Structured Non-Participant Observation in Education

The most commonly used form of observation in education are lesson observations carried out as part of OFSTED inspections – technically these are a form of quantitative non-participant structured observation: OFSTED inspectors have half a dozen criteria to look out for and grade each criteria 1-4, with 1 being outstanding and 4 meaning unsatisfactory; observers will also add in some qualitative notes.

If a researcher is using previously gained records of lesson observations from OFSTED, this of course would count as a form of secondary data, but such a method is relatively easy (compared to participant-observation) for researchers to carry out as a part of their own primary research into schools.

One example of a structured observational schedule which has been used by education researchers is the Flanders System of Interaction Analysis (FIAC) which has been used to measure pupil and teacher interaction quantitatively. The researcher uses a standard chart to record interactions at three second intervals, placing each observation in one of ten pre-defined behaviour categories:

Teacher Talk

  • Teacher accepts pupils’ feelings

  • Teacher praises or encourages pupils

  • Teacher accepts or uses ideas of pupils

  • Teacher asks questions

  • Teacher lectures

  • Teacher gives directions

  • Terrace criticises pupils or justifies authority

Pupil Talk

  • Pupils talk in response to teacher

  • Pupils initiate talk

Silence

  • Silence or confusion.

Flanders used this form of quantitative behavioural analysis to discover than the typical American classroom is taken up by teacher talk 68% of the time, pupil talk 20% of the time with 12% spent in silence or confusion.

The advantages and disadvantages of OFSTED style non-participant observations applied to education

Practical Issues

A practical problem is gaining access to observe lessons – although this is easier than with participant observation, it would still be relatively difficult to get schools and teachers to agree to this

Structured observations are relatively quick to carry out and don’t required much training on the part of the researcher.

Funding would be more likely than with more unstructured forms of observation.

Theoretical Issues

Validity might be an issue – You can only observe with Non Participant Observation, you have little opportunity to get people to explain why they are doing what they are doing.

The Hawthorne Effect can be an issue – students and teachers act differently because they know they are being observed.

Reliability is good if the observation is structured because someone else can repeat the research looking for the same things.

Representativeness is easier than with unstructured observations because they are quicker to do thus larger samples can be achieved. HOWEVER, it is likely that you’ll end up with a self-selecting sample because better schools and teachers are more likely to give their consent to being observed than bad ones.

Ethical Issues

Dis-empowering for teachers and pupils – The observer is detached and acts as an expert.

Schools might give permission for observers to come in without getting the consent of the pupils.

Participant Observation to Research Education

Last Updated on September 10, 2020 by

Participant Observation studies are favoured by interpretivists as they allow for the collection of rich, qualitative data, and for an in-depth exploration of the thoughts and feelings of individuals involved.

If done rigorously this is the best method for gaining an empathetic understanding with respondents, where we really see the world through their eyes.

Practical issues

One of the main methods of collecting data in Participant Observation is simply ‘hanging out’ with respondents – and it’s difficult to see how an adult researcher is going to be able to ‘hang-out’ with either students or teachers today.

Both are too busy during the formal school day, and with pupils especially there is little chance an adult researcher would be given permission to just hang around with them for child protection reasons, even if pupils wanted to ‘hang-out’ with an adult for a day, week, month, term or longer, which is unlikely for most pupils

There is little chance schools or parents would grant an adult researcher access to research their children in this way, and it would be impossible to do this covertly, because if posing covertly as a teacher or an LF, you wouldn’t naturally ‘hang out’ with students.

In the late 1980s, Mac an Ghaill did conduct overt PO researchers with his students while he was employed as a teacher, focusing on how they dealt with racism, and he did ‘hang out’ with them informally, but today this would be frowned upon.  

If focusing on researching teachers a researcher is more likely to gain access to do overt Participant Observation, but they might be something of an irritation, and teachers might be on their guard about what they say ‘back stage’ if they knew a researcher was present.

A researcher could do covert PO on a school by secretly training as a teacher or an LF, but the whole process of training would take a year in the case of being a teacher.

Observations in a school are also limited by the school day, and terms, you don’t get to do research in holidays, and you probably wouldn’t be able to find out anything about the home lives of either students or teachers using this method.

Finally, if doing covert research undercover, there is the problem of recording data – if you’re employed, you have to do the job, so any recording and writing up would need to be done at the end of the working day.

Theoretical issues

Schools are complex places – they consist of numerous students and intersecting friendship groups, students attend several classes in one day, probably with several different teachers, and there are further interactions during school break times. And If researchers want a full understating of peer group interaction today, they should probably seek to investigate social media interactions, which will occur both before, during and after the formal school day. This sheer complexity means Participant Observation is a good fit research method as it stands the best chance of uncovering the depth of the reality of school life.

However, it’s unlikely that  pupils would wish to reveal their feelings to an adult person ‘hanging out with them’ – in real life, adults generally don’t ‘hang-out’ with children (except their own family), so this would hardly be a naturalistic setting where respondents would be at ease.

If doing PO research with teachers, they would be more likely to relax and act naturally over time, but might ‘impression manage’ if they new a researcher was present doing overt rather than covert research.

Ultimately the validity of data collected depends on the skills and personal characteristics of the researcher, and because these will probably have an impact on the data collected, reliability will probably be low.

In terms of representativeness, this method can only be done in one school at a time, and only with a handful of pupils or teachers, so you couldn’t claim to have data that’s representative of a whole cohort of students nationwide – if you wished to ensure representativeness you would ned to do follow up studies using more quantitative methods.

Ethical issues

Child Protection issues could be a real problem with this method – the more invasive a method, the more chance there is for harm to come to respondents.

If you are researching deviance there is also the question of what to do if you find out children are engaged in activities they shouldn’t be (like underaged drinking) – you would be morally obliged to report this, but this would breach confidentiality.

Young, Gifted and Black

A brief summary of Young, Gifted and Black (1988) by Mairtin Mac an Ghaill and a consideration of the practical, ethical and theoretical advantages and disadvantages of the method in this educational context.

In Young, Gifted and Black (1988) Mairtin Mac an Ghaill carried out two ethnographic studies in inner-city educational institutions where he worked. The first study looked at the relations between white teachers and two groups of male students with anti-school values – the Asian Warriors and the African Caribbean Rasta Heads – and the second study looked at a group of black female students, of African Caribbean and Asian parentage, called the Black Sisters.

Why study this subject?

Because of opportunity – He originally wanted to study Irish school students but no one could help him do this, so he was advised to study African Caribbean students instead. As to the Black Sisters he never intended to study them, but they found him – because he was perceived as being on the side of the students they were happy to talk to him about their views of racism.

Because Mac an Ghaill wanted to gain a close insight into the culture and values of respondents, he chose participatory methods – he became friendly with the students and they visited his home regularly… ‘The experience of talking, eating, dancing and listening to music together helped break down the potential social barriers of the teacher-researcher role that may have been assigned to me and my seeing them as students with the accompanying status perception’

At the time the dominant theories argued that black underachievement was due to subcultures of resistance – the problem was seen as being with the students themselves.

However, following his in-depth research, and his adoption of a ‘black perspective’ he realised that racism rather than the students themselves was the biggest problem in their schooling – their subcultures were a response to a racially structured institution.

Ethical Issues

Mac an Ghaill does not claim to be value free in his research – he was committed to helping students overcome their perceived racial barriers.

The research also brought him into conflict with some other members of staff, as he found himself becoming the defender of ethnic minority students against what he perceived to be a racist institution.

Practical Issues with this research

Mac an Ghaill was only able to do this research because of his position as a teacher, it would have been practically impossible otherwise.

Theoretical Issues

Reliability and Representativeness are both low.

Validity is an interesting one – given the in-depth and participatory nature of the method we might assume that we are gaining a true insight into the thoughts and feelings of the respondents. However, the research has only given us an insight into student perceptions of racism, not whether the institution was actually racist. However, even if the institution wasn’t actually racist, understanding the students perception that it was provides us with new insight into why they formed subculture.

