Sociology
as a
Science
* Something is scientific when it uses
EMPIRICISM (knowledge gained from actually
experiencing and / or observing something)
AND
* OBJECTIVITY where the research
does not involve opinions, or
bias or prejudice.
Objectivity & Subjectivity.
1. Introduction to Social Research
The Aim of Sociological Research
To move from subjective to more objective
knowledge of something:
Subjective
knowledge
An individual’s everyday
understanding that comes
from their values,
experiences and beliefs.
Objective
knowledge
Knowledge that is
independent of opinion,
prejudice and bias.
© onlineclassroom.tv 2007
POSITIVISM
Interpretivism
* Sociology should be totally
value-free.
* Sociology should be value
relevant, but cannot be value-free.
* Sociology should study
observable stuff: social facts, that
can be recorded as quantitative
data so correlations can be
identified between variables.
* Sociologists will use their
subjective feelings to identify a
research topic & the concepts they
feel are relevant.
* But sociologists can be objective
in how they carry out their
research, once they’ve
identified concepts.
CORE DEBATE:
Can or should Sociology be value free?
Should all bias be removed from Sociological
research?
What if you were going to do some feminist
research on women wearing Burkas?
Values in the research process:
Choosing
which topic
to research.
Interpreting
findings.
Selecting
which
findings to
include in
the report.
Getting
funding.
Choosing a
research
method.
Operationalising
key concepts.
Recording
responses.
Selecting
appropriate
questions.
Deciding
what report
will be used
for.
Deciding
where report
will be
published.
All these values and considerations make it very
hard for Sociologists to remain objective.
Civitas are
funding
my
research.
They’re
conservative.
My research
will have to
agree with
them.
So, I’ll have to
focus on how
absent dads
create deviant
sons.
This is HOWARD BECKER.
He says it’s impossible to study anything
without using your personal and political beliefs
to understand and judge it.
Some Sociological theories are clearly allied to a
particular political leaning.
For instance, Marxism is a conflict theory
which sees capitalism as problematic for
human happiness and fairness.
Marxism is therefore left wing.
Feminism also, is a conflict theory which
sees patriarchy as problematic for women’s
happiness and fairness.
Feminism also, is therefore left wing.
POSITIVISM – The Scientific
approach uses comparative
and experimental methods
1. Our knowledge about the social world starts
with the collection of facts –
For example, the crime rate, the divorce rate
and the number of men that are victims of
domestic violence.
2. The facts are classified & identified
objectively – without using opinion, and
statistical relationships established.
Eg. Children from low income households are
more likely to become criminal.
3. Once classification has been done, we can
look for (study) correlations – where two or
more things happen at the same time between
different social facts.
For example, a correlation between women
being in care and becoming deviant.
4. If positive correlation is found, a cause and
effect relationship can be established.
For example, educational failure causes greater
likelihood of criminality.
5. Once we’ve sorted out positive correlations
and cause and effect relationships, we can
develop theories that explain the relationship
between different facts.
Eg. Having insufficient integration into society
explains why some commit suicide.
6. Once we have a theory – test it further. If
nothing happens to disprove the theory, we
have discovered a universal law of human
behaviour.
7. Once a law is identified in human behaviour,
we can incorporate it into social policy – we can
organise people through laws & legislation that
will engineer the best results for society.
Criticisms of Positivism
• There is a problem with correlations and
cause and effect.
• Can we really study humans in the same way
as natural phenomena like plants?
• Can any scientists, especially sociologists really
be objective and value-free?
• Individual experience is part of what makes us
human and should not be ignored.
Interpretivism – the
not-so scientific
approach
Starter What method would Atticus Finch think is the
best for researching society based on the below quote?
• "You never really
understand a person until
you consider things from
his point of view - until you
climb into his skin and walk
around in it." spoken by
Atticus Finch, To Kill a
Mockingbird, by Harper
Lee
Interpretivism is THE alternative, THE total opposite of Positivism.
* People like Weber say Sociology should study society from the
perspective of other people to understand how and why things
happen.
* Using Weber’s perspective of
verstehen requires subjective
understanding which draws on
people’s opinions.
* Science is strongly objective and
does not allow opinion to influence
research.
* For this reason, Interpretivists argue
Sociology cannot ever be a science.
Verstehen
Weber’s term for studying human
behaviour
German word for “to understand”, “to grasp
by insight”
Best interpreter of human action is
“someone who has been there” Someone
who can understand the feelings and
motivations of people they are studyingempathy
Interpretivism and Symbolic
Interactionism
• Blumer (1969) argued sociologists need to
immerse themselves in the lives of those they
study.
• It is necessary to understand the meanings
created by individuals and groups.
• An example is Paul Willis – Learning to Labour
• See film.
