners or reduce the time frame by which you&#39;re going to research response rate so if you&#39;re going to be using things like questionnaires which are self reports are people actually going to be giving you the type of data that you want because can they actually bother to reply achieving a geographical spread now this means here is if you are sending out or doing a questionnaire you&#39;ve got to make sure that sent out to the whole of the country whilst if you&#39;re doing things like observations you might be finding it impossible to get that geographical spread because it might be focused around in one area now this is a problem because you cannot achieve that geographical spread for the pure simple reason it&#39;s not going to be practically able for you to do so so therefore you&#39;re going to struggle to generalize those results skill of the researcher now this here would be particularly about observers and interviewers have they been trained in the art of observations and interviews if they haven&#39;t then they&#39;re going to struggle to do the research objectively and as well as that not allowing their biases to influence the overall results accessing unique groups could be a huge problem say if you are looking at a deviant group or an anti-school subculture you might find it very difficult to gain access so you might have to try to get through to a gatekeeper as it were and use them to try to gain access you&#39;re going to have some practical issues regarding record recording information if you are a covert observation like lord humphreys then you&#39;re going to struggle to do that because what you&#39;re going to be doing is working and participating within a group but there&#39;s no time for you to get your notepad out and write everything down so you might find things like exaggeration or lying might occur with the researchers documents you have got additional problems of going native so this is participant observations particularly covert one now this is a big practical issue because the researcher overall is assuming the identity of the group by which they are researching and they&#39;re going to start behaving like them so if it&#39;s a deviant act that&#39;s particularly going to be a big issue then you&#39;ve got the criminal behavior conundrum now this is one by which anyone who&#39;s studying anything that involves a criminal act will find it very difficult to try to balance out because if you&#39;re seeing something illegal you&#39;re duty bound to report it but you&#39;ve also got the confidentiality and anonymity of your participant to safeguard as well as a researcher the next point is about ethical issues so if we look at the ethical issues you&#39;ve got things like consent are the participants aware that they&#39;re actually in a piece of research if not then they not might not be aware of their rights that they have got as participants anonymity so we have to give them pseudonyms we have to change their names etc to ensure that they are protected in terms of their identities this would include if you&#39;re doing things like interviews or questionnaires you will have to remove things like personal identifiers now when i reference personal identifiers i&#39;m talking about things like the area by which they live in so if they say that they live in kent as an example then you&#39;re going to find it very very problematic that they referenced it because someone might narrow down that geographical location and that might be putting them at risk then we have got issues regarding psychological and physical harm so what we have got there is actually has will the research lead to them being psychologically damaged so they might have issues around embarrassment trust of a authority figure because of the way in which the researcher has treated them as well as that the physical harm so if they were the gatekeeper that allowed you to gain access is there a possibility that they could encounter some form of physical harm in addition to this confidentiality must be safeguarded at all time and that is obviously insured through anonymity and just ensuring that the research is obviously taking their responsibility as a researcher to a higher level ethical issue about going native now that is a huge issue because what you have got there is someone who is assuming the identity of the group but they are not really part of the group so this overall could mean that they build a really really good rapport with someone which means that they could cause them psychological harm as and when they have to leave the research and then you&#39;ve got the last issue around deception now deception overall there means that they&#39;ve not been told the overall aims the research so they might be lied about or introduced themselves as a member of the group or they might have been told some elements of the research but not the full aims now that in itself could be really damaging for your participants now some of the theoretical bits that you&#39;ve got to consider so is it a positivist piece of research or interpretivist and then obviously you&#39;ve got to balance out your argument using that what type of data is generated so is it qualitative or quantitative have a discussion about the validity or reliability of the research overall then you&#39;ve got representative samples so can it be generalized overall to the wider population then you have the imposition problem whereby the researcher forces the participant to respond in a certain way now they&#39;ve decided which questions are important and how the reason the respondents should reply then overall which could be quite problematic for obviously the overall validity of the research you have got interviewer bias there as well so they might bias the research in a particular way that allows for the conclusions to be met as well as that they may have their own ideas about a participant so if they have got sexist ideology overall they would find it very difficult to remain objective when interviewing a woman and you got vashtayan so obviously building empathy with the group as well you&#39;ve got objectivity and deception which are big theoretical issues as well and then lastly you do have the problems of the hawthorne effect and experimental effects so this simply for the hawthorne effect means that the presence of the researcher or the group being aware of the researcher could mean that their behaviour is changed so which means you&#39;re not going to get a valid picture overall i mean what experimental effects this is the participants behaviour is influenced by the fact that they are involved in a piece of research so by then just volunteering this means that we&#39;re not going to see their true behaviour emerging overall so now we&#39;re just going to apply the pet model to looking at field experiments overall so let&#39;s have a look at what we can use from the cheat sheet to use as practical ethical and theoretical issues now the first practical issue that does emerge is variables cannot be easily controlled for now this is a result of obviously it being in a natural setting so there might be something else that is emerging within the environment that is actually influencing the overall behavior of the group by which you might not even be aware of unique groups can be studied in their natural environments this is fantastic this means things like the hawthorn effect and experimental effects would be lessened or dampened by the influence or the effect of that particular natural environment ethical issues deception and lack of informed consent can lead to psychological and physical harm overall because obviously when we&#39;re in that field experiment we don&#39;t want to allude that we are researchers to an extent because that means that they could potentially change their behavior then we&#39;ve got theoretical issues here so it&#39;s high in validity since we are in their natural environment so we can see that true to real life behavior emerging and being done quite well participants are usually unaware that they are being studied so this is eliminating the hawthorne effect and experimental effects as well and then what we should identify here is theoretical issues interpreters tend to use