Tag: research
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How many teens are on antidepressants?
A recent survey found that 1/3rd of teens have been prescribed anti-depressants, but this is probably a result of sampling bias.
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Teenage girls think there’s a lot of sexual harassment in schools, but is there?!?
A recent OFSTED report on sexual harassment in schools and colleges examined the extent of sexual harassment in schools, but to my mind it tells us very little about the actual extent of sexual harassment in schools. The researchers visited 32 schools and colleges and interviewed 900 students about their experiences of sexual harassment, and…
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Researching in Classrooms
The classic method for researching in classrooms is non-participant observation, the method used by OFSTED inspectors. However, there are other methods available to the researcher who wishes to conduct research on actual lessons within schools. Classrooms are closed environments with very clear rules of behaviour and typically containing around 20-30 students, one teacher and maybe…
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The Global Drug Survey – a good example of invalid data due to bias?
86% of the global population have used drugs in the last year, and more people have used cannabis than tobacco. Almost 30% of the world’s population have used Cocaine in the last year, at least according to the 2019 Global Drug Survey. This survey asked adults in 36 countries about their use of drugs and…
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Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using participant observation to investigate pupil exclusions
This 20 mark methods in context question came up in the 2018 A-level sociology 7192/1 paper, below is the full question and some thoughts about how you might go about answering it! Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using participant observation to investigate…
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Using interviews to research education
Interviews are one of the most commonly used qualitative research methods in the sociology of education. In this post I consider some of the strengths and limitations of using interviews to research education, focussing mainly on unstructured interviews. This post is primarily designed to get students thinking about methods in context, or ‘applied research methods’.…
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Sociology Crime and Deviance Research Project, Summer Term 2018
This my very simply ‘research’ project task for summer timetable 2018. I’m experimenting with going back to a very open ended project!
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Criticisms of Quantitative Research
Bryman (2016) identifies four criticisms of quantitative research: Quantitative researchers fail to distinguish people and social institutions from the world of nature Schutz (1962) is the main critique here. Schutz and other phenomenologists accuse quantitative social researchers of treating the social world as if it were no different from the natural world. In so doing,…
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The Four Main Concerns of Quantitative Research
Quantitative researchers generally have four main preoccupations: they want their research to be measurable, to focus on causation, to be generalisable, and to be replicable. These preoccupations reflect epistemological grounded beliefs about what constitutes acceptable knowledge, and can be contrasted with the preoccupations of researchers who prefer a qualitative approach. Measurement It may sound like…