Finally, given that Mac an Ghaill was both researcher and teacher, this may have meant some of the student respondents didn’t open up to him fully.

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Learning to Labour

The counter school culture resisted the school but ultimately limited working class kids to getting working class jobs

Last Updated on May 25, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Learning to labour is an ethnographic study of 12 working class white boys who attended one boys only secondary school which Willis called ‘Hammertown Boys’ in the Midlands in the early 1970s. Willis used a mixture of overt participant observation and group interviews to describe and understand the counter-school culture which the boys formed while at school. 

learning-to-labour

Willis began his fieldwork in 1972 and followed the boys for six months in their second to last year of secondary school. He also interviewed them periodically up until 1976, by which time the boys had transitioned from school to work, most of them going into manual factory jobs. 

He applied a neo-marxist framework to explain why these working class lads went on to get working class jobs.

Wills recognised as legitimate the boys’ own interpretation of school as an institution which was irrelevant to their lives as 15-16 year olds because they didn’t need qualifications to move into the manual work they perceived as superior to academic work. 

However, while rational in one sense, the counter school culture they formed which resisted the power of the school in the end led to what he called their “self-damnation: their own choices to spend their time ‘having a laff’ by confronting school authority resulted in them achieving no qualifications and having no choice other than to move into working class jobs, which meant class inequality was reproduced despite their class consciousness. 

The Counter School Culture

In the first half of the book Willis mostly describes the Counter School Culture the Lads formed.

Willis used participant observation and group interviews to study the lads over several years, and he was thus able to produce a rich or thick description of their ‘antics’, their banter and their attitudes towards school and future wok, providing an in-depth account of their own interpretation of their lives within the counter school culture they formed.  

The counter school culture was one of rebellion against school rules and focused on disrupting school life, with status being gained within the group for ‘bad behaviour’ such as not doing homework, disrupting lessons, playing pranks on teachers, and harassing conformist students. 

The lads strongly identified against the school and the fact that it valued academic work and non-manual, or mental labour more highly than the manual labour they saw as real work and more appropriate for real men.

The lads identified against conformist students who they derided as feminine or gay and the lads were also homophobic. 

The lads smoked and had sex with girls, and being known to be sexually active was important in their culture which was patriarchal and sexist and excluded girls. The counter-school culture was also racist, as non-whites were excluded too and the lads made common usage of racial language against ethnic minorities. 

While the lads did truant they mostly preferred being at school because it was such a laff and the disruptive behaviours which confronted authority built a sense of shared identity and solidarity. In fact the lads could have left school at 15 but they chose to stay on for an extra year! 

By the end of the study in the autumn of 1976 most of the lads had gone into the manual jobs they wanted and perceived as empowering, including bricklaying, plumbing and machine work, and only one could not find a job. 

How working class kids get working class jobs

In the second half the book Willis develops a theoretical analysis of how working class kids go on to get working class jobs, and the role the counter school culture plays in this process.

Wills accepted the lads’ own interpretation of their counter-school culture as a form of resistance to school authority, but it also led to what he called their self-damnation, as it ultimately laid the foundation for their acceptance of their subordinate role in capitalist society in lower paid, manual work.

The counter school culture acted as a kind of ‘conscious bridge’ (author’s term) between the working class culture which it reflected and the shop-floor culture of many manual work environment, both of which it mirrored, and being part of the CSC played a role in the reproduction of class inequality, helping to explain why working class kids went on to working class jobs! 

Willis saw the Counter School Culture as a distorted version of class consciousness, it resisted the authorities of capitalism but was short lived and never amounted to anything that would help improve the lads’ subordinate position in the capitalist system. 

The Counter-School-Culture emerges from working class culture and helps the lads understand some of the injustices of capitalism, but it also offers a limited framework of understanding rooted in immediate gratification of having a laff which prevents them from developing effective resistance. 

Penetration and Limitation 

Two concepts Willis developed to understand the lad’s world view were penetration and limitation. 

He argued that the lads had legitimate insights into the truth of their own class position (‘penetrations’) such as recognising that the school was a middle class institution designed primarily to help middle class kids into middle class jobs in exchange for their conformity, of which they were having none! 

However their penetrations were limited and failed to fully blossom into a full, effective, radical class consciousness:

  • Their culture was more emotional than intellectual. It was all about the buzz of having a laugh, not serious resistance that was going to go any further. 
  • It was also a means to accomplish a masculine identity, and in embracing patriarchy and traditional gender divisions of labour, they also limited their capacity to build effective resistance. 

Schools play a role in ideological control 

Schools play a nuanced role in performing the function of ideological control in capitalist society. 

By operating as middle class institutions and serving the needs of middle class students by focusing on academic qualifications relevant to middle class jobs they make working class rebellion more likely, hence they are unintentionally complicit in the counter school culture emerging. 

The counter-school culture then does the rest – the lads ‘choose to fail’ and the school isn’t to blame, at least at the surface level of reality, but deeper down it is because it is failing to meet the needs of working class students who do not want middle class academic jobs. 

Policy suggestions 

Wills also made a number of policy suggestions for schools to help make them more relevant to working class kids and break the role they played in ideological control and the reproduction of class inequality

  • Recognising that schools have a middle class teaching paradigm which disadvantages working class students. 
  • Showing more respect for working class culture and perspectives. 
  • Ceasing to communicate to working class kids that their identities are inferior. 
  • Discussing the role of culture in students’ lives more, and actually showing an interest in the role of working class norms such as immediate gratification and having a laff. 

Criticisms

Angela Mcrobbie criticised Willis for being too forgiving and accepting of the patriarchy and sexism inherent in the counter school culture, however Wilis did recognise that this was a limitation of their culture. 

Willis’ methodology is not that clear which raises questions of reliability. It is unclear for much of the time the specific contexts Willis was in and the exact nature of the group interviews isn’t always specified. 

Teachers in other schools pointed out that there were no cultures of resistance in their schools, raising issues of representativeness. However Willis responded by saying such cultures may not be immediately obvious and that there may be weaker individual manifestations of what he found. 

This is a difficult study to repeat and validate given the amount of times it took, the depth of it and the special access Willis had. 

Focus on Research Methods

Learning to Labour by Paul Willis (1977) is an ethnographic study of twelve working class ‘lads’ from a school in Birmingham conducted between 1972 and 1975. He spent a total of 18 months observing the lads in school and then a further 6 months following them into work. The study aimed to uncover the question of how and why “working class kids get working class jobs” (1977: 1) using a wide range of qualitative research methodologies from interviews, group discussions to participant observation, aiming to understand participants’ actions from the participants’ point of view in everyday contexts.

Participant Observation in the Context of Education

Given the practical and ethical problems of conducting participant observation in a school setting, there are only a handful of such studies which have been carried out in the UK, and these are mainly historical, done a long time ago. They are, nonetheless interesting as examples of research. Below I consider one classic participant observation study in the context of education – Paul Willis‘  Learning to Labour (1977)

Sampling

Willis concentrated on a particular boy’s group in a non-selective secondary school in the Midlands, who called themselves ‘lads’. They were all white, although the school also contained many pupils from West Indian and Asian backgrounds. The school population was approximately 600, and the school was predominantly working class in intake. He states that the main reasons why he selected this school was because it was the typical type of school attended by working class pupils.

Data Collection

Willis attended all school classes, options (leisure activities) and career classes which took place at various times. He also spoke to parents of the 12 ‘lads’, senior masters of the school, and main junior teachers as well as careers officers in contact with the concerned ‘lads’. He also followed these 12 ‘lads’ into work for 6 months. NB He also made extensive use of unstructured interviews, but here we’re focusing on the observation aspects.

Participant observation allowed Willis to immerse himself into the social settings of the lads and gave him the opportunity to ask the lads (typically open) questions about their behaviour that day or the night before, encouraging them to explain themselves in their own words…which included detailed accounts of the lads fighting, getting into trouble with teachers, bunking lessons, setting off fire extinguishers for fun and vandalising a coach on a school trip.