them as they generate qualitative data so we&#39;re going to get this really value-laden subjective rich depth given data which could obviously allow for us to have a deeper understanding of human behavior overall now that you can see how those practical ethical and theoretical issues are all broken down with an example of the field experiments let&#39;s just bring it back in terms of what we&#39;ve looked at for the document section so let&#39;s just bring it back to the advantages and disadvantages so for the first advantage that we&#39;ve looked at so quick easy and free to access that&#39;s a strong practical advantage then we&#39;ve got a few ethical issues this is a good ethical strength high validity as they are not written with an audience in mind so what we&#39;re going to see there is good strong theoretical nature there because what we&#39;re getting there is data that is high in validity overall historical documents may be the only way of studying social behaviors that&#39;s practical so we&#39;re going to be able to understand behavior and unique groups by which we might not be able to study in our in our modern societies for disadvantages what you see a big practical problem there is legal restrictions and what it&#39;s not designed for the purpose of research so it might cause application issues so that&#39;s again a practical issue um consent may be required before using some documents so what we&#39;re going to have to gain there is obviously ethical clearance from a ethical committee as well as that the person themselves so that could obviously be a big ethical problem with personal documents validity may be lacking due to exaggeration or lying about experiences so that&#39;s to be a theoretical problem because obviously again we&#39;re not getting data that&#39;s high in validity and unable to check the validity of the original research in historical documents so this in itself is a practical problem because you&#39;re unable to go back and test it again yourself so we can&#39;t access that group so that&#39;s why it&#39;s a practical problem but it&#39;s a theoretical because what we&#39;re going to potentially see here is a bit of a methodological problem so we don&#39;t have we are unable to test the validity and the reliability of the research again because it&#39;s based on a unique old subgroup which exists now as we know a 10 mark question can emerge that asks you to explain identify some of the big issues within research now what we do suggest using here is a really nice way of writing which is called our sociological sandwich now we&#39;re going to go through some of the main elements as to what you need to cover now by using this writing method you are able to create a coherent and well structured paragraph which will enable you to get the top marks in terms of your essay structure and response so what you look at top slides there it states the advantage of disadvantage by which they&#39;re asking you to analyze so just be really clear and concise as to what we&#39;re looking at use an example to elaborate your initial points so if you do know a piece of research so if we&#39;re going to look at the glasgow gangs or you can bring in lord humphreys anything like that bring it into your example to elaborate as to why it might have validity or reliability or this is a particular strength of using um this type of research method then what you&#39;re doing for the next bit is you are linking it back to the question here and you&#39;re really getting into that nitty gritty wonderful point of why and how this is an advantage or disadvantage so you&#39;re going to really bring your point back to life then the bottom slice is you&#39;re going to analyze this so this is going to be where your evaluation the real critical thought comes into play so you&#39;re gonna analyze the extent to which this could be seen as an advantage disadvantage is there any similar or supportive evidence available and what insight does it give us in terms of other methods that cannot be used or cannot give us this type of information and how accurate the information is as well in terms of an example what we&#39;re going to look at for a 10 mark question we&#39;re going to look at outline and describe two advantages of using content analysis to understand human behavior now this is the sociological sandwich for that particular question so you can see at the top slice an advantage of a content analysis is that it&#39;s quick and easy method for research to use now the example that we&#39;re using here is the researcher can access public or personal documents easily and create categories to look for as themes or trends within the research then we&#39;re bringing it back and just analyzing it a bit further as a result of using these methods researchers will be able to discover things which may not have been obvious before content analysis was conducted then we have our last little bit of analysis now this is obviously just a brief example now generally the type of data that is produced from the method is quantitative meaning objective conclusions can be drawn readily available sources this obviously means in terms of us it might be high in reliability and validity so theoretically this is a strength of using content analysis now we don&#39;t want to neglect the 20 mark question within today&#39;s webinar now this 20 mark question here is absolutely essential that you apply and use a good structure to it now with the 20 mark methods in context question you were only given 30 minutes to answer this so you need to be really really strict with your time because within the same paper you will have a 30 mark question to answer as well now your heart you are going to be given an item so make sure that you&#39;re using the context context of the research as well as the additional points used as retrieval cues within the research as well now the question will require you to develop your points to depth which means that you have to include both strengths and weaknesses of the pet issues you have identified now if possible use example sociological studies to bring your answer to life just to show off your extra level of depth and information that you&#39;ve got now in terms of essay structure hints and tips here what you do have to make sure is make sure the methods are defined and explained well so you&#39;re doing basic stuff immediately so you know what a structured observation is or a structured interview is you know and you can explain it concisely and accurately be clear and coherent with your explanation of the weaknesses and strengths of the methods so make sure that you are not jumping and flitting between point to point you&#39;re really going to town and bringing it to life make sure you write a conclusion now it&#39;s absolutely crucial if you want to get into the top bands for this particular question a conclusion has to be present so make sure conclusion is written now with the conclusion it has to be something new so make sure you&#39;re bringing in extra bits of information that could really bring it to life that little bit further and then lastly do not neglect the item and the context that is given to you because that will enable you to write to a really level a great level of detail that will allow for you to show off your sociological knowledge to great depth now this is the type of structure that i generally recommend people to use now what you can see here is it&#39;s quite clear concise and accurate as to what you need to do so for the introduction define the method so it will tell you in the question exactly what method you are going to be using i would then say which theoretical perspective would use this method and why so they would use it because it&#39;s high in validity or high reliability or generates this type of data then briefly outline who would not use the method and why so obviously pose the opposite there then use your pet structure within your main bodies this means you can have three really really chunky paragraphs describing what&#39;s going on you&#39;re going to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the method in terms for practical ethical and theoretical highlight how other methods are we call or suggest