Methods AO2

Question 1

Crime survey of England and Wales

Answer 1

• a large scale government survey conducted annually, to supplement police statistics
• a large representative sample asked a large number of questions about their experiences of crime in the last 12 months and whether they have been a victim of crime
• was able to reveal some information about the dark figure of crime

Question 2

Venkatesh: Gang leader for a day: A Rouge sociologist takes to the streets (2011)

Answer 2

• set out to study gangs in the housing projects in chicago he began by trying to get gangsters to fill in a questionnaire
• they were dismissive of his attempts and he switched to participant observation as a result of their feedback

Question 3

Connor and Dewson: social class and higher education (2001)

Answer 3

• sent out 4000 questionnaires to 14 institutions for their study on choice at universities, generating lots of data (despite a 41% response rate) and potentially making for a representative study

Question 4

Benfield: Women graduates paid less (2007)

Answer 4

• managed to access a sample of 25000 students
• she established that despite women often outperforming men academically they were paid less

Question 5

Dobash and Dobash (1979) Violence against wives

Answer 5

• semi/unstructured interviews were used to give the women a voice and to allow the researcher to offer support and comfort when tackling such a very sensitive subject
• method is preferred by feminists

Question 6

Oakley (1974) The sociology of housework

Answer 6

• classic feminist study developing the ideas such as dual burden and the nature of housework
• Oakley was keen to give power to the housewives by using semi-structured interviews

Question 7

Humphreys (1970s) The tearoom trade

Answer 7

• as part of this research Humphreys conducted interviews
• this was strongly criticised on ethical grounds : he pretended to be a health professional when conducting the interviews rather than a sociological researcher - practices deception

Question 8

Oakley (1980) Women confined: toward a sociology of childbirth

Answer 8

• used interviews to give the women power
• she was present during some of her interviewees labour - gives some idea of the rapport she had to build with the participants

Question 9

Willis (1977) Lads study

Answer 9

• used interviews and participant observations to support his conclusion
• based on the marxist approach
• used to make some generalisations om questions suggesting that his chosen school was representative of the schools that most working class pupils attend

Question 10

British crime survey

Answer 10

-takes place every 2 years and asks about peoples experience of crime

Question 11

Longitudinal survey of young people in England

Answer 11

• a longitudinal survey that started in 2004 and will continue to track the ample throughout their education and onwards

Question 12

Quota sampling

Answer 12

• typical surveys of voting preferences in journals and newspapers use a quota sample of 1200 to represent British electorate

Question 13

Snowball sampling

Answer 13

• McNamara study of male prostitutes in new york (1994) where he asked prostitutes to identify others gradually building contact for his research

Question 14

Waddington: in proportion race and police stop and search (2004)

Answer 14

• used a wide range of research methods including police statistics in their study of stop and search
• few years later the office for national statistics removed their gold standard from police statistics because they considered them to be unreliable
• evidence of data being manipulated

Question 15

Chubb and Moe: Policies, Markets and America’s schools (1990)

Answer 15

• study included analysis of the difference in results between private and public schools

Question 16

Esther Boserup: the conditions of agricultural growth

Answer 16

• studies relating to demographic change or economic change are often based on hard statistics
• combined the two in showing how agricultural production intensifies to respond to population growth

Question 17

Jacobs: a phenomenological study of suicide notes (1967)

Answer 17

• uses qualitative data - suicide notes
• give some insight to the thoughts of the individuals committing suicide, but must be used critically
• as most suicides don’t include notes so when notes are written whats their purpose

Question 18

Laslett: The world we have lost (1965)

Answer 18

• historical study of rural life before urbanisation and the industrial revolution made use of a range of historical sources including birth, marriage and death parish records

Question 19

Aries: centuries of childhood (1960)

Answer 19

• used paintings and particularly family portraits to reach his conclusions that childhood is a recent idea
• However, just because children were presented in a particular way in a painting it doesn’t mean that this accurately represented their everyday life

Question 20

Patrick: a glasgow gang observed (1973)

Answer 20

• covert participant observation - illustrates the problem of getting out
• published under a pseudonym as he was scared of the violent gang and didn’t publish for several year after
• wrote notes based on his memory of the 4 months with the gang
• ethical issues: had to deceive gang members, who did not give their consent
• he put himself and one gang member who knew he was a researcher at risk and was present during a range of illegal acts

Question 21

Pearson : football hooliganisms (2003-2014)

Answer 21

• used covert participant observation
• defended his own hooliganism in the name of conducting research, including fighting and throwing bricks towards the police

Question 22

Rosenthal and Jacobsen: Pygmalion in the classroom (1966)

Answer 22

• investigates whether teachers expectations impact pupils outcomes
• pupils were given an IQ test at the beginning and end of the process
• along with pupils labelled as having great academic potential there was a control group who hadn’t been labelled but progress could be compared with those who had
• the experiment has been repeated many times with similar results, demonstrating a degree of reliability
• ethical issues with experimenting on children

Question 23

Bandura (1962) social learning through limitation

Answer 23

• criticisms: inability to generalise from what was an unrepresentative group of children
• ethical issues about effectively teaching the children to act aggressively
• took place in an unrealistic environment - data produced is invalid