Last Updated on October 15, 2026 by Karl Thompson
This theory and methods question came up as Question 06 on the 2020 A-level sociology paper, Education with Theory and Methods (7192/1). (The paper is dated May 2020, but because of the pandemic it was actually sat in the November 2020 exam series.) “Outline and explain” questions on theory and methods can come up at the end of Paper 1 or Paper 3, so this is worth practising for both.
Below I summarise what the mark scheme was looking for, give some hints on answering, and then a possible answer, followed by what the examiners said about how students did.
Have a go at it yourself first! For the background, see Qualitative Data: Strengths and Limitations.
The question (no item!)
Outline and explain two problems of using primary qualitative methods in sociological research. (10 marks)
This is a no-item 10-marker, so there are no marks for evaluation. You get your marks for two well-explained problems, not for saying what’s good about qualitative methods.
Below I include the mark scheme and a possible answer to this question…
What the mark scheme was looking for
Summarised in my own words. The full mark scheme is on the AQA’s site.
The mark scheme suggested answers might focus on problems such as:
- you can’t generalise from the findings
- you can’t isolate cause and effect
- the data is difficult to analyse
- the methods are low in reliability
- the findings are subjective
- the researcher may impose their own interpretation on the data
- the methods are unscientific
- they can’t be used to establish social laws
Hints for answering this question
Personally I see these as falling into three groups that naturally fit together:
- you can’t generalise, and so can’t establish social laws
- you can’t isolate cause and effect, and the data is difficult to analyse
- low reliability, imposition, subjectivity and being unscientific
So the strategy here is to pick two of these groups and make them your two points. Keep the two points genuinely separate: don’t let one bleed into the other.
It would also be good to use examples from particular qualitative methods, namely participant observation or unstructured interviews, ideally both.
Suggested answer
The first problem of using primary qualitative research methods such as participant observation is that they are unscientific, and influenced by the subjective biases of the researchers who use them.
A good example of this is Venkatesh’s study Gang Leader for a Day, based on around seven years spent with a crack-dealing gang in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes housing project. He seemed to really like the gang’s leader, and the fact that he got on so well with him may have influenced the way he interpreted his actions. He may also have been selective in what he wrote, possibly keeping some of the worst crimes out of his book.
A related problem is that we can never know how bad the bias is, because participant observation also lacks reliability: it is difficult to repeat in the same way and get the same results.
This is especially true of participant observation carried out over several months or years. It would be impossible for someone else to replicate the context of Venkatesh’s study, because the same situations will not occur again, given how many different people were involved in the research on the ground.
If another researcher could go back and repeat the research, they might follow different leads, speak to different people, and come up with an entirely different interpretation of the same gang.
Although this is a moot point, because by the time Venkatesh published his book in 2008, the Robert Taylor Homes had been demolished. The length of time it takes to write up this kind of research adds to the problem of reliability.
HOWEVER, one can at least check the findings by showing them to the respondents who took part.
A second problem of primary qualitative methods is that it is not usually possible to isolate cause and effect and uncover “social laws”.
For example, unstructured interviews are respondent-led: you might have a broad topic area and then ask different respondents different questions.
You would end up with a nice “thick description” of what respondents think and feel about the topic, but also a mess of qualitative data.
The data would be messy, possibly quite long-winded, and possibly full of irrelevant information if the researcher allowed the respondents too much freedom.
So if you did ten unstructured interviews, you might end up with ten very different sets of findings with no common themes.
It would be hard for a researcher to analyse this data, find the common themes, isolate any variables and find out the specific causes of social action.
To do that, you would need structured questions that limit the options available to respondents.
Having said that, today it should be possible to use software to find common themes in qualitative data, but even that might miss respondents talking about the same thing in different ways.
KT’s commentary
According to the examiners, students did worse on this question than on the rest of the paper, and some didn’t answer it at all. Most could name two problems, usually practical ones like time and cost, but few explained them in any depth. A lot of answers confused validity with reliability, or jumbled several problems together, for example treating not being able to generalise as if it were a problem of reliability.
The answer above avoids that by choosing two problems that don’t overlap: subjectivity and reliability in the first, cause and effect in the second. Each one is explained and then illustrated with a specific method, which is what gets the development marks. Notice too that it isn’t the obvious “time and cost” answer: practical problems are fine, but theoretical ones give you more to explain.
The examiners also suspected that some students ran out of time because they had written too much on the 4- and 6-mark questions earlier in the paper. This is the last question on Paper 1, so leave yourself time for it.
Sources and signposting
- AQA 7192/1 question paper (November 2020 series)
- Mark scheme
- AQA examiners’ report (November 2020)
- AQA Sociology past papers
For more practice on this type of question, see Research Methods Practice Questions. The same paper’s 20-mark Methods in Context question, on non-participant observation, is answered in this post.
For more exam advice for A-level sociology, see my exams and essays page.
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