Wilmott and young pilot interviews
Used over 100 pilot interviews to help decide in design of their study (what questions etc)
Jan Pahl interviews
Used interviews to investigate how family decisions are made
Durkheims secondary data
Durkheims study of suicide started with official statistics from across Europe
Describe Hargreaves study
Administered questionnaires, conducted interviews and observed the pupils in secondary modern school as a participant observer
Examined behaviour and attitudes of boys In the school and their relationships with teachers
Bowles and Gintis study
Measures student personality traits using a questionnaire, compared results with school grade averages found correlation (closer personality is to that required by employer, higher school attainment)
-large sample
Example of a structured interview
Balcazar, denman and Lara (1995) used structured interviews to get data on work related interviews and sickness
Features closed questions
What do Cohen and Taylor (1977) argue about respondents
Respondents try to please the researcher and tell them what they want to hear
Name a sociologist which talks about understanding in unstructured interviews
Kvale (1996) found behaviour is understood from the perspective of those being studied (verstehen)
Name an example of an unstructured interview with Pakistanis
Hamid et al (2010) studied young Pakistani females and found respondents could elaborate in topics e.g marriage
Main example of unstructured interviews
Sue sharps study on girls attitudes to education family and work.
Asked open ems questions
Rich qualitative data
Valid picture of aspirations/feelings
Name a sociologist who talks about semi structured interviews
Oatey(1996) suggests the respondent has greater freedom to answer how they wish :: more valid
Name a sociologist who talked about the validity of group interviews
Nicholas suggests sample should be from the same sex and the same class to prevent reliability and validity being compromised
Name the key group interview study
Willis ‘having a laff’ study carried out unstructured group interviews to uncover counter school culture
What did Gibbs argue a strength of group interviews is?
Ability to draw in attitudes, feelings, experiences and reactions to provide a unique understanding
Describe dobash and dobash research in 1980
Study on domestic violence which uses interviews as it allowed formation of good rapport
Describe James (2007) research
17 in depth interviews and one focus group, gained through snowball sampling to study groups who have a difficult relationship with the police
Describe Chubb and moes survey?
Carried out survey of parental attitudes to schooling, asking fixed questions in interviews or questions used to generalise views.
Why was Chubb and Moes survey bias?
It used a fixed list of questions which imposes the researchers meanings of respondents by limiting what answers they can give :: results could have suited new right perspective
Describe Anjan Declercq research
Observation in different nursing homes
She found dementia upsetting which affected information collected
Staff also withheld some information from Declercq due to questioning the purpose of the presence
Name a non participant observation
Parker’s study of youths stealing cars
Name an example of participant observation
Whytes study of a group of poor
Inner city makes
Name Lacys key observation study
Used a variety of methods including participant and non participant observation showing detailed insight into social relations in school.
Deceive Wright’s observation study
Observed the classroom interactions of over 1000 pupils and teachers to see how teachers actually behaved towards pupils
Describe a questionnaire study (large)
Connor and Dewson were able to post 4000 questionnaires to 14 higher education institutions
