Research Methods Summary Having completed and printed all earlier stages of the online lesson, read and take notes from this PowerPoint online lessononline lesson (based on a resource found at esociology)

Research Methods Although there are no hard and fast rules about which methods are best, some have become associated more with a positivist approach (experiments, questionnaires) and some with interactionist or interpretivist approaches (participant observation)

Research Methods In order to find out information about society sociologists use a range of research methods.

Research Methods Primary Methods Refers to information collected by the researcher It did not exist before

Research Methods Secondary Methods Refers to data which already exists

Research Methods quantitative qualitative Interpretivist Positivist

Quantitative data Data in numerical form – statistics Tables etc can be made of them Helpful for looking at correlations/relationships between factors Often seen as more reliable data than qualitative

Qualitative Data Data in word form Harder to analyse than stats Often seen as more valid data than quantitative

Validity i.e how true a picture does the data give how close to real life is it?

Reliability Data is reliable when different researchers can repeat the research – using the same methods and getting the same results Return to Lesson Home Return to Lesson Home