Practical Issues with Learning to Labour

The research was very time consuming – 2 years of research and then a further 2 years to write up the results.

It would be very difficult to repeat this research today given that it would be harder to gain access to schools (also see reliability)

Funding would also probably be out of the question today given the time taken and small sample size.

Ethical Issues with Learning to Labour

An ethical strength of the research is that it is giving the lads a voice – these are lads who are normally ‘talked about’ as problems, and don’t effectively have a voice.

An ethical weakness is that Willis witnessed the lads getting into fights, their Racism and Homophobia, as well as them vandalising school property but did nothing about it.

A second ethical weakness is the issue of confidentiality – with such a small sample size, it would be relatively easy for people who knew them to guess which lads Willis had been focussing on

Theoretical Issues with Learning to Labour

Validity is widely regarded as being excellent because of the unstructured, open ended nature of the research allowing Willis to sensitively push the lads into giving in-depth explanations of their world view.

Critics have tried to argue that the fact he was obviously a researcher, and an adult, may have meant the lads played up, but he counters this by saying that no one can put on act for 2 years, at some point you have to relax and be yourself.

Something which may undermined the validity is Willis’ interpretation of the data – he could have selected aspects of the immense amount of data he had to support his biased opinion of the boys.

Representativeness is poor – because the sample size is only 12, and they are only white boys.

Reliability is low – It is very difficult to repeat this research for the reasons mentioned under practical factors.

Signposting and Related Posts

This post was written primarily for students of A-level sociology, specifically focussing on the problems of researching in schools using Participant observation, to get students thinking about the Methods in Context part of paper 1.

However the study is also relevant to the education topic more generally, and research methods.

You might also like this summary of more recent research on why the white working classes continue to underachieve in education.

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Interviews in Social Research: Advantages and Disadvantages

The strengths of unstructured interviews are that they are respondent led, flexible, allow empathy and can be empowering, the limitations are poor reliability due to interviewer characteristics and bias, time, and low representativeness.

Last Updated on September 11, 2023 by Karl Thompson

An interview involves an interviewer asking questions verbally to a respondent. Interviews involve a more direct interaction between the researcher and the respondent than questionnaires. Interviews can either be conducted face to face, via phone, video link or social media.

This post has primarily been written for students studying the Research Methods aspect of A-level sociology, but it should also be useful for students studying methods for psychology, business studies and maybe other subjects too!

Types of interview

Structured or formal interviews are those in which the interviewer asks the interviewee the same questions in the same way to different respondents. This will typically involve reading out questions from a pre-written and pre-coded structured questionnaire, which forms the interview schedule. The most familiar form of this is with market research, where you may have been stopped on the street with a researcher ticking boxes based on your responses.

Unstructured or Informal interviews (also called discovery interviews) are more like a guided conversation. Here the interviewer has a list of topics they want the respondent to talk about, but the interviewer has complete freedom to vary the specific questions from respondent to respondent, so they can follow whatever lines of enquiry they think are most appropriated, depending on the responses given by each respondent.

Semi-Structured interviews are those in which respondents have a list of questions, but they are free to ask further, differentiated questions based on the responses given. This allows more flexibility that the structured interview yet more structure than the informal interview.

Group interviews – Interviews can be conducted either one to one (individual interviews) or in a a group, in which the interviewer interviews two or more respondents at a time. Group discussions among respondents may lead to deeper insight than just interviewing people along, as respondents ‘encourage’ each other.

Focus groups are a type of group interview in which respondents are asked to discuss certain topics.

Interviews: key terms

The Interview Schedule – A list of questions or topic areas the interviewer wishes to ask or cover in the course of the interview. The more structured the interview, the more rigid the interiew schedule will be. Before conducting an interview it is usual for the reseracher to know something about the topic area and the respondents themselves, and so they will have at least some idea of the questions they are likely to ask: even if they are doing ‘unstructred interviews’ an interviewer will have some kind of interview schedule, even if it is just a list of broad topic areas to discuss, or an opening question.

Transcription of interviews -Transcription is the process of writing down (or typing up) what respondents say in an interview. In order to be able to transcribe effectively interviews will need to be recorded.

The problem of Leading Questions – In Unstructured Interviews, the interviewer should aim to avoid asking leading questions.

The Strengths and Limitations of Unstructured Interviews 

Unstructured Interviews Mind Map

The strengths of unstructured interviews

The key strength of unstructured interviews is good validity, but for this to happen questioning should be as open ended as possible to gain genuine, spontaneous information rather than ‘rehearsed responses’ and questioning needs to be sufficient enough to elicit in-depth answers rather than glib, easy answers.

Respondent led – unstructured interviews are ‘respondent led’ – this is because the researcher listens to what the respondent says and then asks further questions based on what the respondent says. This should allow respondents to express themselves and explain their views more fully than with structured interviews.

Flexibility – the researcher can change his or her mind about what the most important questions are as the interview develops. Unstructured Interviews thus avoid the imposition problem – respondents are less constrained than with structured interviews or questionnaires in which the questions are written in advance by the researcher. This is especially advantageous in group interviews, where interaction between respondents can spark conversations that the interviewer hadn’t thought would of happened in advance, which could then be probed further with an unstructured methodology.

Rapport and empathy – unstructured interviews encourage a good rapport between interviewee and interviewer. Because of their informal nature, like guided conversations, unstructured interviews are more likely to make respondents feel at ease than with the more formal setting of a structured questionnaire or experiment. This should encourage openness, trust and empathy.

Checking understanding – unstructured interviews also allow the interviewer to check understanding. If an interviewee doesn’t understand a question, the interviewer is free to rephrase it, or to ask follow up questions to clarify aspects of answers that were not clear in the first instance.

Unstructured interviews are good for sensitive topics because they are more likely to make respondents feel at ease with the interviewer. They also allow the interviewer to show more sympathy (if required) than with the colder more mechanical quantitative methods.

They are good for finding out why respondents do not do certain things. For example postal surveys asking why people do not claim benefits have very low response rates, but informal interviews are perfect for researching people who may have low literacy skills.

Empowerment for respondents – the researcher and respondents are on a more equal footing than with more quantitative methods. The researcher doesn’t assume they know best. This empowers the respondents. Feminists researchers in particular believe that the unstructured interview can neutralise the hierarchical, exploitative power relations that they believe to be inherent in the more traditional interview structure. They see the traditional interview as a site for the exploitation and subordination of women, with the interviewers potentially creating outcomes against their interviewees’ interests. In traditional interview formats the interviewer directs the questioning and takes ownership of the material; in the feminist (unstructured) interview method the woman would recount her experiences in her own words with the interviewer serving only as a guide to the account.

Practical advantages – there are few practical advantages with this method, but compared to full-blown participant observation, they are a relatively quick method for gaining in-depth data. They are also a good method to combine with overt participant observation in order to get respondents to further explain the meanings behind their actions. So in short, they are impractical, unless you’re in the middle of a year long Participant Observation study (it’s all relative!).

The Limitations of unstructured interviews

The main theoretical disadvantage is the lack of reliability – unstructured Interviews lack reliability because each interview is unique – a variety of different questions are asked and phrased in a variety of different ways to different respondents.

They are also difficult to repeat, because the success of the interview depends on the bond of trust between the researcher and the respondent – another researcher who does not relate to the respondent may thus get different answers. Group interviews are especially difficult to repeat, given that the dynamics of the interview are influenced not just by the values of the researcher, but also by group dynamics. One person can change the dynamic of a group of three or four people enormously.

Validity can be undermined in several ways:

  • respondents might prefer to give rational responses rather than fuller emotional ones (it’s harder to talk frankly about emotions with strangers)
  • respondents may not reveal their true thoughts and feelings because they do not coincide with their own self-image, so they simply withhold information
  • respondents may give answers they think the interviewer wants to hear, in attempt to please them!