alternative methods that may eradicate the weaknesses that you&#39;ve identified now throughout all of this make sure you are applying and giving the methods that are being used the context that they are being used in then lastly the conclusion identify one major fundamental strength or weakness and elaborate on it would it be useful for studying this topic now suggest and discuss something new within the conclusion now this is always a strength here you do not regurgitate what you have written within this conclusion you can suggest something which is going to be absolutely fantastic talk about the idea of method methodological pluralism so talk about actually we can use all of these different methodologies so we can use structured interviews and then we talk about getting a participant observation and we can get these two different types of data that then allows us to triangulate the results and it&#39;s given us a piece of research that is both valid and reliable overall so bring that in and make sure you are applying context to it okay now realistically when you look at the 20 mark question now this is just in case some of us haven&#39;t seen it before this is your 20 mark question that can be presented to you which is two very clear paragraphs as to what are given to you now this one is all about field experiments and the effects of streaming so that top paragraph general always be your context second paragraph will be a link to the methods that you are studying whether it&#39;s splattering a context throughout as well then you&#39;ve got your question but you need to be looking at and using the buzzwords to do so now obviously for those of us that been looking at the past specimen papers or examples of past exam papers from the old legacy specification what you are going to see there is students used to be given the choice as to which methods they wanted to analyze and describe you guys are told which methods you have to look at so they&#39;ve done the thinking exercise for you to an extent but you are restricted in terms of choice so this question you have to evaluate the strengths and limitations of using a field experiment and then obviously the context is with the effects of streaming now what i&#39;m going to do is i&#39;m just going to show you a quick little paragraph so you can kind of understand what&#39;s required of you in terms of a structure within a paragraph itself now i&#39;m using the sociological sandwich paragraph just to help you understand as to where each point is going there overall so we&#39;ve got top slice there as do as stated in the item b the research can allocate people in the high streams and let and live streams and measure the effect practical strength of using a field experiment is opportunity to study phenomenas in a natural setting this practical strength as a researcher are age-controlled variables within the experiment this allows for the opportunity for research to establish cause and effects about the effects of streaming on pupil self-esteem self-image and influence on which subculture they would join ultimately allowing a further understanding of on how streaming can influence a pupils outcomes and self-filling prophecies now good bottom slides to themselves our analysis and evaluation overall however a weakness of field experiment is not all variables can be controlled for as in the case with lab experiments other variables within the school itself can influence the overall results such as institutional racism which can explain why certain groups are joining anti-school subcultures and why others are not therefore meaning field experiments will lack reliability as research cannot be easily replicated again to test the results and falsify the hypotheses now as you can see that is how a pet paragraph should really be looking because you&#39;ve got your strengths you&#39;ve got your weaknesses and you&#39;ve got all of your explanations and your depth to your answer being given as well and obviously there are bits and elements of us using context to actually bring the paragraph to life overall now obviously if you are looking to gain any extra help or support there are obviously the additional events that are being run this week as well which you are more than happy to join up to as well as that we have got our twitter so tuesday and obviously join that and we regularly update that with loads of updates in terms of the website etc or if you have got any additional questions and looking for extra support from members of your peer group as well as that from the tutor to you staff we have got a facebook community so this is a level sociology student group there for you to join and access now this was our second webinar about getting ready for paper one and three with research methods and methods in context thanks for listening

hello and welcome to the next webinar for essential sociology getting ready for paper one and three for research methods and methods in context so in today&amp;#39;s webinar what we&amp;#39;re trying to aim for is to discuss some of the areas of concern and some of the difficult research methods that some of us find a bit difficult to get our heads around and also to go through the debate between interpretivism and positivism alongside this we&amp;#39;re going to understand the types of questions that can come up regarding research methods and methods in context and then lastly we are going to explore a writing framework for these essays by which most of you might be familiar with now positive interpretivism tends to be an area by which most of us seem to have some hang ups about now the reason behind this is because they are theoretical perspectives and what we have to recognize is they are associated with specific types of research methods but often when we try to marry the two up that&amp;#39;s where we often find struggling tends to occur now this is often because students can over complicate the two perspectives so what i&amp;#39;m going to try aim to do right now is break them down and give the give a definitive meaning and identity identify the methods associated with each one of these types of theoretical perspectives so it&amp;#39;s about taking a quick snapshot and trying to understand them at a very detailed level okay this is the table by which we&amp;#39;re going to use to try to understand positivism and interpretivism at a really detailed level now you can see i&amp;#39;ve got some main ideas as to what we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at for each one of these theoretical perspectives so the first one is key concepts and ideas so when we&amp;#39;re looking at this we&amp;#39;re trying to understand what each one of these perspectives actually mean and what they really want to promote as a theoretical perspective as well then we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at primary methods so if we&amp;#39;re going to relate to anything it&amp;#39;s a bit like primary data so this is a method that the researcher actually uses themselves to collect the data and what are their preferred methods in terms of collecting this original form of data then we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at secondary methods now again if you&amp;#39;re going to liken that to anything it&amp;#39;s like secondary data in a sense so this is data or publications or methods that are using already existing material to try to analyze and try to gain an insight in human behavior and in the last point we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at the actual theoretical perspective itself so is it a micro or macro theory and what are their views in terms of how society influences the individual [Music] so if we focus first down on positivism&amp;#39;s key concepts and ideas so what we&amp;#39;ve got here it&amp;#39;s scientific so obviously for this method here it believes that sociology in itself should be treated as a science which means things like objectivity and value freedom should be reinforced now when we talk about value freedom what we&amp;#39;re actually stating here is the research should not have any of the researchers own biases or prejudices influencing the research and the way it&amp;#39;s conducted now this may means the