How to Answer Methods in Context Questions (AQA)

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 16, 2026 by Karl Thompson

The Methods in Context question asks you to evaluate one research method for investigating one specific education topic, using the item. To do well you need to:

Know the method: its practical, ethical and theoretical strengths and limitations.
Apply it to the topic: who you would be researching, where, and why the topic is sensitive.

Use the item: it tells you the topic, the method and some of the issues the examiner wants you to pick up.
Evaluate and conclude: say whether the method is actually any good for this topic, and why.

The second step is where most students lose marks. A good general essay on the method that never applies it to the topic will not get out of the middle of the mark scheme.

This post explains what the question is, how it is marked, and a step-by-step way to plan and revise it. It finishes with a worked example: an AS answer that the AQA awarded 18/20, summarised paragraph by paragraph with the examiner’s comments. It has been written for students studying research methods as part of the AQA’s A-level (and AS-level) sociology course.

What is a Methods in Context question?

Methods in Context is a 20-mark question on the Education paper. You are given an item about an education topic and asked to evaluate the strengths and limitations of one research method for investigating it. The wording is always the same apart from the method and the topic:

Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using [method] to investigate [topic]. (20 marks)

	A-level	AS-level
Paper	7192/1 Education with Theory and Methods (2 hours, 80 marks)	7191/1 Education with Methods in Context (1 hour 30, 60 marks)
Where it comes	Section B, Question 05	Section B, Question 06
Item	Item C	Item B
Marks	20	20

On the A-level paper it is a quarter of the marks, so on marks alone it deserves about half an hour.

Any of the main research methods can come up: questionnaires, structured and unstructured interviews (including group interviews), participant and non-participant observation (overt or covert), field and laboratory experiments, official statistics and documents. The topic can be almost anything in the education specification.

You may also see these called “applied methods” questions. “Methods in Context” is the AQA’s own term and the one you’ll see on the paper. Personally I think “applied methods” describes what you have to do much better, but it’s the AQA’s exam!

For the rest of Paper 1, see A-level Sociology AQA Paper 1: Education with Theory and Methods. For the AS paper, see AQA AS Sociology Paper 1 (7191/1).

How Methods in Context questions are marked

The mark scheme is a set of level descriptors, and the thing that separates the levels is application: how closely you tie the method to the specific topic in the question. Below is my summary of what each band is looking for, based on the AQA’s recent mark schemes. The wording is mine, not the AQA’s; the AQA’s own mark scheme for June 2023 is the official version.

Marks	What the answer looks like	Where you want to be
17–20	Detailed, accurate knowledge of a range of the method’s strengths and limitations, applied accurately and sensitively to the specific topic. Evaluation is explicit, analysis is clearly explained, and the answer reaches a conclusion.	If you work your guts off, you could get here!
13–16	Accurate knowledge, but less complete. Application is either too general (to education as a whole rather than the topic) or specific but undeveloped. Evaluation is limited.	You should aim to be here at the very least.
9–12	Basic but mostly accurate knowledge of some strengths or limitations, often in a list, with little or no application. Evaluation is brief and the analysis is descriptive.	Reasonable, but not where you want to be.
5–8	A few limited points about the method, weak application, perhaps drifting into an unfocused comparison of different methods. Little or no evaluation.	No one should be here!
1–4	Very limited knowledge with significant errors, or an answer that just recycles the item or writes about the topic with hardly any reference to the method.	You definitely shouldn’t be here!

Two things follow from this.

First, knowing the method gets you roughly half marks. An answer that lists the method’s strengths and limitations without really applying them sits around the 9–12 band. That is useful to know when you are revising: you need to know each method well anyway, and that knowledge is the foundation. HOWEVER, it is application that takes you higher.

Second, the top band expects a conclusion. Don’t just stop after your last limitation. Say whether, on balance, this method would be a sensible choice for this topic, and why.

What “applying the method to the topic” means

The mark scheme spells out the kinds of things it means by application. Answers don’t need all of them, even for full marks, but the best answers keep coming back to three questions:

Who would you be researching? Pupils (and which pupils: their age, literacy, self-esteem, attitude to school), peer groups, parents, teachers, support staff.
Where would you be researching? Classrooms, staffrooms, the wider school premises, pupils’ homes.

