hello and welcome to unit 2 methods of research uh the second part we're going to look at approaches to sociological research so this is the second part of the unit and in the next video we're going to look at research issues so within this video we're going to look at use of approaches on research methods uh the mixed method approach the positivist and interpretivist approach and debate of Science and sociology so we're going to start looking at not really research methods like we did last video but techniques so these are like categories of the research methods we have looked so firstly case studies this would include uh like this is basically when a researcher studies a really small group so it can include stuff like group interviews or even like observation like when the researchers join groups um so the strength of these like because I'm going to be talking about like the strength and limitations of each which are quite Universal and here's just a tip like if you know these general ones like they can obviously ask for like Pace studies um and the rest that we look at um like these approaches for the strs and limitations but also like um if you get asked a research method that you know is a case study or the rest we're going to look at like part of that category of approaches those strength and limitations you can also apply them um so it's really good to know them um well you still have to know them because they can ask particularly about them but you know you can apply them to the research methods of each category that makes sense so the strength are that data has a lot of depth and detail because researchers obviously focus on one single group and because it has depth and detailed it is more valid obviously and also large amounts of data can be collected in a cost effective way like the researcher doesn't have to spend too much money like they're just studying one single group but because they study like in so much depth they get a large like a large amount of data like a lot of data so that's really cost- effective however the limitations are that they demand a lot of skill from the researchers because of these detailed detailed nature like they have to get so much information that it does take a lot of skill and because of that same information it does take a lot of time as well like up to months or years sometimes and because it's like a small group it's difficult to generalize so it's not representative um usually so the next one is social service and this would include things like questionnaires and structured and semi-structured interviews so it wouldn't include uh unstructured interviews because those don't have like pre-coded questions so the strengths are that they do tend to be representative of groups um because like researchers will send them out to a lot of people um and they usually do look for representative uh representativity because they want to generalize results so that's a strength like researchers can generalize um the results um and particularly like cross-sectional surveys they can explain differences in behaviors by changing variables so cross-sectional surveys are when a like researcher identifies a group with like similar similarities uh like broad similarities sorry such as like level of education and then they measure differences with a single variable such as like do people with higher educations have higher marriage rates um so those are particularly useful to explain difference in behavior and then limitations are that they have a low response rate uh researchers don't know who has answered um unless it's in person like uh structured and semi-structured interview like that would be particularly for questionnaires and it's also like a really cold method for sensitive topics which might be better to use an unstructured interview like a conversation where the researcher can build trust with the respondent um then we have ethnographic and this is basically like a really inp study of a group or culture um but like differently to case studies it's when the researcher does go in the daily life of participants and like it involves a lot of things like um obviously it involves observation way it's quite similar to case studies but like it just involves a lot more like researchers can use like a variety of methods like they will look at documents photograph di Diaries um they might use uh unstructured interviews so like they really get in the life of the people they're studying um so the strengths are that it's quite extensive it's very in-depth and detailed data again that's means that the like findings are high in validity um verse to H is achieved and that's a concept we looked in the previous video where like uh researchers understand by experiencing and it's a concept I think introduced by Weber you would have to reference him if you talk about that and Rapport is also achieved which is like trust with the respondents like because they allow you in their lives and you kind of build trust with them they're more likely to open up and um when you ask questions um they're more likely to answer honestly that actually both both of those actually increase validity the limitations are that it's timec consuming for researchers obviously they have to get in the life of these people of this culture or usually it's like from different cultures but not necessarily um also because the researcher has to like observe them um that's what's involed in observation but also like when they look at their documents photographs and Diaries they have to take subjective interpretation and even just like observing their day-to-day life it might lead to obser a bias like they might be biased um and make subjective conclusions which might actually um lower the validity and reliability yeah moving to reliability actually it's really hard to replicate um to find the same group and similar researchers to replicate like it's just really hard because groups are so particular so it's not really reliable and lastly again like case studies because it focuses on one group it's not representative and you can't um generalize results and then moving to longitudinal studies the strength of these well first of all these is a study that takes place over a long period of time um and the researcher might use questionnaires for example like every month they might send questionnaires to this group of people or non participant observation whether like they observe their lives but they don't participate in that basically it's just any research method can be used but it's just like it just like the research itself takes a long period of time like years um because they want to track changes with time so yeah the