1. http://www.educationforum.co.uk 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)

2. http://www.educationforum.co.uk 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)

3. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Research Methods In order to find out information about society sociologists use a range of research methods.

4. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Research Methods Primary Methods Refers to information collected by the researcher It did not exist before

5. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Research Methods Secondary Methods Refers to data which already exists

6. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Research Methods quantitative qualitative Interpretivist Positivist

7. http://www.educationforum.co.uk 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

8. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Qualitative Data Data in word form Harder to analyse than stats Often seen as more valid data than quantitative

9. http://www.educationforum.co.uk Validity i.e how true a picture does the data give how close to real life is it?

10. http://www.educationforum.co.uk 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