OCR A-Level Sociology Component 2 research methods overview quiz quiz

Qualitative data about the subjective meanings behind actions

Personal documents such as diaries, letters and photographs

Unstructured interview transcripts rich in detail and depth

Quantitative data revealing social facts and patterns

Empathetic understanding of people's meanings

A statistical correlation found between two measured variables

A controlled scientific experiment carried out in a laboratory

A representative sample drawn carefully from the wider population

Whether the research can be repeated and yield the same result

Whether research truly measures what it claims to measure

Whether the sample used in the study is sufficiently large

Whether the data gathered is numerical rather than written

Positivist, empirical and theoretical approaches to study

Primary, experimental and tested sources of research data

Practical, ethical and theoretical factors

Population, ethics and triangulation of different methods

The researcher over-identifying closely with the group and losing their objectivity

A statistical bias that creeps into the way the research sample is selected

An ethical breach in which participants never give their informed consent

Participants changing their behaviour because they know they are being watched

The researcher over-identifying with the group and losing objectivity

Travelling abroad in order to study an unfamiliar foreign culture

Using a random sample drawn fairly from the whole target population

Conducting research covertly without telling the group it is happening

Hard statistics are simply old records while soft statistics are very recent ones

Hard statistics are reliable counts; soft statistics are open to under-recording

Hard statistics are purely qualitative whereas soft statistics are quantitative

There is no real difference at all between hard and soft official statistics

Random sampling

Stratified sampling

Snowball sampling

Systematic sampling

Carrying out a small pilot study before the main research

Combining several different methods together in one study

Gaining the informed consent of all of the participants

Turning an abstract concept into a measurable indicator

It relies on deception and lacks informed consent

It is far too expensive to be worth carrying out in practice

It always produces invalid and untrustworthy research data

It is completely unable to reach hidden or hard-to-reach groups