strength are obviously that researchers can track personal social changes over long periods of time and find Trends uh Trends they usually remain hidden if you like just study like for example like case study a group for like even a few months like that you can't find exactly like Trends as you would if you study them for like years um and they usually are based on representative samples um because researchers obviously dedicate so much time they do want to have a representative uh group and and they can be really used to suest correlations and cations again kind of similar to like how they can incover Trends um and then limitations are that they can be sample attrition which is like when a number of people um drop out and that actually reduces the representativeness of the sample so like the type of people who remain are certain type of people so the study only like the results only applies to those category of people and people who dropped out you know just like reduces their representativeness of course like if kind of like the sample selects itself um and Sample attrition might happen that's actually a risk that increases with time but it might happen because people lose interest or they move away or they move away without the contact details or sometimes they might just die um so yeah that obviously increases with time and then uh the other limitation is that they so it does like researchers can identify Trends but they don't really explain them um so they can be criticized for lacking depth and detail so the main exact question you would have for the use of approaches would be kind of similar to the one we looked for research methods before it would be explain one strength and one limitation or two strengths or two limitations off and then the research approach and then you would do the same thing like point you name one explain why it has such a strength or limitation and then explain why it's a strength or limitation so we're going to look at mix methods and there's two key words and they look really similar but they actually are different so on one hand um we have meth methodological pluralism M it's quite tricky to anounce and that's the theoretical argument for combining research methods um so the like reason why it's a good thing to combine a research method is because they complement each other and you can use one um like to like kind of upset the weaknesses of one method like we'll look at that later for example like you might use a quantitative method and a qualitative method so that you get both valid and reliable data in the research um and then triangulation is the actual practice of using more than one method in sociological research um but yeah um for example you might use uh questionnaires um on unstructured interviews so the questionnaires are very reliable because they can be repeated so they give reliable data but sometimes they're criticize because it's not exactly that valid data but in an instructed interview um researchers can respond freely and as at the length they want and they open up because there's Rapport like confidence and trust build so dat is a lot more valid so but it's not that reliable because you can't really repeat an unstructured interview and compare answers so if you use both of them in a research that like makes the research much better so that's an example of how like it would be beneficial to like why like the theoretical argument for combining the research is because they complement each other um and then yeah so triangulation strengths like there's multiple strengths um and also there's different ways of translation like it like some people just think like some students just think that it's using more than one type of method but it also can be um different researchers using the same method um and if if that like the strength of that would be that if they arve to the same results they can confirm the reliability of data um and another thing that can be done is like using researchers from different ethnic uh groups a age groups gender and class uh to avoid Observer and interview bias so if if they use different researchers and plus they're like from different social groups uh that not only confirms reliability but it can also avoid Observer and interview bias so that's two different strengths kind of um and this is particularly true when the method involves interpretations um like the second part like using researches from different social groups um if the method is kind of like involves interpretation for example um because I already said instruction interv before let's go back to that example um there's really long responses and it's not just like pre-coded like there's a certain amount of responses like certain possibility of responses like respondents can answer freely so then the like interviewer has to like Analyze That and come to conclusions so that that's a method that involves interpretation so for those methods that do involve interpretation it's really useful to to avoid bias use researches in different groups uh the limitations are however that it does add another layer of time effort and expense that's because like first of all there's more there needs to be more time to analyze data and sometimes it may not be easy to compare a data um if they're like for example one method is quantitative and the other one is qualitative it might be hard to like um compare and sometimes data might contradict each other so if like two different methods show different results um and reach different like opposing conclusions it might be really hard for the researcher to then choose uh which one to believe or which one to choose to uh show in the research um or they might have to repeat the investigation all together again um they also more money because they need to employ more researchers actually that's also more time because they actually like whoever is leading the research has to find those researchers and it's just harder to coordinate because the research is larger so the exam questions you would have for this is um explain two reasons well this is obviously one of like the like the main choice that you would get but obviously could be anything but this is one that does come out quite a lot at least when I was doing the exams and it's explained two reasons why sociologists may use either triangulation or methodological pluralism and it's an eight marker so you would make a point then you explain then you give evidence and example Le and then you kind of like the last sentence would be like an analysis or link to the question again um so what I would do is for examp like the example part just use like a research method and show the Str limitations how