Sociology AS - OCR NEW SPEC - Paper 2 - Research Methods

Sociology AS - OCR NEW SPEC - Paper 2 -
Research Methods

Validity - ANS-The research and findings give us a true picture of what is being studied.

Reliability - ANS-If people repeating the research get similar results.

Representativeness - ANS-The sample must be representative of the larger

population. Random sampling - ANS-selecting names randomly from a sampling

frame. Systematic sampling - ANS-Every nth person.

Stratified sampling - ANS-most common technique. Dividing the sampling frames into a
number of sampling categories, eg race, age, etc.

Snowball sampling - ANS-involves asking a member of the sampling frame to suggest
another person for an interview.

Volunteer sampling - ANS-People come forward.

Opportunity sampling - ANS-People available to you.

Purposive - ANS-Choosing specific people, eg single mothers

Quota - ANS-Used by market researchers to target types of people in the street, eg
asking 30 housewives which washing powder they use.

Positivism - ANS-Those sociologists believe social behaviour is the product of social
control.

Consensus - ANS-Refers to the sharing of agreement, for example that some belief is
worth pursuing.

Integration - ANS-Refers to a sense of belonging to a group or society.

Quantitative data - ANS-Numerical data that can be analysed and used to identify