way in which the research conducts and how evidence is interpreted would be considered value-free because the researchers biases and prejudices will not be brought into the over overall way that the research is done now there is a huge emphasis on reliability within positivism this simply means that there is a focus on making sure that the research has got the ability to be replicated and repeated and this in itself can link to other areas such if we&amp;#39;re going to look at popper in terms of falsification because we have got the ability to actually test the hypothesis and the theory by which we have created in addition to this they prefer to use representative sampling methods the reason being for this is so that it allows for us to generalize the results so instead of us having a snapshot of very unique individual or collective we have got data that is worthwhile and is beneficial towards society because we&amp;#39;ve taken the time to use methods such as stratified sampling to enable us to have a mini population created in our sample so therefore we know that this is how everyone within our society behaves always expected to behave and then lastly in terms of a key concept and idea the data generally that is used is quantitative in nature and obviously this fitting quite relatively well with the objective idea here because you can only pick up objectively with numbers or statistics what the actual trend of the data is all about in addition to this all of the idea of terms of research it is structured so what we are seeing here is every single piece of data that we are using and research method that we have started to use for research will be extremely structured or have standardized procedures and instructions by which the research will be expected to follow and obviously by doing so this again feeds into the idea of that reliability because we&amp;#39;ll be able to repeat that time and time again now for interpretivism is slightly different now if you look at this it is subjective in nature so this is about us taking the time and trying to understand what we believe is the meaning behind an individual&amp;#39;s behavior now what we do argue here is it will be value-laden so the researchers own ideas and concepts and meanings we brought into the research trying to give us a greater understanding of how and why people feel and behave the way that they do now interpretivists argue that in terms of allow for value-laden research it allows you to have first-aid now the reason behind for staying is that it&amp;#39;s the idea of putting yourself in another person&amp;#39;s shoes as it were this allows you to show empathy in terms of why and how they behave so what you&amp;#39;re really getting into here is understanding the individual&amp;#39;s world view at a very finite level so you&amp;#39;ll be able to completely understand why and how they feel and behave in that particular way now the type of data that is generally generated for interpretivism is qualitative data so this obviously means that this is the thoughts feelings emotions and opinions of the actual research individual that is being promoted throughout so what we&amp;#39;re seeing here is we&amp;#39;re going to see quite a lot of subjective interpretation of this data as well so we&amp;#39;re going to read that out in our own individual ways to try and understand how and why people feel and behave the way that do as a result of this type of method that is used generally everything would be unstructured in nature by allowing us to have a greater freedom to gain a deeper insight of individuals and their behavior overall now in terms of primary methods preferred by positivists are the following so we&amp;#39;ve got the survey now the survey allows us to collect a huge amount of quantitative data for us to then generalize about the wider population so if we take an example here as the census so if we were going to generate and create our own version of the census we would therefore be allowed to create a wealth of information and data which then can be generalized about the wider population then we can use techniques such as self-report questionnaires which are obviously preferred to use the method of closed questions now by doing so we&amp;#39;ll be allowing to create quick forms of data again by which we send out a huge amount of these questionnaires and we could potentially get a more generalizable results then we prefer to use structured interviews now structured interviews mean simply that the researcher will go in with a set of pre-coded questions now this means that the researcher or the interviewer will not stray from these pre-coded questions they will be expected to stay with them and it doesn&amp;#39;t allow for them to probe any deeper below a individual&amp;#39;s response so this feeds into the idea that there&amp;#39;s easy reliability overall now lab experiments are also preferred now for the simple reason that we can say that all variables are controlled for so that there&amp;#39;s not something else that is influencing the overall results so when we&amp;#39;re looking at reliability we&amp;#39;ve got a good standardized set of research methods that are being used here meanwhile for interpretivism there&amp;#39;s a slightly different angle which is being covered here we&amp;#39;ve got covert and overt participant observations now for us both of which will generate quite a lot of value-laden research overall and because if we go covert or overt it&amp;#39;s going to be the observer&amp;#39;s own integration within the group that would influence their interpretation of what&amp;#39;s happening now what we do have with unstructured interviews is they do not go in with a set of pre-coded questions they may have one or two set questions to get them going in terms of the interview but they will not have a clear guideline as to we&amp;#39;re going to ask this question next and this one afterwards now the reason behind that is it does allow for greater validity overall because what we&amp;#39;re seeing here this is a true to real life picture that is being generated now they also prefer to use field experiments now a field experiment is simply a test carried out within a natural environment and this can mean that we can try to establish cause and effect between identified variables now the only reason why interpreters prefer to use this is it does allow us to un uncover those hidden meanings within naturalistic settings however what we do need to realize is other variables can influence the overall results here now lastly for these secondary methods by which we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at so what we can see for these secondary methods they prefer to use things like official statistics which we collect by charities or governmental agencies that are objective in their nature public documents so again this will be things that are readily available for them to look at so this again could be reports published by the local authority about housing situations as an example then we will have historical data such as parish records would be preferable to use because this will give us a snapshot about the population at the time now they do like to use content analysis [Music] now positivists prefer to use a formal or statistical content analysis now what formal content analysis is that it allows for quantitative data to be generated now this is done by using a systematic sample of text so ensuring that you&amp;#39;ve got a wide range that is collected so therefore you&amp;#39;re not jeopardizing your generalizability here and then a classification system is created now this means that we&amp;#39;ll be looking for themes within the text that emerge as well now once those different themes are all identified what you see with the research is they then count them and then they start to pick up any interesting trends that are occurring with the type types of data or records that they are analyzing meanwhile for secondary methods for interpretivism they prefer to use methods that are a lot more inwardly focused as it were so what we can see there is they prefer to use personal documents such as diaries now this allows us to have greater stay in because for the simple