What are the different methods and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
Method Strength Weakness
Longitudinal studies - Can map patterns and trends - High dropout rates
What is this? - Can identify social change - Views/experiences between dropouts and those remaining
- Most of the time they are reliable, representative and there may be very different impacting the validity
- Expensive
- Over that time researcher/researched relationships may
become too friendly, impacting their ability to stay
objective
-
Questionnaires - Cheap - Question can be bias and leading
What is this? - Lower time scale - They can be misunderstood by respondent
- Less issue of ethical concerns – especially anonymity - They can be ‘loaded’
- Reach larger numbers of respondents - Meaning to attached to terms may be different .e.g. how
- Reliable many is a few?
- Representative and generalizable - Lack validity
- Useful if the research population is geographically dispersed - Lack verstehen
- Useful for embossing/sensitive issues - Low response rate
Any other information? - Little chance of researcher influence/Hawthorne affect - People may lie to make themselves look better
- Positivists say the data is scientific - ‘imposition problem’ – questions designed to measure
sociologists views not what the respondents think
- Closed questions may not be the real answer, it may be the
closest to the real answer (impact on validity)
Interviews Useful for areas that are not accessible any other way - Expensive
What is this? - Fully dependent on the skill of the interviewer and their
suitability
Structured interviews - Positivists say they are more scientific - interview bias or demand characteristics
What is this? - Reliable - Inflexible
- Much better response rate to questionnaires - Static snapshot of that moment in time
- Quick due to set questions - no chance of development of responses
- dictated by the researcher so lacks respondent experience
which will impact validity
Method Strength Weakness
Longitudinal studies - Can map patterns and trends - High dropout rates
What is this? - Can identify social change - Views/experiences between dropouts and those remaining
- Most of the time they are reliable, representative and there may be very different impacting the validity
- Expensive
- Over that time researcher/researched relationships may
become too friendly, impacting their ability to stay
objective
-
Questionnaires - Cheap - Question can be bias and leading
What is this? - Lower time scale - They can be misunderstood by respondent
- Less issue of ethical concerns – especially anonymity - They can be ‘loaded’
- Reach larger numbers of respondents - Meaning to attached to terms may be different .e.g. how
- Reliable many is a few?
- Representative and generalizable - Lack validity
- Useful if the research population is geographically dispersed - Lack verstehen
- Useful for embossing/sensitive issues - Low response rate
Any other information? - Little chance of researcher influence/Hawthorne affect - People may lie to make themselves look better
- Positivists say the data is scientific - ‘imposition problem’ – questions designed to measure
sociologists views not what the respondents think
- Closed questions may not be the real answer, it may be the
closest to the real answer (impact on validity)
Interviews Useful for areas that are not accessible any other way - Expensive
What is this? - Fully dependent on the skill of the interviewer and their
suitability
Structured interviews - Positivists say they are more scientific - interview bias or demand characteristics
What is this? - Reliable - Inflexible
- Much better response rate to questionnaires - Static snapshot of that moment in time
- Quick due to set questions - no chance of development of responses
- dictated by the researcher so lacks respondent experience
which will impact validity