How sensitive is the topic? The vulnerability of the pupils involved, stigma, the need for parental consent, teachers’ reluctance, the school’s reputation and position in the market, and what the research findings might mean for the school, its resources and its pupils.

I have a short post on each of these research contexts: Researching Pupils, Researching Teachers, Researching Parents, Researching in Classrooms and Issues Surrounding Researching in Schools. They are worth reading before you start practising these questions, because they give you the material you need for the “who” and “where” parts of every answer.

How to plan a Methods in Context answer

The simplest way to plan is to hold three things together: the topic, the research context (who and where) and the method. Then work through the method’s practical, ethical and theoretical issues, asking each time what is different about them for this topic.

The template below should work for most Methods in Context questions. It fits less well for questions on secondary data, where you aren’t gaining access to people in the same way, but the logic is the same.

Section	Questions to ask yourself
Sampling and representativeness	How would you get a representative sample of the group you’re studying? Is there anything about this group that makes that hard? Does this method make a representative sample easier or harder? What could you do about it?
Access	Once you’ve chosen your sample, why might getting access to them be a problem? (Think about who you are researching and where.) Does this method make access easier or harder? What would you have to do to gain access to this particular group?
Validity, trust and insight	Are there reasons why these people might not want to, or be unable to, tell you what you need to know? Does this method make building trust easier or harder? What could you do to make sure the data you get is valid?
Ethics	Are there specific ethical problems with researching these people, about this topic? Given those problems, is this method appropriate? How would you make sure the research is ethical?
Conclusion	Taking all of the above into account, is this a practical, theoretically sound and ethical method for this topic?

Under each heading, use the item. It will usually mention one or two features of the method and one or two features of the topic, and these are the lead points the examiner expects you to develop.

For the general factors you should consider for any method, see Factors Affecting Choice of Research Methods. For more on how much to rely on the item in exam essays generally, see How Important Is It to Use the Item in A-level Sociology Essay Questions?

What a top-band point looks like

The difference between a general methods point and a top-band point is that the top-band point could only have been written about this topic. Two examples, both about structured questionnaires.

Structured questionnaires would be a good method for researching how parents’ values and attitudes affect their children’s achievement, because this is a relatively simple topic. It would be quite easy to operationalise and measure things like how long parents spend helping with homework, or whether they want their child to go to university. However, a problem is that parents who aren’t very interested in their children’s education are the least likely to bother filling in a questionnaire, which would bias the sample towards exactly the parents the research is least interested in.

Structured questionnaires would be a bad method for researching how gender identities affect learning, especially from a postmodernist perspective, because gender identities are complex and “played out” within groups. They would be an especially bad method for exploring the identities of groups of boys: “lads” are unlikely to take a structured questionnaire seriously, and any member of a laddish subculture seen filling one in properly might well be ridiculed by the rest of the group.

Both points relate a specific feature of the method to a specific feature of the topic. You need good knowledge and evaluation of the method as well, but to get into the top band you need a number of statements like these, ideally developed even further.

Method and topic combinations to practise with

A useful revision activity is to pick one method and work through two or more topics, writing down how you would use the method to research each one, and what the specific advantages and problems would be.

The methods you need to be able to apply:

Secondary documents
Official statistics
Laboratory and field experiments
Questionnaires
Interviews
Participant observation (overt and covert)
Non-participant observation (overt and covert)

Some education topics you might be asked about:

how the values, attitudes and aspirations of parents contribute to the achievement of certain groups of children

why boys are more likely to be excluded than girls
why white working-class boys underachieve
whether teachers have “ideal pupils”, and whether they label certain groups of pupils favourably
whether the curriculum is ethnocentric
the extent to which sexist bullying disadvantages children
how gender identities help or hinder children’s learning
the relative importance of cultural deprivation and material deprivation in explaining underachievement

how successful policies aimed at raising achievement are, such as employing more black teachers

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.

A step-by-step way to revise Methods in Context questions

This is the sequence I used with my students. Notice that the item doesn’t come in until the third step.

Step 1: Warm up with the method on its own

Talk through, or write down, the theoretical, practical and ethical strengths and limitations of the method alone. You need to know the method anyway, and as the mark scheme shows, a decent methods essay with little application is already worth around half marks.