We also need to keep in mind that interviews can only tap into what people SAY about their values, beliefs and actions, we don’t actually get to see these in action, like we would do with observational studies such as Participant Observation. This has been a particular problem with self-report studies of criminal behaviour. These have been tested using polygraphs, and follow up studies of school and criminal records and responses found to be lacking in validity, so much so that victim-surveys have become the standard method for measuring crime rather than self-report studies.

Interviewer bias might undermine the validity of unstructured interviews – this is where the values of the researcher interfere with the results. The researcher may give away whether they approve or disapprove of certain responses in their body language or tone of voice (or wording of probing questions) and this in turn might encourage or discourage respondents from being honest.

The characteristics of the interviewer might also bias the results and undermine the validity – how honest the respondent is in the course of an hour long interview might depend on the class, gender, or ethnicity of the interviewer.

Sudman and Bradburn (1974) conducted a review of literature and found that responses varied depending on the relative demographics of the interviewer and respondent. For example white interviewers received more socially acceptable responses from black respondents than they did from white respondents. Similar findings have been found with different ethnicities, age, social class and religion.

Unstructured interviews also lack representativeness – because they are time consuming, it is difficult to get a large enough sample to be representative of large populations.

It is difficult to quantify data, compare answers and find stats and trends because the data gained is qualitative.

Practical disadvantages – unstructured Interviews may take a relatively long time to conduct. Some interviews can take hours. They also need to be taped and transcribed, and in the analysis phase there may be a lot of information that is not directly relevant to one’s research topic that needs to be sifted through.

Interpersonal skills and training – A further practical problem is that some researchers may lack the interpersonal skills required to conduct informal unstructured interviews. Training might need to be more thorough for researchers undertaking unstructured interviews – to avoid the problem of interviewer bias.

Shapiro and Eberhart (1947) showed that interviewers who were more prepared to probe received fuller answers, and both response rate and extensiveness of response are greater for more experienced interviewers.

There are few ethical problems, assuming that informed consent is gained and confidentially ensured. Although having said this, the fact that the researcher is getting more in-depth data, more of an insight into who the person really is, does offer the potential for the information to do more harm to the respondent if it got into the wrong hands (but this in turn depends on the topics discussed and the exact content of the interviews.

Sociological perspectives on interviews

Interviews of any kind are not a preferred method for positivists because there is no guarantee that responses aren’t artefacts of the interview situation, rather than a reflection of underlying social reality.

If interviews must be used, Positivists prefer structured interviews that follow a standardised schedule, with each question asked to each respondent in the same way. Interviewers should be neutral, show no emotion, avoid suggesting replies, and not skip questions.

For Interactionists, interviews are based on mutual participant observation. The context of the interview is intrinsic to understanding responses and no distinction between research interviews and other social interaction is recognised. Data are valid when mutual understanding between interviewer and respondent is agreed.

Interactionists prefer non-standardised interviews because they allow respondents to shape the interview according to their own world view.

Denzin (2009) goes as far as to argue that what positivists might perceive as problems with interviews are not problems, just part of the process and thus as valid as the data collected. Thus issues of self-presentation, the power relations between interviewer and respondent and opportunities for fabrication are all part of the context and part of the valid-reality that we are trying to get to.

Related Posts

For more posts on research methods please see my research methods page.

Examples of studies using interviews – Using Interviews to research education.

Participant Observation –  A related qualitative research method – detailed class notes on overt and covert participant observation. 

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Recommended further reading: Gilbert and Stoneman (2016) Researching Social Life

The Functionalist Perspective – Class Notes for A Level Sociology

The key ideas of Functionalism include social structure, scientific research methods to find the general laws of society, socialisation and social solidarity to prevent anomie, the organic analogy and social evolution.

Last Updated on October 13, 2022 by

These class notes on Functionalism should be all you need to revise this topic for your A level sociology exam

Functionalism: Key Ideas

The key ideas of Functionalist perspective are as follows

  1. There is such a thing as a social structure that exists independently from individuals. This social structure consists of norms values passed on through institutions which shape the individual.
  2. We should study society scientifically and at the macro level – looking for the general laws that explain human action.
  3. Socialisation is important – individuals need to be regulated for the benefit of everyone. The integration and regulation of individuals is a good thing.
  4. We should analyse society as a system – look at each bit by looking at the contribution it makes to the whole.
  5. Social institutions generally perform positive functions – value consensus social integration; social regulation; preventing anomie and so on.
  6. Advanced Industrial society is better than primitive society – one of the main reasons social order is so important is so we don’t go backwards – (ties into the idea of progress).

You would do well to be able to distinguish between the ideas of Emile Durkheim – one of the founding fathers of Sociology and Talcott Parsons – who developed Functionalism in the 1940s and 50s.

Durkheim and Functionalism

Durkheim is one of the founding fathers of Sociology. He basically believed that social structure and social order were important because they constrained individual selfishness. However, he realized that as societies evolved, so people became more individualistic – more free – and so maintaining social order became more of a problem for society. The question of how social order was to be achieved in complex societies was one of his chief concerns.

Durkheim: Historical Context

Emile Durkheim 1858-1917: he was the first ever ‘Professor of Sociology’

In order to understand Durkheim’s work you need to understand the historical context in which he was writing. Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) was a student of the Positivist Auguste Comte. Durkheim and the first ever professor of Sociology. Durkheim’s major works were published between 1893 and 1912 – so he was writing in the middle of modernity and experiencing the industrialisation and urbanisation of France. Durkheim believed that the social changes ushered in by modernity threatened social order and his sociology is a response to this. His social research had two main concerns:

  • He wanted to ensure that modern societies were harmonious and orderly  
  • He wanted to create a science of society so that we could generate clear knowledge about how to bring about social order

Social Structure

Durkheim believed that there was such a thing as a social structure – made up of norms and values. He argued that this structure existed above the level of the individual because norms and values precede the individual – they already exist in society when we are born into it. Durkheim believed that people’s behaviour was shaped by the system of norms and values that they were born into.

Durkheim believed that the social structure consisted of ‘social facts‘ – phenomena which were external to the individual and constrained their ways of acting…

Durkheim

The Scientific Method Applied to Society

Much of Durkheim’s work was aimed at demonstrating the importance of organic solidarity and also trying to find out what societies must do in order to achieve organic solidarity. In order to do this he argued that we needed to use objective, social scientific methods to find out the general laws that govern societies..

To find out more you should refer to the section on Durkheim’s scientific methods and his study of suicide in the Positivism, sociology and social research post.

Individuals need to be restrained

Durkheim believed that individuals had a biological tendency to be naturally selfish and look out for themselves and that it was up to society to regulate these naturally selfish desires ultimately for the benefit of all. Too much freedom is bad for both the individual and society. This is quite an obvious idea really – all Durkheim believed is that greater levels of human happiness and ‘progress’ could be achieved if people cooperated together rather than competing like animals in a war of all against all over scarce resources.

Societies somehow have to ensure that individual’s naturally selfish tendencies are restrained and in order to do this societies need to create a sense of social solidarity – which is making individuals feel as if they part of something bigger and teaching them the standards of acceptable behaviour – a process Durkheim called Moral regulation.

Both Social Solidarity and Moral Regulation rely on the effective socialisation of individuals into the wider society. Socialisation is the process whereby individuals learn the norms and values of a society.

Key Term – Social SolidarityWhere there is a sense of feeling part of something greater. A shared feeling of working together to achieved the collectively agreed on goals of society.

Solidarity in Industrial Societies

Achieving solidarity in advanced industrial society is difficult

Durhkeim argued that solidarity and moral regulation were achieved in different ways in primitive and advanced industrial societies. In the former, solidarity happens automatically, while in the later it is more difficult to achieve.

In Primitive society, for Example: Feudal Britain, before industrialisation were small scale and locally based, with people living in the same area all their lives. There was also very little role differentiation and no complex division of labour. Generally speaking, people have shared experiences of the same village, the same activities and the same people all there lives. Durkheim argued that when people share the same reality and the same goals, and are closely reliant on one another, moral regulation and social solidarity are easily achieved. People also shared one religion which provided a shared set of moral codes to all people. Durkheim referred to this situation as mechanical solidarity: Solidarity based on similarity.