reason we can understand how that person is generally feeling at that moment of time so we can start say actually this is how and why people react and behave that they did within that point we can use public documents now when referring to public documents this can be things such as governmental reports about a scenario event that has occurred in addition to this we can use things like historical documents now we talk about historical data or documents we&amp;#39;re talking about previous reports or information that has been generated for us to look at in addition to this you can use personal documents so this would be a focus on those diaries those photo albums those letters by which we can also begin to analyze about how a person was feeling then they prefer to use a different type of content analysis analysis here which is semiology and now what we&amp;#39;ll talk about semiotic content analysis this means that we&amp;#39;re going to actually try to examine the themes that occur within a text and by doing so we can start to understand why people might be reporting particularly events in the way that they are now as a result of that what we do have we have got greater validity and for staying because we&amp;#39;ve got a true to real life picture happening and uncovering those hidden meanings whilst also understanding why and how people felt at that moment of time now the last part that we&amp;#39;re looking at here is the theoretical perspective so what we see for positivists they take more of a macro approach so what they want to see is actually how society influences individual action so what functions or features have occurred within society that have resulted in people behaving that their way that they have meanwhile interpretivists take more of a micro approach so they want to see how the individual action influences society so this wants to understand actually how individual movements or particular views on scenarios would influence how society reacts and bet becomes the way it does now that we&amp;#39;ve looked at the main ideas behind positivism and interpretivism i&amp;#39;m hoping that you are feeling a little bit more stable in terms of what they actually mean now there are a couple tricky methods out there by which most of us do struggle with and what i&amp;#39;ve tried to do is try to pick on the main ones throughout this as well now documents seems to always be seen as one of the trickier methods as you need to establish if it&amp;#39;s an official document or a personal document and then by doing so and as what we know from the previous slide this will determine the theoretical perspective that would prefer them as well so that will allow you to write your next part the paragraph a little bit easier so for example parish records are statistical data about the community which are intended for analysis this is obviously preferred by positivists as a result whilst diaries and letters will be preferred by interpretivists as they allow for the researcher to uncover the hidden meaning behind data and individuals behavior now what you can see here is the document section actually has quite a lot of crossover in terms of advantages and disadvantages so what we can see is an advantage usually quick easy and free to access due to them being secondary data now this means someone else has already done all the hard work for the researcher so they can access it and do a huge amount of analysis over a range of different documents in addition to this there are generally no ethical issues but obviously what we need to be very much aware of that might change with personal documents now personal documents such as diaries are high in validity as they are not written with an audience in mind so what you do have what you have got here is a document that is really telling us about how an individual group of people lived and how they functioned within society that moment of time and that that&amp;#39;d be quite magical for a researcher because we could start to understand the semiotic nature of society as it were in addition to this historical documents may be the only way of studying behavior overall because we might be looking at a particular thing which might have been outlawed in past society but it&amp;#39;s no longer illegal within our modern society which means we&amp;#39;re going to struggle to try and investigate this subcultural deviant act if it&amp;#39;s legal within our current modern society so those historical documents can render a lot of useful information for us because we can have that snapshot of that moment of time which we are unable to do as modern researchers meanwhile there is a couple of disadvantages with documents overall so there may be legal restrictions in using these public documents so governments or local educational authorities or local authorities might put restrictions on actually how much information you can use from these documents this is obviously because they also want to have vested interest in themselves they don&amp;#39;t want themselves to be painted in a bad picture in terms of how a researcher might be analyzing them as these documents are not designed for the purpose of the research this may cause application issues because what we&amp;#39;re talking about here is they were not created for this sociological research in mind they were created because the government or the local authority wanted to understand their population and their makeup of their population which means that you might have a bit of difficulty in terms of applying some of the data and some of the information to the wider context because it doesn&amp;#39;t quite fit in addition to this personal documents such as diaries and letters may require consent because again they weren&amp;#39;t written with an audience in mind but they weren&amp;#39;t also written for the fact of sociological research so you would have to go speak to those people and ask would it be okay for me to use your diary or your lessons to analyze and understand human behavior in addition to this personal documents can lack validity now the main reason behind that is it can encounter quite a lot of exaggeration or lying about their experiences because what we&amp;#39;ve got to take into account here is there might be a little bit of social desirability going on they might not want to look bad to the person that they&amp;#39;re writing to or sharing information with so therefore we&amp;#39;re not getting a true to real life picture and the last disadvantage here is historical documents lack the ability to check the validity of the original research because a if it&amp;#39;s about a piece of behavior which we cannot we cannot investigate in our modern world we won&amp;#39;t be able to go back and check the validity of the research methods that we used within those historical documents which means we&amp;#39;re going to have a huge amount of issue in terms of validity because we don&amp;#39;t actually know if this is really giving us a true to real life picture of society overall now let&amp;#39;s start talking about some of the exam questions that could emerge overall here now obviously today&amp;#39;s webinar is about paper one and three and now we&amp;#39;re talking about just the questions that could potentially come up with research methods in mind so we&amp;#39;ll look at paper one now you&amp;#39;re very lucky you are going to be given a methods in context question now this is 20 minutes in total so the time that you&amp;#39;ll spend on this particular question is 30 minutes now you will come up with they&amp;#39;ll come up with an item for you to use and this item will give you hints as to what are possible problems with the research in addition to this what you have to be very much aware of is with this item it will also give you contextual information by which you will be expected to use within your answer now all of the ao skills will be present so a01 knowledge and understanding ao2 application will be seen through the use of your sociological knowledge as well as your use of the item and ao3 skills will be used here so this is evaluation and analysis of the research method overall now paper three what we do see here is theory and or methods questions can emerge