Criticisms of Interpretivism
• Research carried out on a micro scale is high in
validity but low in representativeness and
reliability therefore lacks scientific rigour
• Is qualitative research on low numbers of
participants meaningless?
• Ignores the existence of social norms and a
basic order of things and sometimes focuses
too heavily on deviant groups.
Feminist Methodology
• Reinhartz (1992) Women’s ways of knowing.
• Grounded in Feminist Theory and moving
away from Malestream
• Uses various methods and mixed.
• Aims to bring about social change
• Researcher builds rapport with participant and
is included as part of the research.
• Reflexivity is important
Criticisms
 Critics say feminist research is not objective
since it is grounded in feminist theory
 Feminists argue that reflexivity is a strength
since it allows them to be open about their
values from the start – therefore they do not
falsely claim to be value-free but state how their
values have influenced their research.
 See handout -Do you think these reflections
improve the objectivity of the study?
 Do you think Feminist research is still relevant?
Realist Methodology
 Realists distinguish between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ systems of
causality. Natural sciences work within closed systems
where predictions can be made and empirical data
collected. They refer to society as an open system.
 This means being realistic and accepting that humans and
society are fluid and changeable and subject to countless
causal mechanisms.
 Phenomena are subject to predictable, discoverable causes
but these are difficult to identify because they change
rapidly.
 Realist accept the important of subjective experience and
are not committed to quantitative or qualitative methods.
 It is widely used as a perspective which can transcend social
structure and social action.
Plenary
• Identify some criticisms of Realist
Methodology.
Key words
•
•
•
•
•
•
Empirical
Objective
Comparative method
Verstehen
Reflexivity
Causal mechanisms
Organise these words into groups
INTERPRETIVIST
REALISM
Quantitative
malestream
Objective
POSITIVIST FEMINISM
Qualitative
Functionalism
Open Systems
Labelling Theory
Verstehen
Patriarchy
Subjective
reflexivity
Causal mechanisms
Official Crime Statistics
Ways of collecting Data
• Quantitative data – based on numbers and
statistics – Objective and goes with Positivist
• Qualitative data – based on rich descriptions of
events – Subjective and goes with Interpretivist
• Primary data – collected direct from participants
by the researcher
• Secondary Data – are data which already exist in
form of statistics, diaries, personal documents
etc.
• Mixed Methods – mixing two or more methods
Research Design
• Aim, a statement about what your overall aim is
• Hyposthesis (If quantitative) a prediction about what you think will be
found
• Operationalisation (how are you measuring/defining the concept e.g class
inequalities)
• Sampling method (how will you get access to your participants and select
them?)
• Method used (primary or secondary data collection and actual method)
• Procedure used, how you would actually carry it out
• Analysis of the data, how would you analyse it and what you might expect
to find.
• Evaluation. A couple of paragraphs at most explaining any problems you
might anticipate with data collection e.g time, cost, access to sample, and
problems with the design itself in terms of GROVER, see above.
• A way to remember order of above list:• A Hippo Only Smells Monkeys Properly After Eating.
•
Research Design
• As an A level Sociologist, you have been asked
to research whether young single mothers
become pregnant in order to avoid work and
gain benefits.
•
• Suggest a simple research design and justify
your choices. Explain the difficulties that you
might experience in carrying out your design
and suggest how you would avoid them
•
Peer Assessment Criteria
• Award a mark out of 15 based on the
following criteria taken from the markscheme.
• 1. Reference to issues of ‘GROVER’ all
• 2. Reference to practical issues – 3+
• 3. Identified 3+ ways to improve study
Starter
• How would you go about researching the
extent of poverty amongst children in UK
society?
• What problems would you have to overcome?
Key concerns in research. When we evaluate
how well a piece of research has been carried
out we consider the following things.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Generalisation
Representativeness
Operationalisation
Validity
Ethics
Reliability
GROVER
Generalisation
• Can the results of the study be applied to
wider society?
• E.g if you studied knife crime in Torquay could
you apply the findings to the whole of UK?
• Likewise if you only studied use of kitchen
knives as a weapon you could not gain
generalisable results.
Representativeness
• Does the sample of people you studied
accurately represent the population.
• E.g If you are studying anti-social behaviour of
young people but only studied boys, your
sample would not represent ‘young people’
Operationalisation
• Has the study correctly defined what they are
studying.
• E.g If you wanted to study happiness but
defined this as having Sky television it would
not be a very accurate study!
Operationalising concepts
• How would you go about measuring the
following concepts?
• Family income
• Sexual orientation
• Ethnicity
• Social class
• Happiness
Which concepts are objective and which are
subjective?
Validity
• This is related to the accuracy and truthfulness
of your findings.
• E.g If you went to lower school and asked
everyone whether or not they smoked you
would probably find that 100% said no!
