Major Research Methods

Summary

This lecture series explores the methods sociologists use to set up research projects, ensuring reliability and accuracy without infringing on participants' rights. It delves into four primary research designs: surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources. Surveys are highlighted for their cost-effectiveness and ability to gather sensitive data, while face-to-face interviews offer high response rates. Observations, often through participant observation, provide in-depth insights, albeit with ethical considerations. Experiments, though limited in replicating real-world settings, offer controlled variable manipulation. Existing sources, including secondary analysis and content analysis, allow for the use of pre-collective data, expanding the scope of sociological research.

Takeaways

• 🔍 Sociologists primarily use four research designs: surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources to ensure reliability and accuracy in their research.
• 📊 Surveys are the most common method, with face-to-face interviews and questionnaires being the main techniques, offering benefits like quick turnaround and anonymity but also limitations such as low response rates for mailed surveys.
• 🤝 High response rates in face-to-face interviews are attributed to personal contact, but rapport development is crucial for credibility.
• 👀 Observant interviewers can gather non-verbal cues like body language and facial expressions for deeper understanding.
• 🔬 Experiments in sociology are limited due to their artificial settings and the difficulty in generalizing lab results to the general population.
• 👥 Participant observation involves joining a group to understand its operations, with debates on the value of covert versus overt methods.
• 📚 Ethnographies are in-depth, long-term studies of social settings, similar to cultural anthropology, and require building trust over time.
• 🔍 Experiments must be carefully conducted to avoid the Hawthorne effect, where subjects change their behavior because they know they are being observed.
• 📈 Secondary analysis uses pre-existing data, allowing for research without direct contact with subjects but limiting the ability to follow up on specific responses.
• 📚 Content analysis involves coding and analyzing texts or images to make inferences about societal roles and behaviors.
• 💻 Technological advancements have greatly expanded the capacity for data storage and analysis, facilitating more extensive sociological research.

Q & A

What are the primary research designs sociologists rely on?

The primary research designs sociologists rely on are surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources.

Why are surveys considered the 'big hitter' for sociologists?

Surveys are considered the 'big hitter' because they are the most commonly used method. They are inexpensive, simple to administer, and can quickly gather basic information from a large group of people.

What are the two general ways in which surveys are conducted?

Surveys are generally conducted either through interviews (over the phone or face-to-face) or through questionnaires, which are usually in a printed form.

What are some benefits of using surveys for sociological research?

Benefits of surveys include low cost, ease of administration, quick turnaround, anonymity, and the ability to gather information on sensitive topics from a large group of people.

Why is it important for researchers to develop a good rapport with their subjects in face-to-face interviews?

Developing a good rapport is crucial because it can significantly impact the credibility of the research and the quality of the responses. A poor rapport can undermine the research and lead to less reliable data.

What are some limitations of mailed questionnaires in surveys?

Limitations of mailed questionnaires include a very low response rate, potential suspicion from respondents about the request for information, and the possibility of questions being unclear or complicated, leading to non-response or discarded questionnaires.

How can face-to-face interviews provide additional data beyond the verbal responses?

Face-to-face interviews allow researchers to observe body language, facial expressions, and intonations, which can provide valuable insights and help interpret the person's verbal response.

What is participant observation and how is it used in sociological research?

Participant observation is a method where researchers join a group to understand how it operates. It can be done covertly or overtly, and is often used in ethnographic studies, which take a long time to complete and focus on a higher social setting.

What are the potential dangers of covert participant observation research?

Covert participant observation can be dangerous because if the researcher is discovered during the research, the group they are infiltrating may react negatively, potentially putting the researcher in harm's way.

What is the Hawthorne effect and why is it a concern in sociological experiments?

The Hawthorne effect is the unintended influence of observers or experiments on the subjects, where subjects change their behavior because they know they are being watched. This can skew the results of experiments, making it difficult to generalize findings to the general population.

What are the two techniques used with existing sources in sociological research?

The two techniques used with existing sources are secondary analysis, which involves using previously collected and publicly accessible data, and content analysis, which involves coding and analyzing content such as literature or images.

Outlines

00:00

📊 Sociological Research Methods and Surveys

This paragraph introduces the fundamental concepts of sociological research, emphasizing the importance of reliability and accuracy in research results and the need to respect the rights of research subjects. It outlines the four primary research designs used by sociologists: surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources. Surveys are highlighted as the most commonly used method, with a focus on their benefits such as cost-effectiveness, simplicity, and quick results. The paragraph also discusses the different types of surveys, including face-to-face interviews and questionnaires, and their respective advantages and limitations. The importance of rapport in face-to-face interviews and the potential for collecting additional non-verbal data is noted, as well as the challenges of low response rates in mailed surveys and the issues of question clarity and respondent honesty.