now this one&amp;#39;s a little bit trickier for us because it can see that it&amp;#39;s an either or type question that could occur within that last particular question area now the time would be about 15 minutes now that you&amp;#39;ll be used to use this overall now what you do are expected to do is outline explain two advantages or disadvantages of using dot dot in sociological research so what you have to do here is provide a very clear and structured approach to this now what we do see here is again all of the assessment objectives will be used and be expected to be seen present and be quite visible within your answer overall now with the use of the methods in context questions you have got two ways in which you could try to deal with the questions overall now one of the ways i will teach today the other ways which you can do but it is a lot of steps to obviously writing your paragraphs overall as well now the first way is obviously the pet model here so this is where you look at the practical issues that arise in the research the ethical issues that arise in the research and then the theoretical issues that arise from the research now we&amp;#39;re going to look through a cheat sheet in a second which will help you through each one of those meanwhile you can also use the pervert model which is what practical issues are there with using this method the ethical issues arising from using this method the reliability of the information that is collected can it be replicated then you question the validity of the information is this a true to real life picture and then you look at examples from research of your own understanding to demonstrate the knowledge of the method so this would be looking at and using examples throughout the whole of your your answer so for example if you get given a study which is talking about covert observations then you&amp;#39;ll be expected to linking lord humphreys research overall as well about the tea room trade and then lastly you&amp;#39;ll be expected to cover the theoretical issues which are the views on positivism interpretivism overall now this little cheat sheet that i&amp;#39;ve created here is just giving you a rough idea as the different things that you look for in your pet model now as we&amp;#39;ve said you are very lucky you get given an item so make sure you&amp;#39;re looking at that item because it will deliver and give you some cues by which you can use so let&amp;#39;s look at some of the practical issues so you&amp;#39;ve got issues such as time and funding and they are big ones because is the method going to take you for too long are you going to get funding from researchers um if you are going to getting funding from a research institution then you&amp;#39;ve got to make sure that it&amp;#39;s not going to be costing them too much so you might have to cut corners or reduce the time frame by which you&amp;#39;re going to research response rate so if you&amp;#39;re going to be using things like questionnaires which are self reports are people actually going to be giving you the type of data that you want because can they actually bother to reply achieving a geographical spread now this means here is if you are sending out or doing a questionnaire you&amp;#39;ve got to make sure that sent out to the whole of the country whilst if you&amp;#39;re doing things like observations you might be finding it impossible to get that geographical spread because it might be focused around in one area now this is a problem because you cannot achieve that geographical spread for the pure simple reason it&amp;#39;s not going to be practically able for you to do so so therefore you&amp;#39;re going to struggle to generalize those results skill of the researcher now this here would be particularly about observers and interviewers have they been trained in the art of observations and interviews if they haven&amp;#39;t then they&amp;#39;re going to struggle to do the research objectively and as well as that not allowing their biases to influence the overall results accessing unique groups could be a huge problem say if you are looking at a deviant group or an anti-school subculture you might find it very difficult to gain access so you might have to try to get through to a gatekeeper as it were and use them to try to gain access you&amp;#39;re going to have some practical issues regarding record recording information if you are a covert observation like lord humphreys then you&amp;#39;re going to struggle to do that because what you&amp;#39;re going to be doing is working and participating within a group but there&amp;#39;s no time for you to get your notepad out and write everything down so you might find things like exaggeration or lying might occur with the researchers documents you have got additional problems of going native so this is participant observations particularly covert one now this is a big practical issue because the researcher overall is assuming the identity of the group by which they are researching and they&amp;#39;re going to start behaving like them so if it&amp;#39;s a deviant act that&amp;#39;s particularly going to be a big issue then you&amp;#39;ve got the criminal behavior conundrum now this is one by which anyone who&amp;#39;s studying anything that involves a criminal act will find it very difficult to try to balance out because if you&amp;#39;re seeing something illegal you&amp;#39;re duty bound to report it but you&amp;#39;ve also got the confidentiality and anonymity of your participant to safeguard as well as a researcher the next point is about ethical issues so if we look at the ethical issues you&amp;#39;ve got things like consent are the participants aware that they&amp;#39;re actually in a piece of research if not then they not might not be aware of their rights that they have got as participants anonymity so we have to give them pseudonyms we have to change their names etc to ensure that they are protected in terms of their identities this would include if you&amp;#39;re doing things like interviews or questionnaires you will have to remove things like personal identifiers now when i reference personal identifiers i&amp;#39;m talking about things like the area by which they live in so if they say that they live in kent as an example then you&amp;#39;re going to find it very very problematic that they referenced it because someone might narrow down that geographical location and that might be putting them at risk then we have got issues regarding psychological and physical harm so what we have got there is actually has will the research lead to them being psychologically damaged so they might have issues around embarrassment trust of a authority figure because of the way in which the researcher has treated them as well as that the physical harm so if they were the gatekeeper that allowed you to gain access is there a possibility that they could encounter some form of physical harm in addition to this confidentiality must be safeguarded at all time and that is obviously insured through anonymity and just ensuring that the research is obviously taking their responsibility as a researcher to a higher level ethical issue about going native now that is a huge issue because what you have got there is someone who is assuming the identity of the group but they are not really part of the group so this overall could mean that they build a really really good rapport with someone which means that they could cause them psychological harm as and when they have to leave the research and then you&amp;#39;ve got the last issue around deception now deception overall there means that they&amp;#39;ve not been told the overall aims the research so they might be lied about or introduced themselves as a member of the group or they might have been told some elements of the research but not the full aims now that in itself could be really damaging for your participants now some of the theoretical bits that you&amp;#39;ve got to consider so is it a positivist piece of research or interpretivist and then obviously you&amp;#39;ve got to balance out your argument using that what type of data is generated so is it qualitative or quantitative have a discussion about the validity or reliability of the