BUT…..
Ethics
• British Sociological Association have
guidelines which must be followed.
• Informed Consent
• Privacy/confidentiality of participants
• Protection from harm caused by potential
deception, embarrassment etc
• Right to withdraw from the study
You want to study children’s
playground behaviour.
• You get a video camera and film the children
secretly from the branches of tree outside the
playground.
• You show the film to colleagues to analyse
your results.
You want to find out attitudes towards
underage drinking in your area
• You ask some year 10 and 11 students to
complete a questionnaire. You ask them for
their names and addresses so that you can
contact them again if there are any problems
with their responses.
You want to find out about empathy
for snails
• You get consent from a number of students to
take part in a study about snails.
• When they arrive you tell them that they have
to step in a box of snails and crush them all so
that you can monitor facial expressions.
• When they are finished you say thank you and
ask them to leave.
Reliability
• This is about the way the data is collected.
• If it is a consistent measure such as a
questionnaire with yes/no answers then
another sociologists could repeat the study
and get similar results.
• If is say an interview/conversation then
another sociologists might get different results
and the study might be unreliable.
A little Test
• In pairs test each other on the meanings of
the terms in GROVER.
True/False Game
Lego Demonstration - Copy this table out in your
notes with a brief description of each type refer to
page 51
Sample: a segment of the target population
being studied.
Probability or Random
[reflects the population]
 Random
Non-Probability or Nonrandom
[does not reflect the population]
 Quota
 Systematic
 Snowball
 Stratified
 Purposive
© onlineclassroom.tv 2007
Access
• Access to participants is a big deal in
sociological research. Sometimes it can be
difficult.
• Consider some of the difficulties you might
find if you had to access these particpants
• Children under 3, Young Offenders, Mentally
ill.
• Often there will be a person who will facilitate
access, for example to school pupils, this
person is referred to as a gatekeeper
Examples
• 40,000 homes in the UK are selected by a
computer to take part in the British Crime
Survey.
• 15 boys and 15 girls are to be selected from 3
different 6th form colleges.
• Researchers receive an alphabetical list of all
people with alzheimer’s in a hospital to take
part in research they must select 20
participants with no computer
Examples
• Researchers want to study the experiences
single mums living in inner city areas. They
need 20 women to take part.
• Researchers wish to study incidents of suicide
amongst children under 16. They need 4 or 5
families to take part.
• A university needs 5 Asian, 5 Black and 5
white people under 21 to take part in
research.
Quantitative methods include:•
•
•
•
•
•
Social Surveys
Questionnaires
Structured Interviews
Statistical data
Content analysis
Experiments
Quantitative Data Analysis
• Quantitative data consists of numbers, so we look for
patterns and trends indicated by statistics e.g
percentages, averages etc.
• In our research we are looking for the % of boys Vs
girls choosing particular subjects.
• We need to know how many students in TOTAL chose
that subject and then work out how many were boys
and how many were girls to get a % for each.
• We then work out the difference between the two.
• E.g in 2011 22 students chose Physics, 13 were boys
and 9 were girls = 60% boys and 40% girls.
Presenting descriptive statistics
• Table form e.g like the sheet with the subject
choices data from last year.
• Graph form may include
• Bar charts
• Histogram
• Scattergraph for correlations
• These make the data easier to analyse for
patterns.
Social surveys and Longitudinal
Studies
• Social surveys are large scale quantitative studies
with data collected wither through questionnaires or
interviews with closed questions.
• Longitudinal studies are very good for measuring
changes over time.
• However they have problems with participants
dropping out and are very expensive.
• A famous study is the 7UP programme which
followed children from age 7 to adulthood.
Pilot Studies
• Pilot studies are often used to check the
methods being used.
• A small scale study can check the validity of
questionnaires for examples before they are
used on a wider scale.
• Pilots are usually only used in quantitative
research since using a pilot in qualitative
would be uneccessary.
Questionnaires
1. Complete the self-report questionnaire
2. What are the problems with this type of
questionnaire?
3. Make a bullet point list of advantages and
disadvantages and some examples of
research using pg 52.
Plenary
• Page 83 OCR Book – Activity 5.3
• Identify problems with this questionnaire.
Starter – identify whether these
are criticisms of quantitative and
qualitative data
• Variables cannot always be isolated and cause and effect
cannot be established
• Lacks scientific rigour
• Findings cannot be generalised so are of little use
• Researchers can never be value-free or completely objective
• Statistical analysis can lead to misinterpretation of the data
• Open to subjective interpretations of researchers
• Of little use to large-scale organisations like government.
• Numbers cannot provide explanations
Structured Interviews
• How would you go about obtaining
quantitative data from an interview?
• What kind of questions would you ask?