they would complement like the example I gave before um maybe you could have like one paragraph um because you would do this twice right to get like four marks uh and four marks so you maybe you wouldd have like a paragraph combining like those strs and limitations like how that works with like how good is to combine quantitative and qualitative data which is the one I said and then maybe you would have another paragraph of like how good it is to use different researchers but obviously you have to point explain evidence the example is the most important part and then like analyze that so then positivism is it's like an interpret like a approach is L sociology but not like well yeah it's actually related also to research methods but it's like an entirely different thing to what we were looking at before like it's not a category of research method it's it's like a belief of how sociology should be studied and there's positivism and then there's interpretivist interpretivism and they're they're opposite so positivists believe that sociology should be studied like science and sociology should use a scientific method so that would involve like systematic observation accurate testing quantitative measurements um they prefer to study Society in a macro level that means like because they believe institutions and social structures affect individuals right they want to study how that happens um so they look at macro level like not at they don't study individuals but rather these social institutions like that includes like stuff like education family uh religion the media those those things that we're going to look more in further units so they value objectivity value freedom and reliability so they prefer quantitative methods again all of those like all of those things are like in the sciences and the primary goal is to explain the general rules of behavior but not describe them so like they just want to identify this causes it's like science like they they want like in science there's nature nature laws if that makes sense like like things that will happen because they happen but they don't want to like explain them they just want to like kind of identify them more or like explain what they are but not like why they are that way so looking closely to science um just to understand positivism a bit more science is both valid and reliable um it has a set of procedures like the hypothe hypothetical deductive method um and that's where like a hypothesis or research question is set and then there's like data collection and then conclusion based on tested facts that's important part like they're tested um and then there's scientific ethos which is like science has to be evaluated with universal criteria it has to be like communal so like it has to be published for everyone this in trust and skeptical like nothing is beyond criticism and that's the main part like when a research is published it's it's true until it's disproven that's the thing about science like it can it's always open to being disproved um and that's what the positivists want to kind of follow um because they believe that um sociology should and can be studied like Sciences however interpretivists believe that sociology can't be like science because people do have free will over their choices um we're not like programmed in a way like we're not like this kind of links back to the nature versus nurture um debate but like they believe that we don't act how we act because of nature like we like um do like have a choice over how we act and humans are unpredictable so they can't be studied like the natural world so they study Society in a micro level that means like studying individuals and how they make sense of the world and create meanings that's the main like thing they would focus is meanings um because they believe that individuals give meanings to things and look at things um like they want to look things in the context of individuals to understand that and what shapes their choices and their behavior um so they believe that sociologist should acknowledge their values and allow a degree of subjectivity so whilst they don't want to be entirely like not objective they believe that it's better to like acknowledge your values in their research and then let other people judge whether you were good at keeping them out of the research but they do believe that so sociology should accept them and be open about them in their research um they favor validity so they prefer qualitative methods um and the primary goal is to describe and understand people's behavior so they really value par ipation because of ver to him like understanding by experiencing because again according to them individuals create Society um and they believe that behavioral rules are context bound so they just really want to get into like people's life and understand their perspective and how they act why they act to like uncover um like sociology so the exam questions and these are basically the same the exam questions for the use of approaches uh would be to what extent should sociologist value interpretivist methods over positive methods or you would have it the other way around or to what extent should sociologist use scientific methods in sociology so again like the second question scientific methods would basically mean positivism um in sociology um and then I'm not going to go now into how you would answer these I'll probably do this in a later video over exam technique um but basically these are both essay questions and you would have to bring in like examples like sociologists um you would have to have a balanced answer so like in favor and against um Etc and finally U some key sociologist so you have denzen which he argues that triangulation allows researchers to offset the weakness of one method with the strength of another that's basically what we said before but he's the one who said it so you would have to reference him uh mer argues that a scientific eths is required to make sure that scientists all follow the same procedures like well he basically just argued scientific eths is required I just added this part because it's what it says like in the CH book um but yeah just he actually just said the first part um and then comp argues for he's actually the one who established positivist approach in sociology arguing that sociology is the science and can discover laws of human behavior like scientists can incover laws of natural world and nature and that's the end of this lesson I hope you found it useful and please like And subscribe to the channel if you um found it useful and share if you have if you know any classmates who might also um like the video thank you for watching