research overall then you&amp;#39;ve got representative samples so can it be generalized overall to the wider population then you have the imposition problem whereby the researcher forces the participant to respond in a certain way now they&amp;#39;ve decided which questions are important and how the reason the respondents should reply then overall which could be quite problematic for obviously the overall validity of the research you have got interviewer bias there as well so they might bias the research in a particular way that allows for the conclusions to be met as well as that they may have their own ideas about a participant so if they have got sexist ideology overall they would find it very difficult to remain objective when interviewing a woman and you got vashtayan so obviously building empathy with the group as well you&amp;#39;ve got objectivity and deception which are big theoretical issues as well and then lastly you do have the problems of the hawthorne effect and experimental effects so this simply for the hawthorne effect means that the presence of the researcher or the group being aware of the researcher could mean that their behaviour is changed so which means you&amp;#39;re not going to get a valid picture overall i mean what experimental effects this is the participants behaviour is influenced by the fact that they are involved in a piece of research so by then just volunteering this means that we&amp;#39;re not going to see their true behaviour emerging overall so now we&amp;#39;re just going to apply the pet model to looking at field experiments overall so let&amp;#39;s have a look at what we can use from the cheat sheet to use as practical ethical and theoretical issues now the first practical issue that does emerge is variables cannot be easily controlled for now this is a result of obviously it being in a natural setting so there might be something else that is emerging within the environment that is actually influencing the overall behavior of the group by which you might not even be aware of unique groups can be studied in their natural environments this is fantastic this means things like the hawthorn effect and experimental effects would be lessened or dampened by the influence or the effect of that particular natural environment ethical issues deception and lack of informed consent can lead to psychological and physical harm overall because obviously when we&amp;#39;re in that field experiment we don&amp;#39;t want to allude that we are researchers to an extent because that means that they could potentially change their behavior then we&amp;#39;ve got theoretical issues here so it&amp;#39;s high in validity since we are in their natural environment so we can see that true to real life behavior emerging and being done quite well participants are usually unaware that they are being studied so this is eliminating the hawthorne effect and experimental effects as well and then what we should identify here is theoretical issues interpreters tend to use them as they generate qualitative data so we&amp;#39;re going to get this really value-laden subjective rich depth given data which could obviously allow for us to have a deeper understanding of human behavior overall now that you can see how those practical ethical and theoretical issues are all broken down with an example of the field experiments let&amp;#39;s just bring it back in terms of what we&amp;#39;ve looked at for the document section so let&amp;#39;s just bring it back to the advantages and disadvantages so for the first advantage that we&amp;#39;ve looked at so quick easy and free to access that&amp;#39;s a strong practical advantage then we&amp;#39;ve got a few ethical issues this is a good ethical strength high validity as they are not written with an audience in mind so what we&amp;#39;re going to see there is good strong theoretical nature there because what we&amp;#39;re getting there is data that is high in validity overall historical documents may be the only way of studying social behaviors that&amp;#39;s practical so we&amp;#39;re going to be able to understand behavior and unique groups by which we might not be able to study in our in our modern societies for disadvantages what you see a big practical problem there is legal restrictions and what it&amp;#39;s not designed for the purpose of research so it might cause application issues so that&amp;#39;s again a practical issue um consent may be required before using some documents so what we&amp;#39;re going to have to gain there is obviously ethical clearance from a ethical committee as well as that the person themselves so that could obviously be a big ethical problem with personal documents validity may be lacking due to exaggeration or lying about experiences so that&amp;#39;s to be a theoretical problem because obviously again we&amp;#39;re not getting data that&amp;#39;s high in validity and unable to check the validity of the original research in historical documents so this in itself is a practical problem because you&amp;#39;re unable to go back and test it again yourself so we can&amp;#39;t access that group so that&amp;#39;s why it&amp;#39;s a practical problem but it&amp;#39;s a theoretical because what we&amp;#39;re going to potentially see here is a bit of a methodological problem so we don&amp;#39;t have we are unable to test the validity and the reliability of the research again because it&amp;#39;s based on a unique old subgroup which exists now as we know a 10 mark question can emerge that asks you to explain identify some of the big issues within research now what we do suggest using here is a really nice way of writing which is called our sociological sandwich now we&amp;#39;re going to go through some of the main elements as to what you need to cover now by using this writing method you are able to create a coherent and well structured paragraph which will enable you to get the top marks in terms of your essay structure and response so what you look at top slides there it states the advantage of disadvantage by which they&amp;#39;re asking you to analyze so just be really clear and concise as to what we&amp;#39;re looking at use an example to elaborate your initial points so if you do know a piece of research so if we&amp;#39;re going to look at the glasgow gangs or you can bring in lord humphreys anything like that bring it into your example to elaborate as to why it might have validity or reliability or this is a particular strength of using um this type of research method then what you&amp;#39;re doing for the next bit is you are linking it back to the question here and you&amp;#39;re really getting into that nitty gritty wonderful point of why and how this is an advantage or disadvantage so you&amp;#39;re going to really bring your point back to life then the bottom slice is you&amp;#39;re going to analyze this so this is going to be where your evaluation the real critical thought comes into play so you&amp;#39;re gonna analyze the extent to which this could be seen as an advantage disadvantage is there any similar or supportive evidence available and what insight does it give us in terms of other methods that cannot be used or cannot give us this type of information and how accurate the information is as well in terms of an example what we&amp;#39;re going to look at for a 10 mark question we&amp;#39;re going to look at outline and describe two advantages of using content analysis to understand human behavior now this is the sociological sandwich for that particular question so you can see at the top slice an advantage of a content analysis is that it&amp;#39;s quick and easy method for research to use now the example that we&amp;#39;re using here is the researcher can access public or personal documents easily and create categories to look for as themes or trends within the research then we&amp;#39;re bringing it back and just analyzing it a bit further as a result of using these methods researchers will be able to discover things which may not have been obvious before content analysis was conducted then we have our last little bit of analysis now this is obviously just a brief example now generally the type of data that is produced from the method is quantitative meaning objective