Methods in Context revision: strengths and limitations of the method, A-level sociology

Step 2: Apply the method to the topic in general

Brainstorm the general ethical, practical and theoretical issues you might run into when researching this topic with this method. Be as open-minded as possible at this stage. It’s easiest to do this on paper.

Applying a research method to an education topic, A-level sociology Methods in Context

Step 3: Plan using the specific details in the item

Now read the item. I used an A3 sheet for this, with the item and the question in the middle, and students planned around it, linking each of their points to something in the item.

Methods in Context essay plan around the item, A-level sociology

Step 4: Turn the plan into a flow chart

Add analysis and evaluation to each lead point, so that each one becomes a chain of reasoning rather than a single statement. (I used side two of the A3 sheet for this.)

Methods in Context flow chart of analysis and evaluation points, A-level sociology

Step 5: Repeat step 2 with a different topic

Take the same method and apply it to a different topic, to see how different the answer becomes. Don’t go through the whole process again: once is enough. The point is to see that the same method can be a good choice for one topic and a poor one for another.

Same research method applied to a different education topic, A-level sociology

Why students find these questions hard

There’s a real possibility that you’ll write a good methods essay and still not “get” what the question wants, because you have to be so nit-pickingly explicit about relating the method to the specific topic. Drilling this is painful and thankless for teachers and students alike, and it exists solely because of the demands of this particular question format.

There is also the possibility that you will lose the will to live, especially as some past-paper topics are ones that even I find intolerably dull, and I’m actually interested in this stuff. Stick with it: it is a very learnable question once you’ve practised a few.

A worked example: an 18/20 answer from the AQA(AS standard!)

This question appeared on the AQA’s AS Sociology Paper 1 (7191/1) in May 2017. The AQA published the student answer below, with examiner comments, in its feedback on that exam series. This was an AS answer, but the question format and mark scheme are the same at A-level, so it shows you what a strong answer looks like.

The item, the student’s answer and the examiner’s comments are summarised in my own words below. The original question paper, mark scheme and feedback are on the AQA’s website.

The question

The item, titled “Investigating working-class educational underachievement”, made three points:

on average, working-class pupils underachieve compared with middle-class pupils, and sociologists have suggested material deprivation, the values and attitudes of working-class homes, and factors inside schools as causes
written questionnaires let the researcher reach large numbers of pupils, parents and teachers, and respondents can usually stay anonymous
however, not everyone who receives a questionnaire will complete it

The question was: Applying material from Item B and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using written questionnaires to investigate working-class educational underachievement. (20 marks)

What the mark scheme wanted

For the top band, the mark scheme looked for accurate, conceptually detailed knowledge of written questionnaires, applied accurately to working-class underachievement. It suggested answers might consider the characteristics of the people being researched (pupils, teachers and parents, and things like self-esteem, literacy and attitudes to school), the research settings (school, classroom, home), and the sensitivity of the topic (a school’s market position and the risk of negative publicity, the vulnerability of participants, parental consent and teacher reluctance). Evaluation had to be explicit and relevant.

The answer, paragraph by paragraph

Overall: very strong on the method, with clear links to the topic in two or three places. Mark: 18/20.

AS SOCIOLOGY Paper 1 Education with Methods in Context, Tuesday 16 May 2017

Text Version:

Paragraphs as in actual student response, numbers added for clarity.

Examiner comments appear in red after each paragraph.

ONE – Written questionnaires are a type of survey where questions are standardised and distributed to large numbers of people. This is useful in an educational setting because it means they can be given to numerous students in numerous schools, something which is very important when investigating working class pupils as there are many regions which are predominantly working class.

First paragraph – general advantages of written questionnaires – standardised and large distribution. Attempt to link to topic

TWO – One major advantage of using questionnaires is that they pose relatively few practical issues. They are fairly cheap to create and distribute and they quick to fill out, especially if all questions are closed ended. This means that access is not usually an issue for the researcher as they will not disrupt lessons as much as other methods such as structured interviews, meaning that the researcher is more likely to received permission from the gatekeeper. Furhtermore, working class pupils are more likely to need to take on paid work and so the quick-nature of questinnaires which are not very time consuming means that they are useful for investigating working class underachievement.

Para 2 – advantage of Wc related to context of research in schools (gatekeepers).

