Positivism Flashcards
What do positivists like?
Methods that are detached and scientific
What do positivists believe?
Believe that sociology should be studied like a science.
What do positivists like to use?
Statistics, generalisations and hypothesis.
Which methods do positivists prefer?
Quantitative methods.
Why do positivists think researchers should be detached?
Do they don’t influence results.
What are generalisations?
When you draw conclusions and create laws about human behaviour from research that applies to large groups of society.
What is reliability?
Research that can be repeated
What is representativeness?
If the research reflects characteristics of wider target population which is being studied.
What are some studies positivists conduct?
Experiments, comparative methods, social surveys, structured questionnaires, structured interviews and non-participant investigation.
What is a macro approach?
Focusing on society as a whole
What are the pros of closed questionaires?
Ethically good- anonymous
Consensual
Can be done in own time
Less pressure
What are the cons of closed questionnaires?
Not everyone may respond
May feel uncomfortable
People may lie to produce socially desirable answers
May misunderstand
May just tick anything
What is the imposition problem?
The researcher has decided questions not letting answers say what they feel.
What happened during the video nasties research?
They asked primary school children which horror movies they’d seen and they ticked all boxes. So they showed them a list of fake horror movies and they still ticked all movies.
What are some advantages of questionnaires?
They are detached so don’t impact answers.
They are reliable as they can be repeated.
They are representative as they can collect data from lots of people.
They can test a hypothesis.