In advanced Industrial society the number of specialised tasks increase and the Division of Labour becomes more complex. Individuals become more interdependent as people become less self-sufficient and more dependent on a larger number of people that they do not know. As a result, the ability of religion to provide the same moral codes to all individuals declines. The problem is that people no longer lead the same lives, they are different to each other, and modern societies need to find a way of achieving solidarity based on difference rather than solidarity based on similarity.

Because of these differences, Modern societies run the risk of excessive individualism and face a ‘crisis of moral regulation’, a condition which Durkheim called ‘anomie’  and Durkheim thus argued that achieve moral regulation and regulating individuals was the primary problem facing advanced industrial societies. The problem was one of achieving  ‘organic solidarity’: ‘social solidarity based on difference

Durkehim argued that, given the decline of religion, labour organisations and education would provide society with the necessary moral regulation in advanced industrial societies. Focussing on education, Durkheim argued that what education does is simultaneously teach us the diverse skills required for an advanced division of labour and provide us with shared norms and values through the teaching of subjects such as history and with there being shared assemblies.

Key Term – AnomieWhere modern social systems encourage excessive individualism – as a consequence there is a general lack of agreement around norms and values – some commentators describe anomie as a state of normlessness.

Talcott Parsons

Writing in the 1940s and 1950s Talcott Parsons built on Durkheim’s work and developed Functionalism further.

The Organic Analogy

The organic analogy is the idea that society works like a human body.

Parsons argued that institutions in society were like organs in the body – each performing specific functions that were necessary to the maintenance of the whole.

Parsons argued that parts of society should be understood in terms of what they contribute to the maintenance of the whole.

The bodyInstitutions
Each Organ has a unique functionInstitutions have a unique function
All the bits essentially work together harmoniouslyAll institutions work together harmoniously
Organs are interdependentOrgans are interdependent
Has an identifiable boundaryHas an identifiable boundary e.g nations.
The sum is greater than its partsThe system is greater than its institutions .
Normal: healthy Normal: low rates of social problems
The Organic Analogy

Institutions perform positive functions

Following the organic analogy, Parsons sought to understand institutions by analysing the positive functions they played in the maintenance of social order. Some of the positive functions Parsons identified include those below

  • Institutions generally promote Value Consensus – One of the most important functions of social institutions is the creation of value consensus – which is agreement around shared values. Parsons argued that commitment to common values is the basis for order in society. Two of the most important shared values include a belief in the work ethic and a belief in meritocracy. Parsons argued these were both vital to modern society because a work ethic ensures people value working rather than lazing about and meritocracy means people believe that hard work should be rewarded.
  • The Family is responsible for passing on the basic norms and values of our society – it provides early socialisation; the stabilisation of adult personalities and also somewhere for people to escape from the pressures of modern life – acting as a release valve.
  • Education integrates individuals into wider society – providing individuals with a sense of belonging and identity to the wider society. Parsons argued, for example, that education does this through teaching us a shared history and language.
  • Other institutions regulate individual behavior through social sanctions, preventing crime and deviance escalating out of control.

Functional Pre-requisites

Parsons believed that societies had certain functional prerequisites. Functional pre-requisites are things that societies need in order to survive. Just like human beings need certain things to survive, so every society has to have certain things in order to function properly.

For example, a society must produce and distribute resources such as food and shelter; there has to be some kind of organisation that resolves conflicts, and others that socialise the young.

According to Parsons a social system has four needs which must be met for continued survival – These are adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency.  In advanced industrial society, these needs are met through specialised sub systems

Parson’s name for each function (AGIL)Performed by what institutions?
AdaptationAdapt to the environment and the production of goods and services
Goal AttainmentDecide what goals society as a whole should aim to achieve
IntegrationAchieve social cohesion
Latency (Pattern Maintenance)Socialise the young into shared values

Parsons argued that society’s needs must come before the needs of the individual. This is why he is so keen to stress the importance of the family and education passing on particular norms and values that bind people together in value consensus.

Functional Prerequisites: Find out More

Functionalist theory about what ‘needs’ societies have is far from perfect. Their theories about what needs societies have come from the following two sources:

Sociologists and Anthropologists have studies thousands of different societies and cultures to discover if there are any institutions which appear in all of them. George Peter Murdock in the 1940s argued that the family exists in every society while Davis and Moore (1960s) argued that there is some form of stratification system in every society.

Functionalists thus concluded that at the very least societies need some form of family and some form of stratification system in order to survive.

Marion J Levy (1952) reflected on what kinds of conditions would lead to the collapse of society. She argued that this  would happen if members became extinct, if they became totally apathetic, involved in a war of all against all, or if they were absorbed into another society.

Thus she argued that all societies needed mechanisms to ensure that these things did not happen. It follows that societies needed some kind of mechanism for reproducing new members.

Social change and social evolution

Parsons viewed social change as a process of ‘social evolution’ from simple hunter-gatherer societies to more complex forms of advanced industrial society.

More complex forms of society are better because they are more adaptive – more able to respond to changes in the environment, more innovative, and more able to harness the talents of a wider range of individuals (because they are meritocratic).

They are thus more able to survive. (This is actually quite Darwinian – human beings thrive more than monkeys because they are more able to adapt their environment to suit them – advanced industrial societies thrive because they are more able to adapt their environment compared to hunter- gatherer societies.)

Parsons argued that initially economic and technological changes lead to societies evolving, but increasingly values become the driving force behind social progress.

He argued that the values of advanced industrial societies were superior to those of traditional societies because modern values allow a society to be more adaptive, whereas traditional values are more likely to prevent change and keep things the way they are.

Now reflecting back to Parson’s analysis of the family and education, we can see that the reason he stresses the importance of these is because they are keeping together the most advanced society – the best – if the family etc. collapse, we may regress back to a more primitive form of social organisation.

Criticisms of Functionalism

1.    Is there really a ‘structure’ that exists independently of individuals? 

 2.    It is difficult to assess the effects of institutions – In order to establish whether an institution has positive functions, one would need to accurately measure all of the effects an institution actually had on all individuals and all other institutions. This is extremely difficult to do because it is impossible to isolate the effects of an institution on other things.

3.Functionalism exaggerates the extent of Value consensus and Social Order – Parsons is criticised for assuming value consensus exists rather than actually proving it

4.Michael Mann argues that social stability might be because of lack of consensus rather than because of it. If everyone really believed in the value of achievement then disorder might result because not everyone can get the highest reward. It follows that social stability is more likely if the people at the bottom of society – the majority are tuned out.

5.Functionalism is a deterministic theory – Human behaviour is portrayed as being shaped by the social system, as if individuals are programmed b social institutions.

 6.Functionalism ignores conflict and coercion  – Marxists argue that mainstream social values – like those in pattern variable B, are actually the values of elite groups, and thus social order is imposed on the majority by a relatively small group of elite actors.

7.    Functionalism is Ideological  – Functionalism is a conservative social theory. By arguing that certain institutions are necessary – such as the family, religion and stratification systems – they are actually justifying the existence of the social order as it is, also by focussing on the positive functions

Is Functionalism still relevant today?

Despite the flaws mentioned above perhaps Functionalism should not be rejected out of hand:

The idea that we can usefully look at society as a system and that the parts are interdependent is an assumption made by governments who inject money into education or welfare in order to achieve a desired end.

Similarly the idea that we can help countries develop from primitive to advanced by giving aid is still a very common idea, and many in the developing world aspire to become like countries in the West.

Finally, statistics still reveal some interesting correlations between someone’s position in the social structure and their chances of something happening to them. For example….

Related Posts

The Functionalist Perspective on The Family

The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Modernisation Theory (kind of Functionalism applied to Global Development)

Find out More: Basic info

This History Learning Site post has a very basic overview of Functionalism

Find out More: Extension sources

This video from the School of Life provides a useful non-A Level version of Durkheim’s thought – A level Sociology really oversimplifies Durkheim to the point of mis-teaching him (sorry folks!) so this video might be a better starting point than all of the material above…

Sociological Perspectives on Single Person Households

people increasingly choose to live alone because of increased wealth, urbanisation, improved communications and living longer

Last Updated on July 3, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Why are increasing numbers of people all over the world living alone?