THREE – However, when investigating working class pupils there may be the issue of cultural deprivation, particularly language issues. Berciler and Englemann argue that the language spoken by the working class is deficient, a particular issue when trying to interpret the questions on a written question questionnaire. When coupled with the fact that questionnaires are written in the elaborated code but working class pupils (and parents) tend to speak in the restricted code this can be a major problem in gaining accurate results; unlike with other methods, questions cannot be clarified

Para 3 – good link to topic and WQ re language and speech codes.

FOUR – As well as posing few practical issues, written questionnaires do not pose many ethical issues. This is because the respondent can remain anonymous if they so wish and they can also leave any intrusive or sensitive issues blank. When studying working class underachievement this is a particular advantage because some pupils may be embarrassed to discuss their home lives, particularly if they live in poverty.

Para 4 – ethical issues discussed – anonymity developed with reference to topic

FIVE – Even though there are relatively few ethical uses, the researcher must be aware of harm to respondents. For working class children there may be a stigma attached, and for sensitive issues such as home life, the use of questionnaires can still cause distress. Nevertheless, the fact that respondents are not obligated to respond means this ethical problem is easily overcome.

Para 5 – further developed with reference to topic

SIX – From the perspective of a positivist, written questionnaires are a useful way to investigate working class underachievement because the data produced when using standardised questions is quantitative and high in reliability. This makes questionnaires useful for investigating working class underachievement because it allows cause and effect relationships to be established, for example whether or the not the structure of the education system reproduces working class underachievement, or whether there is a correlation between family background and achievement. However, the nature of written questionnaires can be an issue if the researcher’s meaning is imposed onto the questionnaire so it is another fact that must be taken into account

Para 6 – various positivist concepts – good on usefulness of WC – but not unique to topic

SEVEN – From the point of view of an interpretivist, written questionnaires are not useful when investigating working class underachievement because the data lacks validity. While questionnaires may be able to identify that factors such as material deprivation may influence the achievement of working class pupils, it does not get to the heart of the matter. Written questionnaires do not investigate the meanings that pupils may attach to the reasons they may underachieve, and do not let the respondent communicate their ideas freely. Because of this lack of validity interpretivists do not favour the use of written questionnaires to investigate working class underachievement.

Para 7 – interpretivism and validity – not related to topic specifically (generic)

EIGHT – Ultimately, written questionnaires can be useful to investigate working class underachievement because the data is easy to analyse and compare, which may be useful as the data could be used over time to look at whether government policies put in place to reduce working class underachievement really work. Not only that but they are representative, so generalisations about the wider population can be made in a way that methods favoured by interpretivists cannot.

Para 8 – attempt to relate strengths of WQs to topic

Overall COMMENT – very strong on method with some (2/3) clear links to topic

MARK: 18/20

KT’s commentary

This is a strong answer, and it shows how far good method knowledge plus a few genuine topic links will take you. But look at where the examiner’s comments say “generic” or “not specific to the topic”: paragraphs 6 and 7 could have been written about almost any education topic. That is where the missing two marks went. The positivist paragraph could easily have been tied to the topic, for example by asking how you would operationalise “working class” on a questionnaire that pupils fill in themselves.

Note also the slip in paragraph 3: the elaborated and restricted codes are Bernstein’s concepts, not Bereiter and Engelmann’s, and the student runs the two together. It didn’t cost them here, but it is exactly the kind of thing that can.

For more examples of model answers to exam questions, please see the links on my main page on exam advice!

Picture Version…

Page 2

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’.

Sources, Signposting and related posts

This post has been written for students studying the research methods part of the AQA’s A-level and AS-level sociology courses, and specifically the Methods in Context question on the Education paper.

Methods in Context Questions: A Full Mark Answer from the AQA is a second worked example, at A-level, with my view on how it was marked.

Research Methods for A-level Sociology is the main research methods page, where you’ll find posts on each method.
For more model answers to exam questions, see my page on exams, essays and short answer questions.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

AS Sociology 7191/1 Education with Methods in Context Final Mark scheme 7191, June 2017

AS SOCIOLOGY: Feedback on the exam(s) Student responses and commentaries: Paper 1 Education with Methods in Context Published: Autumn 2017

How to Answer Methods in Context Questions: A Model Answer from the AQA