05:03

🔍 Observation and Experimentation in Sociological Research

The second paragraph delves into the methods of observation and experimentation within sociological research. It explains that observation can be conducted covertly or overtly, with a focus on participant observation and the potential dangers associated with covert research. The paragraph also touches on the concept of ethnography, which involves long-term study of a social setting. Experiments are described as artificially created situations with manipulated variables, but their limited value for sociologists is noted due to their inability to replicate real-world social dynamics. The Hawthorne effect, which refers to the influence of being observed on subjects' behavior, is highlighted as a potential issue in experimental research. The paragraph concludes with a brief mention of the use of existing resources in sociological research, including secondary analysis and content analysis.

10:04

📚 Utilization of Existing Data and Technological Advancements

The final paragraph discusses the use of existing data sources in sociological research, such as secondary analysis and content analysis. Secondary analysis relies on previously collected data, which can be limited by the lack of direct contact with research subjects. Content analysis, on the other hand, involves coding and analyzing texts or images to draw conclusions about societal roles or behaviors. The paragraph also highlights the impact of technology on sociological research, with software packages enabling the storage and analysis of vast amounts of data. The potential for longitudinal studies and the availability of public data banks for research are mentioned, showcasing the expanded capabilities facilitated by technological advancements.

Keywords

💡Sociologists

Sociologists are scientists who study society and social behavior. In the context of the video, they are the primary researchers who set up projects to understand social phenomena. The script discusses how sociologists ensure the reliability and accuracy of their findings and respect the rights of the subjects they study.

💡Research designs

Research designs are detailed plans or methods for obtaining data in a scientific manner. The script outlines four primary research designs used by sociologists: surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources. These designs are central to the theme of the video, as they form the basis of sociological investigation.

💡Surveys

Surveys are a common method used by sociologists to gather data from a large group of people. They can be conducted through interviews or questionnaires, as mentioned in the script. Surveys are significant in the video as they are the 'big hitter' for sociologists, providing inexpensive and simple ways to collect data quickly.

💡Interviews

Interviews are a type of survey method where researchers ask questions to individuals, either over the phone or face-to-face. The script highlights the high response rate of face-to-face interviews and the importance of developing rapport with subjects to ensure the credibility of the research.

💡Questionnaire

A questionnaire is a printed or digital set of questions used to gather information from respondents. The script discusses the benefits and limitations of questionnaires, including their potential for low response rates and the issues of clarity and sensitivity in the questions asked.

💡Confidentiality

Confidentiality refers to the protection of the identity of research subjects. The script mentions that surveys are often anonymous, ensuring confidentiality, which is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the research and the trust of the respondents.

💡Participant observation

Participant observation is a research method where the researcher becomes a part of the group being studied, either overtly or covertly. The script discusses the benefits and risks associated with this method, including the potential for obtaining rich data and the ethical considerations involved.

💡Ethnography

Ethnography is an in-depth study of a particular culture or group, often involving long-term participant observation. The script describes ethnographies as similar to studies in cultural anthropology and notes the time-intensive nature of this research method.

💡Experiments

Experiments are artificially created situations where researchers manipulate variables to observe effects. The script points out the limited value of experiments in sociology due to their artificial nature and the difficulty in generalizing findings to the broader population.

💡Hawthorne effect

The Hawthorne effect refers to the phenomenon where subjects change their behavior because they know they are being observed. The script warns against this effect in experiments, as it can skew results and make it difficult to draw accurate conclusions.

💡Secondary analysis

Secondary analysis involves using previously collected data for new research purposes. The script mentions this method as a way to utilize existing resources like census data, but also notes the limitations, such as the lack of direct contact with research subjects.

💡Content analysis

Content analysis is a research technique used to analyze and interpret texts or other media. The script provides an example of a content analysis of children's books, where researchers coded language and images to make assertions about gender roles in society.

💡Technology

The script mentions the impact of technology on sociological research, particularly the use of software packages that enable the storage and analysis of large amounts of data. Technology extends the capabilities of researchers and is integral to the modern sociological research process.

Highlights

Sociologists use four primary research designs: surveys, observation, experiments, and existing sources.

Surveys are the most commonly used method in sociology, with benefits including cost-effectiveness and quick turnaround.

Surveys can be conducted through interviews or questionnaires, each with their advantages and limitations.

Anonymous surveys encourage respondents to answer sensitive questions honestly.

Face-to-face interviews have a high response rate and allow for the collection of non-verbal cues.

The rapport between researcher and subject is crucial for the credibility of survey responses.

In-depth interviews can provide detailed descriptions of personal experiences and social worlds.

Mailed surveys often have a low response rate due to public suspicion and disinterest.

Survey questions must be clear to avoid confusion and encourage participation.

People may provide opinions on topics they know little about, as demonstrated in fictitious surveys.

Income questions in surveys are often skipped or dishonestly answered, especially by wealthier respondents.

Observation involves direct participation or watching a group, which can be done covertly or overtly.

Ethnographies are in-depth, long-term studies of social settings, similar to cultural anthropology.

Debate exists over the value of covert versus overt participant observation in research.

Experiments in sociology are limited due to their artificial nature and difficulty in generalizing results.

The Hawthorne effect is a phenomenon where subjects change their behavior because they are being observed.