conclusions can be drawn readily available sources this obviously means in terms of us it might be high in reliability and validity so theoretically this is a strength of using content analysis now we don&amp;#39;t want to neglect the 20 mark question within today&amp;#39;s webinar now this 20 mark question here is absolutely essential that you apply and use a good structure to it now with the 20 mark methods in context question you were only given 30 minutes to answer this so you need to be really really strict with your time because within the same paper you will have a 30 mark question to answer as well now your heart you are going to be given an item so make sure that you&amp;#39;re using the context context of the research as well as the additional points used as retrieval cues within the research as well now the question will require you to develop your points to depth which means that you have to include both strengths and weaknesses of the pet issues you have identified now if possible use example sociological studies to bring your answer to life just to show off your extra level of depth and information that you&amp;#39;ve got now in terms of essay structure hints and tips here what you do have to make sure is make sure the methods are defined and explained well so you&amp;#39;re doing basic stuff immediately so you know what a structured observation is or a structured interview is you know and you can explain it concisely and accurately be clear and coherent with your explanation of the weaknesses and strengths of the methods so make sure that you are not jumping and flitting between point to point you&amp;#39;re really going to town and bringing it to life make sure you write a conclusion now it&amp;#39;s absolutely crucial if you want to get into the top bands for this particular question a conclusion has to be present so make sure conclusion is written now with the conclusion it has to be something new so make sure you&amp;#39;re bringing in extra bits of information that could really bring it to life that little bit further and then lastly do not neglect the item and the context that is given to you because that will enable you to write to a really level a great level of detail that will allow for you to show off your sociological knowledge to great depth now this is the type of structure that i generally recommend people to use now what you can see here is it&amp;#39;s quite clear concise and accurate as to what you need to do so for the introduction define the method so it will tell you in the question exactly what method you are going to be using i would then say which theoretical perspective would use this method and why so they would use it because it&amp;#39;s high in validity or high reliability or generates this type of data then briefly outline who would not use the method and why so obviously pose the opposite there then use your pet structure within your main bodies this means you can have three really really chunky paragraphs describing what&amp;#39;s going on you&amp;#39;re going to outline the strengths and weaknesses of the method in terms for practical ethical and theoretical highlight how other methods are we call or suggest alternative methods that may eradicate the weaknesses that you&amp;#39;ve identified now throughout all of this make sure you are applying and giving the methods that are being used the context that they are being used in then lastly the conclusion identify one major fundamental strength or weakness and elaborate on it would it be useful for studying this topic now suggest and discuss something new within the conclusion now this is always a strength here you do not regurgitate what you have written within this conclusion you can suggest something which is going to be absolutely fantastic talk about the idea of method methodological pluralism so talk about actually we can use all of these different methodologies so we can use structured interviews and then we talk about getting a participant observation and we can get these two different types of data that then allows us to triangulate the results and it&amp;#39;s given us a piece of research that is both valid and reliable overall so bring that in and make sure you are applying context to it okay now realistically when you look at the 20 mark question now this is just in case some of us haven&amp;#39;t seen it before this is your 20 mark question that can be presented to you which is two very clear paragraphs as to what are given to you now this one is all about field experiments and the effects of streaming so that top paragraph general always be your context second paragraph will be a link to the methods that you are studying whether it&amp;#39;s splattering a context throughout as well then you&amp;#39;ve got your question but you need to be looking at and using the buzzwords to do so now obviously for those of us that been looking at the past specimen papers or examples of past exam papers from the old legacy specification what you are going to see there is students used to be given the choice as to which methods they wanted to analyze and describe you guys are told which methods you have to look at so they&amp;#39;ve done the thinking exercise for you to an extent but you are restricted in terms of choice so this question you have to evaluate the strengths and limitations of using a field experiment and then obviously the context is with the effects of streaming now what i&amp;#39;m going to do is i&amp;#39;m just going to show you a quick little paragraph so you can kind of understand what&amp;#39;s required of you in terms of a structure within a paragraph itself now i&amp;#39;m using the sociological sandwich paragraph just to help you understand as to where each point is going there overall so we&amp;#39;ve got top slice there as do as stated in the item b the research can allocate people in the high streams and let and live streams and measure the effect practical strength of using a field experiment is opportunity to study phenomenas in a natural setting this practical strength as a researcher are age-controlled variables within the experiment this allows for the opportunity for research to establish cause and effects about the effects of streaming on pupil self-esteem self-image and influence on which subculture they would join ultimately allowing a further understanding of on how streaming can influence a pupils outcomes and self-filling prophecies now good bottom slides to themselves our analysis and evaluation overall however a weakness of field experiment is not all variables can be controlled for as in the case with lab experiments other variables within the school itself can influence the overall results such as institutional racism which can explain why certain groups are joining anti-school subcultures and why others are not therefore meaning field experiments will lack reliability as research cannot be easily replicated again to test the results and falsify the hypotheses now as you can see that is how a pet paragraph should really be looking because you&amp;#39;ve got your strengths you&amp;#39;ve got your weaknesses and you&amp;#39;ve got all of your explanations and your depth to your answer being given as well and obviously there are bits and elements of us using context to actually bring the paragraph to life overall now obviously if you are looking to gain any extra help or support there are obviously the additional events that are being run this week as well which you are more than happy to join up to as well as that we have got our twitter so tuesday and obviously join that and we regularly update that with loads of updates in terms of the website etc or if you have got any additional questions and looking for extra support from members of your peer group as well as that from the tutor to you staff we have got a facebook community so this is a level sociology student group there for you to join and access now this was our second webinar about getting ready for paper one and three with research methods and methods in context thanks for listening

Transcript for:Essential Sociology Webinar: Research Methods and Methods in Context

Transcript for:
Essential Sociology Webinar: Research Methods and Methods in Context