People increasingly choose to live alone because of:

  1. Increasing wealth: people in wealthier countries are more likely to choose to live alone.
  2. Improved communications: makes it easier for solo-livers to keep in contact with friends and family while living alone.
  3. Mass urbanisation: higher density populations = easier to connect with other people.
  4. Increased longevity: following a relationship ending or one partner dying, there is less desire to pair-up again!

According to a recent book by Eric Klinenberg (2013) Explaining the Rise of Solo Living (1), this is a global phenomenon and mainly reflects the increasing degree of individual choice that comes with increasing wealth.

Global trends in single person households

The percentage of one person households has increased in many countries since the 1960s and since the year 2000, although there is a lot of variation by country.

In America the number of single person households has doubled since. the1960s, with 28% of households having only one person in them in 2018.

The countries with the highest levels of people living on their own are in Northern Europe. In Germany, for example, more than 40% of households. are single person households. (2)

Single Person Households in the UK

In 2022, 30% of households in the UK were single person households, this is a very slight increase since 2012.

bar chart showing percentage of one person and family households UK 2022.

Living alone: younger men and older women

There has been a change in the proportion of men and women living alone by age over the last decade. In 2022 the relative percentages are as follows:

AgeMenWomen
16-242.6%1.8%
25-4423.6%20.7%
45-6434.6%26.6%
65-7419%23.5%
75+20.3%37.5%
Percentages of single person households by age, 2022 U.K.

A Summary of Going Solo by Klinenberg

Going Solo Klinenberg cover

Klinenberg argues that the rise of solo living is an extremely important social trend which presents a fundamental challenge to the centrality of the family to modern society. In the USA, the average adult will now spend more of their life unmarried than married, and single person households are one of the most common types of household. We have entered a period in social history where, for the first time, single people make up a significant proportion of the population.

Eric Klinenberg spent seven years interviewing 300 single Americans who lived alone, and the general picture he got was that these people were exactly where they wanted to be – living on their own was not a transitory phase, it was a genuine life choice. On the whole, living alone is seen as a mark of social distinction, living as part of a couple is for losers.

While single by choice is very much on the up among younger people who have never settled down into a long term cohabiting relationships and have no intention of doing so, it is also the norm among older people who have come out of relationships.

Where older people living alone are concerned, and these are mostly women, they are not all chasing the dwindling population of men in their age group (given the higher life expectancy for women). Most of them are in fact wary of getting involved in relationships because doing so will probably mean becoming someone’s carer (again), and similarly they are skeptical about moving back in with their children (and possibly their grandchildren too) because of fear that they will become an unpaid domestic and child-sitting slave.

NB, as a counter to the above, not all singles are happy about it, however. One such group consists of mainly men on low wages who are unmarriageable and live in ‘single room occupancy facilities’ often suffering from various addictions and who practice ‘defensive individualism’ in order to cope with their bleak situation.

Why are more people living alone?

So how do we account for this increasing in single person households?

Klinenberg suggests four reasons…

  1. The increased wealth generated by economic growth and the social security provided by the modern welfare state – the basic thesis is that the rise of single living is basically just a reflection of increasing wealth. When we can afford to live alone, more of us choose to do so. We especially see this where Scandinavia is concerned, and nearly half of the adult population live alone.
  2. The communications revolution – For those who want to live alone, the internet allows us to stay connected. An important part of his thesis is that just because we are increasingly living alone, this doesn’t mean that we are becoming a ‘society of loners’.
  3. Mass urbanization – Klinenberg suggests that Subcultures thrive in cities, which tend to attract nonconformists who are able to find others like themselves in the dense variety of urban life. In short, it’s easier to connect with other singles where people live closer together.
  4. Increased longevity – because people are living longer than ever and because women often outlive their spouses by decades rather than years — aging alone has become an increasingly common experience.

Discussion questions 

In the video below, Wayne discusses his motivations for ‘going solo’ with his friend Archie, and together they explore some of the reasons for the increase in single person households.


  • To what extent do you think Kleinberg’s findings apply to the increase in Solo Living in the UK?
  • What other ‘deeper’ Sociological reasons might explain the increase in Solo Living?
  • Do you agree that the rise of Solo Living challenges the centrality of the family in modern society?

Historical data (on single person households)

single people UK pie chart

Most people who live alone are 65+ and increasing numbers of those aged 45-60 are living alone. However, the numbers of younger people living alone are declining (so Wayne in the video above is actually wrong when he says solo living is on the increase among younger people!)

solo living UK
Signposting and Related Posts

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

Explaining the reasons for the increase in family diversity (explores further reasons for the increase in single person households and other ‘family’ types).

(1) Klinenberg’s Book on Amazon.

(2) Our World in Data: People Living Alone.

(3) ONS (2021, see also 2022) Families and Households in the UK.

How Old are Twitter Users?

‘Who Tweets’ is an interesting piece of recent research which attempts to determine some basic demographic characteristics of Twitter users, relying on nothing but the data provided by the users themselves in their twitter profiles.

Based on a sample of 1470 twitter profiles* in which users clearly stated** their age, the authors of ‘Who Tweets’ found that 93.9% of twitter users were under the age of 35. The full age-profile of twitter users (according to the ‘Who Tweets’/ COSMOS data) compared to the actual age profile taken from the UK Census is below:

The age profiles of Twitter users - really?
The age profiles of Twitter users – really?

 

Compare this to the Ipsos MORI Tech Tracker report for the third quarter of 2014 (which the above research draws on) which used face to face interviews based on a quota sample of 1000 people.

Ages of twitter users according to a face to face Mori Poll
Ages of twitter users according to a face to face Mori Poll

Clearly this shows that only 67% of media users are under the age of 35, quite a discrepancy with the user-defined data!

The researchers note that:

‘We might… hypothesis that young people are more likely to profess their age in their profile data and that this would lead to an overestimation of the ‘youthfulness’ of the UK Twitter population. As this is a new and developing field we have no evidence to support this claim, but the following discussion and estimations should be treated cautiously.

Looking again at the results from the Technology Tracker study conducted by Ipsos MORI, nearly two thirds of Twitter users were under 35 years of age in Q3 of 2014 whereas our study clearly identifies 93.9% as being 35 or younger. There are two possible reasons for this. The first is that the older population is less likely to state their age on Twitter. The second is that the age distribution in the survey data is a function of sample bias (i.e. participants over the age of 35 in the survey were particularly tech-savvy). This discrepancy between elicited (traditional) and naturally occurring (new) forms of social data warrants further investigation…’

Comment 

This comparison clearly shows how we get some very different data on a very basic question (‘what is the age distribution of twitter users’?) depending on the methods we use, but which is more valid? The Ipsos face to face poll is done every quarter, and it persistently yields results which are nothing like COSMOS, and it’s unlikely that you’re going to get a persistent ‘tech savy’ selection bias in every sample of over 35 year olds, so does that mean it’s a more accurate reflection of the age profile of Twitter users?

Interestingly the Ipsos data shows a definite drift to older users over time, it’d be interesting to know if more recent COSMOS data reflects this. More interestingly, the whole point of COSMOS is to provided us with more up to date, ‘live’ information – so where is it?!? Sort of ironic that the latest public reporting is already 12 months behind good old Ipsos –

Age profiles of Twitter users in final quarter of 2015 according to MORI
Age profiles of Twitter users in final quarter of 2015 according to MORI

 

 

At the end of the day, I’m not going to be too harsh about the above ‘Who Tweets’ study, it is experimental, and many of the above projects are looking at the methodological limitations of this data.  It would just be nice if they, err, got on with it a bit… come on Sociology, catch up!

One thing I am reasonably certain about is that the above comparison certainly shows the continued importance of terrestrial methods if we want demographic data.