• Sue Sharpe used structured interviews in her
research. What was it about?
• Evaluate her research using GROVER.
Interviews
• Identify the difference between structured
and semi-structured interviews pg84-85
• Which would you prefer to use and why ?
• List the advantages and disadvantages of
structured interviews in your notes.
Secondary sources
• Official statistics are a major source of
secondary data.
• O.S. Are collected by the state such as a
Census.
• Unofficial statistics are collected by agencies
such as pressure groups, or trade unions
• Examples of surveys include BSAS, BCS,
Census
Evaluation
• Positivists believe providing O.S. Are accurate, they
are a valid and reliable source of data
• Interactionists are very critical. For example, they
argue Crime stats’ are socially constructed and
probably tell us more about police priorities, rather
then about the patterns of crime.
• Marxists argues that the state serves the ruling class.
Therefore, anything published by the state is likely to
give a distorted impression that serves capitalism.
The use of statistical data and content
analysis
• Give a definition of these two types of
research
• Give examples of where they might have been
used
• List advantages and disadvantages of both
types
Experiments
• http://www.educationforum.co.uk/experimen
ts.htm
• Experiments are rarely used in sociology
because it is difficult to control variables in a
social setting. You can learn more about the
use of experiments on the above link.
Complete the exercises.
Experiments
• Laboratory experiments are conducted in a
controlled environment where the
relationship between two variables can be
tested. E.g Bandura’s bobo doll experiment.
• They are highly scientific and reliable but also
very artificial so may lack validity
• Field experiments are partly controlled but
conducted in a natural setting e.g classroom,
seeing if sitting at the back hinders learning.
Example of experiments
• Rosenthal and Jacobsen Pygmalion in the
classroom.
• Jane Elliot brown eyes blue eyes.
• Bandura bobo doll
• Stanley Milgram – study on obedience
• Zimbardo – Standford Prison study.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QyqxkM_Z94
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7JneNPZltU&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1F-AMTnGg&feature=related
Quantitative research design
questions
• As an A level Sociologist, you have been asked to design a quantitative
study into the impact of student loans on graduates in your area.
• Suggest a simple research design and justify your choices. Explain the
difficulties that you might experience in carrying out your design and
suggest how you would avoid them.
• As an A level Sociologist, you have been asked to discover whether there is
gender inequality in the behaviour and actions of the police in your area.
• Suggest a simple research design and justify your choices. Explain the
difficulties that you might experience in carrying out your design and
suggest how you would avoid them
•
•
Qualitative Methods include:•
•
•
•
•
Observation
Ethnography
Interviews
Focus Groups
Analysis of personal document
Analysing Qualitative Data
• Qualitative Data consists of rich data in the form of
words i.e personal answers to open questions.
• This requires a degree of interpretation of written
text.
• We need to look for emerging patterns or themes e.g
many students might say that their parents
influenced their choices of further education
subjects.
• The key themes are identified and then included in
our analysis.
Participant Observation (PO)
• Participant Observation is an alternative to asking questions;
it involves getting involved, and experiencing first hand how
the group live/ behave.
• Covert or Overt PO
• PO can be divided into 3 stages; getting in, staying in (without
your cover being blown) and then, getting out.
• P.O is usually small-scale, and is hard to generalise has its
unlikely to observe the same findings.
• Paul Willis found getting out an issue when he studied 12
working class males from a midlands school (‘Learning to
labour) (overt PO)
• In Laud Humphreys study of ‘tearoom trade’, he breached
serious ethical guidelines when watching homosexual sexual
activity, and recording car registration of the people involved
Read pg 92-93 and answer the
following:• What is the difference between participant
and non-participant observation?
• What is the Hawthorne effect?
• What is the difference between structured
and un-structured observation?
• List advantages and disadvantages of
participant observation.
Case Study
• Case studies are research focused on
individuals or small groups e.g one class in a
school.
• They are high in validity but lack
representativeness – Why is this?
The use of Mixed Methods.
• We have identified that there are various
problems with both quantitative and
qualitative methods
• So why not use both?
• The use of mixed methods can be referred to
as methodological plurism or triangulation but
these have different meanings – see pg 99
• Identify advantages and disadvantages of
using mixed methods and add to your notes.
• Complete activity 7.1 on page 100.
Qualitative research design
question
• As an A level Sociologist, you have been asked to design a qualitative study
into the impact of poverty on pensioners in your area.
• Suggest a simple research design and justify your choices. Explain the
difficulties that you might experience in carrying out your design and
suggest how you would avoid them
• As an A level Sociologist, you have been to discover qualitative differences
between how working class and middle class students see their class
position.
• Suggest a simple research design and justify your choices. Explain the
difficulties that you might experience in carrying out your design and
suggest how you would avoid them