Of course, one simple way of checking the accuracy of the COSMOS data is simply to do a face to face survey and ask people what there age is and whether they state this in their Twitter profiles, then again I’m sure they’ve thought of that… maybe in 2018 we’ll get a report?

*drawn from the  Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS)

**there’s an interesting discussion of the rules applied to determine this in the ‘Who Tweets’ article.

 

Field Experiments in sociology

The practical, ethical and theoretical strengths and limitations of field experiments in comparison to lab experiments, relevant to sociology.

Last Updated on February 24, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Field Experiments take place in real-life settings such as a classroom, the work place or even the high street. Field experiments are much more common in sociology than laboratory experiments. In fact sociologists hardly ever use lab experiments because the artificial environment of the laboratory is so far removed from real life that most sociologists believe that the results gained from such experiments tell us very little about how respondents would actually act in real life.

It is actually quite easy to set up a field experiment. If you wanted to measure the effectiveness of different teaching methods on educational performance in a school for example, all you would need to do is to get teachers to administer a short test to measure current performance levels, and then get them to change one aspect of their teaching for one class, or for a sample of some pupils, but not for the others, for a period of time (say one term) and then measure and compare the results of all pupils at the end.

You need to know about field experiments for the research methods component of A-level sociology and the AQA exam board does seem to like setting exam questions on experiments!

Field experiments.png

The advantages of Field Experiments over Lab Experiments

Better external validity – The big advantage which field experiments obviously have better external validity than lab experiments, because they take place in normally occurring social settings.

Larger Scale Settings – Practically it is possible to do field experiments in large institutions – in schools or workplaces in which thousands of people interact for example, which isn’t possible in laboratory experiments.

The disadvantages of Field Experiments

It is not possible to control variables as closely as with laboratory experiments – With the Rosenthal and Jacobson experiment, for example we simply don’t know what else might have influenced the ‘spurting group’ besides ‘higher teacher expectations’.

The Hawthorne Effect (or Experimental Effect) may reduce the validity of results. The Hawthorne effect is where respondents may act differently just because they know they are part of an experiment. The Hawthorne Effect was a phrase coined by Elton Mayo (1927) who did research into workers’ productivity at the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne plant. With the workers agreement (they knew that an experiment was taking place, and the purpose of the experiment), Mayo set about varying things such as lighting levels, the speed of conveyor belts and toilet breaks. However, whatever he did, the worker’s productivity always increased from the norm, even when conditions were worsened. He concluded that the respondents were simply trying to please the researcher. NB – The Hawthorne effect can also apply to laboratory experiments.

Practical Problems – Access is likely to be more of a problem with lab experiments. Schools and workplaces might be reluctant to allow researchers in.

Ethical Problems – Just as with lab experiments – it is often possible to not inform people that an experiment is taking place in order for them to act naturally, so the issues of deception and lack of informed consent apply here too, as does the issue of harm.

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s 1968 Field Experiment

Rosenthal and Jacobson’s classic 1968 field experiment on the effects of teacher expectations (aka Pygmalion in the Classroom) illustrates some of the strengths and limitation of this method

Aim

The aim of this research was to measure the effect of high teacher expectation on the educational performance of pupils.

Procedure

Rosenthal and Jacobson carried out their research in a California primary school they called ‘Oak School’. Pupils were given an IQ test and on the basis of this R and J informed teachers that 20% of the pupils were likely ‘spurt’ academically in the next year. In reality, however, the 20% were randomly selected.

All of the pupils were re-tested 8 months later and he spurters had gained 12 IQ points compared to an average of 8.

Rosenthal and Jacobsen concluded that higher teacher expectations were responsible for this difference in achievement.

Limitations of the Experiment

Deception/ Lack of Informed Consent is an issue: In order for the experiment to work, R and J had to deceive the teachers about the real nature of the experiment, and the pupils had no idea what was going on.

Ethical problems: while the spurters seem to have benefited from this study, the other 80% of pupils did not, in fact it is possible that they were harmed because of the teachers giving disproportionate amounts of attention to the spurting group. Given that child rights and child welfare are more central to education today it is unlikely that such an experiment would be allowed to take place.

Reliability is a problem: while the research design was relatively simple and thus easy to repeat (in fact within five years of the original study this was repeated 242 times) the exact conditions are not possible to repeat – given differences between schools and the type and mixture of pupils who attend different schools.

Finally, it’s not possible to rule out the role of extraneous variables. Rosenthal and Jacobson claim that higher teacher expectation led to the higher achievement of the ‘spurters’ but they did not conduct any observations of this taking place. It may have been other factors.

Signposting and Related Posts 

Seven Examples of Field Experiments in Sociology

An Introduction to Experiments in Sociology

Laboratory Experiments in Sociology

Are Chinese Teaching Methods the Best?  – A Field Experiment in ‘tough teaching methods’ in the UK conducted in 2015.

Theory and Methods A Level Sociology Revision Bundle 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Theory and Methods Revision Bundle – specifically designed to get students through the theory and methods sections of  A level sociology papers 1 and 3.

Contents include:

  • 74 pages of revision notes
  • 15 mind maps on various topics within theory and methods
  • Five theory and methods essays
  • ‘How to write methods in context essays’.

Experiments in Sociology – An Introduction

Last Updated on July 27, 2020 by

Experiments aim to measure the effect which an independent variable (the ’cause’) has on a dependent variable (‘the effect’).

The key features of an experiment are control over variables, precise measurement, and establishing cause and effect relationships.

In order to establish cause and effect relationships, the independent variable is changed and the dependent variable is measured; all other variables (known as extraneous variables) are controlled in the experimental process.

Different types of experiment

There are three main types of experimental: The Laboratory experiment, the field experiment and the comparative method.

  • Laboratory Experiments take place in an artificial, controlled environment such as a laboratory
  • Field Experiments – take place in a real world context such as a school or a hospital.
  • The comparative method – involves comparing two or more similar societies or groups which are similar in some respects but varied in others, and looking for correlations.

The Key Features of the Experiment

It’s easiest to explain what an experiment is by using an example from the natural sciences, so I’m going to explain about experiments further using an example used from biology

NB – You do need to know about the scientific method for the second year sociology theory and methods part of the course ( for an overview of theories and methods click here), so this is still all necessary information. I’ll return to the use of laboratory and field experiments in sociology (/ psychology) later on…

An example to illustrate the key features of an experiment

If you wished to measure the precise effect temperature had on the amount* of tomatoes a tomato plant produced, you could design an experiment in which you took two tomato plants of the same variety, and grow them in the same greenhouse with same soil, the same amount of light, and the same amount of water (and everything else exactly the same), but grow them on different heat pads, so one is heated to 15 degrees, and the other 20 degrees (5 degrees difference between the two).

You would then collect the tomatoes from each plant at the same time of year** (say in September sometime) and weigh them (*weighing would be a more accurate way of measuring the amount of tomatoes rather than the number produced), the difference in weight between the two piles of tomatoes would give you the ‘effect’ of the 5 degree temperature difference.

You would probably want to repeat the experiment a number of times to ensure good reliability, and then average all the yields of tomatoes to come up with an average difference.

After, say, 1000 experiments you might reasonably conclude that if you grow tomatoes at 20 degrees rather than 15 degrees, each plant will give you 0.5 kg more tomatoes, thus the ’cause’ of the 5 degree temperature increase is 0.5 Kg more tomatoes per plant.

In the above example, the amount of tomatoes is the dependent variable, the temperature is the independent variable, and everything else (the water, nutrients, soil etc. which you control, or keep the same) are the extraneous variables.

** of course, you might get different results if you collected the tomatoes as they ripened, but for the sake of controlling extraneous variables, you would need to collect all the tomatoes at the same time.

The Role of Hypotheses in Experiments

Experiments typically start off with a hypothesis which is a theory or explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. A hypothesis will typically take the form of a specific, testable statement about the effect which one or more independent variables will have on the dependent variable.

The point of using a hypothesis is that it helps with accuracy, focussing the researcher in on testing the specific relationship between two variables precisely, it also helps with objectivity (see below).

Having collected the results from the above experiment, you might reasonably hypothesise that ‘a tomato plant grown at 25 degrees compared to 20 degrees will yield 0.5K.G. more tomatoes’ (in fact a proper hypothesis would probably be even tighter than this, but hopefully you get the gist).

You would then simply repeat the above experiment, but heating one plant to 20 degrees and the other to 25 degrees, repeat 1000 (or so times) and on the basis of your findings, you could either accept or reject and modify the hypothesis.

Experiments and Objectivity

A further key feature of experiments are that they are supposed to produce objective knowledge – that is they reveal cause and effect relationships between variables which exist independently of the observer, because the results gained should have been completely uninfluenced by the researcher’s own values.

In other words, somebody else observing the same experiment, or repeating the same experiment should get the same results. If this is the case, then we can say that we have some objective knowledge.

A final (quick) word on tomato experiments, and objective knowledge…

NB – the use of tomato plants is not an idle example to illustrate the key features of the experiment – nearly everyone eats tomatoes (unless you’re the minority of Ketchup and Dolmio abstainers) – and so there’s a lot of profit in producing tomatoes, so I imagine that hundred of millions, if not billions of dollars has been spent on researching what combinations of variables lead to the most tomatoes being grown per acre, with the least inputs…. NB there would have to be a lot of experiments because a lot of variables interact, such as type of tomato plant, altitude, wave length of light, soil type, pests and pesticide use, as well as all of the basic stuff such as heat, light, and water.

A woman picks tomatoes at a desert experimental farming greenhouse.

The importance of objective, scientific knowledge about what combination of variables has what effect on tomato production is important, because if I have this knowledge (NB I may need to pay an agricultural science college for it, but it is there!) I can establish a tomato farm and set up the exact conditions for maximum production, and predict with some certainty how many tomatoes I’ll end up with in a season…(assuming I’m growing under glass, where I can control everything).

The advantages of the experimental method

  • It allows us to establish ’cause and effect relationships’ between variables.
  • It allows for the precise measurement of the relationship between variables, enabling us to make accurate predictions about how two things will interact in the future.
  • The researcher can remain relatively detached from the research process, so it allows for the collection of objective knowledge, independent of the subjective opinions of the researcher.
  • It has excellent reliability because controlled environments allow for the exact conditions of the research to be repeated and results tested.

Disadvantages of the experimental method

(Why it may not be applicable to studying society as a whole or even individual humans…)

  • There are so many variables ‘out there’ in the real world that it is impossible to control and measure them all.
  • Most social groups are too large to study scientifically, you can’t get a city into a laboratory to control all it’s variables, you couldn’t even do this with a field experiment.
  • Human beings have their own personal, emotionally charged reasons for acting, which often they don’t know themselves, so they are impossible to measure in any objective way.
  • Human beings have consciousness and so don’t just react in a predictable way to external stimuli: they think about things, make judgements and act accordingly, so it’s impossible to predict human behaviour.
  • There are also ethical concerns with treating humans as ‘research subjects’ rather than equal partners in the research process.

Experiments – Key Terms

Hypothesis – a theory or explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. A hypothesis will typically take the form of a testable statement about the effect which one or more independent variables will have on the dependent variable.

Dependent Variable – this is the object of the study in the experiment, the variable which will (possibly) be effected by the independent variables.

Independent variables – The variables which are varied in an experiment – the factors which the experimenter changes in order to measure the effect they have on the dependent variable.

Extraneous variables – Variables which are not of interest to the researcher but which may interfere with the results of an experiment

Experimental group – The group under study in the investigation.

Control group – The group which is similar to the study group who are held constant. Following the experiment the experimental group can be compared to the control group to measure the extent of the impact (if any) of the independent variables.

Related Posts 

Laboratory experiments: definition, explanation, advantages and disadvantages

Field experiments: definition, explanation, advantages and disadvantages.

Useful Introductory Sources on Experiments

Simply Psychology – The Experimental Method

The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life – A Summary

A summary of The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman, and a brief discussion of its relevance to A level Sociology. 

Executive Summary

The best way to understand human action is by seeing people as actors on a ‘social stage’ who actively create an impression of themselves for the benefit of an audience (and, ultimately themselves).

When we act in the social world, we put on a ‘front’ in order to project a certain image of ourselves (call this part of our ‘social identity’ if you like) – we create a front by manipulating the setting in which we perform (e.g. our living room), our appearance (e.g. our clothes) and our manner (our emotional demeanour).

In the social world we are called upon to put on various fronts depending on the social stage on which we find ourselves and the teams of actors with whom we are performing – the work-place or the school are typical examples of social stages which require us to put on a front. On these social stages we take on roles, in relation to other team-members and carefully manage the impressions we give-off in order to ‘fit in’ to society and/ or achieve our own personal goals

Impression management involves projecting an ‘idealised image’ of ourselves, which involves concealing a number of aspects of a performance – such as the effort which goes into putting on a front, and typically hiding any personal profit we will gain from a performance/ interaction.

Unfortunately because audiences are constantly on the look-out for the signs we give off (so that they can know who we are) ‘performers can stop giving expressions, but they cannot stop giving them off’. This means that we must be constantly on our guard to practice ‘expressive control’ when on the social stage. There are plenty of things that can go wrong with our performance which might betray the fact that we are not really the person who our act suggests that we are – we might lose bodily control (slouch), or make mistakes with our clothing (a scruffy appearance) for example.

Acting out social roles is quite demanding and so in addition to the front-stage aspect of our lives, we also have back-stage areas where we can drop our front and be more relaxed, closer to our ‘true-selves’, and where we can prepare for our acting in the world.

We generally tend to think of performances as being of one or two types – the sincere and the contrived. Some people sincerely believe in the parts they are playing, they invest their true selves in the impression they give off, this is the typical case. However, other people act out their roles more cynically – they do not believe the parts they are playing are a reflection of their ‘true selves’ but instead only play their part in order to achieve another end.

However, most performances on the social stage fall somewhere between these two realities. What is required in social life is that the individual learn enough about role-playing to fulfil the basic social roles that are required of him during his life – most of us ‘buy into this’ and act out what is expected of us, so we invest an element of ourselves into our roles, but at the same time we don’t necessarily get into our roles in a gung-ho sort of way…. So most acting is neither fully ‘sincere’ or fully ‘contrived’ and most people oscillate between sincerity and cynicism throughout the day and throughout the role they are playing.

Some of the roles we play contradict each other – and so we need to keep audiences separate – some performances are only meant for certain audience members – For example a student might act studiously while at school but more care-free while amongst his friends outside of school.

Thankfully most audience members are tactful and voluntarily stay away from back-stage areas where we prepare for our social roles, and if we ever ‘fall out of character’ they tend to engage in ‘tactful inattention’ in order to save the situation.

The significance of Goffman’s work for A level Sociology

From a theoretical point of view Goffman criticises structuralist (Functionalist and Marxist) theories of socialisation – Marxism for example argues that school socialises children to passively accept authority and hierarchy thus preparing them for exploitation in later life. What Goffman’s theory suggests is that many children might just be acting out this acceptance of hierarchy in order to get through school with as little hassle as possible, while backstage they may think school is not particularly important, and they may not accept authority.

From a research methods point of view the significance of Goffman lies in the fact that f we really want to understand people, we would need to engage in participant-observation in order to get back-stage with them, because we only get to see peoples true feelings when they stop performing.

If a researcher merely gave people a questionnaire to fill out, or even if they did an in-depth interview with them – they could be perceived by the respondent as a member of an audience – and the results we get could just be a performance put on for the benefit of the researcher.

Ultimately from this Interactionist/ dramaturgical perspective human interaction is so intricately complex that the correct way to study human action is to look at either individuals or small groups and focus on the efforts they make to maintain their identities in public, and how these social identities differ from their more relaxed selves when they are back-stage.