Secondary analysis uses previously collected data, but lacks direct contact with research subjects.

Content analysis involves coding and analyzing texts or images to make sociological assertions.

Technology has expanded the capacity for sociological research, with software enabling large-scale data storage and analysis.

Transcripts

throughout this lecture series bear in

mind that we're going to answer how

sociologists go about setting up

research projects how they ensure that

the results of their research are

reliable and accurate and whether or not

they can carry out their research

without violating the rights of those

they study now let's take a look at

Major research designs now you'll recall

from your science classes that a

research design is a detailed plan or

method for obtaining data

scientifically for a sociologist there

are four designs that we rely on

primarily and those are surveys

observation experiments and existing

sources there are others that we use but

these four are the primary sources let's

take a look first at surveys this is the

big hitter for sociologist this is the

one that we use the most and there are

generally two ways in which we conduct

surveys and one is the interview either

over the phone or face to face and then

the questionnaire and the questionnaire

is usually in a printed form now each

technique that a sociologist uses does

have benefits and limitations and we're

going to talk about a few of those here

some of the good things about surveys is

that they're usually inexpensive and

they're simple to administer and they do

have a very quick turn around a survey

is very helpful in finding out basic

information from a large group of people

in a very short period of time most of

the time the results of a survey are

Anonymous and respondents are generally

willing to answer questions on sensitive

topics such as income sexual behavior

and the use of drugs even if we're in a

face-to-face setting we rarely know the

research subject's name or any other

kind of identifying information and so

it is a confidential Anonymous process

face-to-face interviews have an

extremely high response rate up to about

99% and it's theorized that because that

type of situation involves person

personal contact with the researcher now

it's important for the researcher to be

able to develop a good rapport with the

research subjects so if for example uh

the researcher walks in with an attitude

or with a chip on her shoulder or

presents herself in a way that is not

flattering to the research subjects and

a rapport cannot be developed that can

seriously undermine The credibility of

the research and the answers that uh the

respondents give if we have the time to

do in-depth interviews or if that's

what's called for in our research we can

get a lot of detail about the social

world and very very good descriptions of

people's personal experience one of the

interesting things about face-to-face

interviews is that oftentimes the

researcher is collecting other data that

the research subject is not even aware

of so while we're asking a question and

we're recording the answer to the

question we're also looking at body

language facial expressions intonations

and all of that stuff can be very useful

in interpreting the person's verbal

response um if a respondent doesn't

understand a question we can clarify by

looking at their their facial expression

we can maybe say the question in a

different way being a good interviewer

is definitely a skill that has to be

honed it's not something that you learn

overnight and an observant interviewer

can gather lots of information on

variables uh you know you maybe have to

go into the respondent's home so you can

get a wealth of socioeconomic data that

way just by looking around and being

observant some of the limitations of

surveys particularly those that are

mailed questionnaires are that they have

a very low response rate people don't

tend to answer things VIA mail any

longer they're a little suspicious of

who's asking for the information and why

they want it our response rate in fact

for mailed surveys is at about 10%

um if the questions aren't clear or

complicated if you've written them in a

potentially offensive way respondents

can simply throw it away and not even

think about it again we also know

interestingly from Gathering data that

people will offer

opinions uh about things that they don't

know about for example we have done some

surveys where we've made up political

figures and fictitious legislation and

mailed it out and asked questions

questions about it and respondents have

responded to the questions and to the

fictitious politician as if they

actually exist and that these

respondents know something about the

issue something that also happens with

surveys is that people may skip or lie

about the questions that they feel are

too nosy for example in the census of

2000 53% of people who got the long form

which is not something that everybody

gets uh didn't answer the questions

about income and this is standard with

survey type questions income is

considered a sensitive topic

interestingly the Richer you are the

less liable you are to answer truthfully

the poorer you are the more likely you

are to answer truthfully so face-to-face

interviewing can be pretty expensive but

questionnaires and telephone surveys can

be cheap so there are benefits and

drawbacks to both one of the upcoming

techniques for surveys is internet and

there are some inherent problems with

using the internet and that is that not

everybody has access to the internet in

their home not everybody understands how

to use a computer so there are

significant demographic issues with who

we're capturing data from and whether or

not that's a good random sample of our

population so surveys capture either

quantitative or qualitative data if

they're capturing quantitative data it's

uh reporting primarily data that's in

its numerical form this is where often

times you'll hear information such as

99% of face-to-face interviews have high

response rates and less than 10% of the

people who are mailed questionnaires

respond to them they also capture

qualitative data the qualitative data

that is captured is usually what happens

in the field so it's not necessarily

about the question that you may be

asking the person but it's what's going

on in that particular setting that

becomes qualitative so let's say for

example you're doing a focus group on

couples and you have four or five

couples there that you're asking

questions to and as a researcher you can

see that one couple is very loving

towards each other they're holding hands

and they're smiling and they're making a

lot of eye contact and one couple is

sitting as though they're divided

they're not touching each other other

and they both have their arms crossed

across their chest and they're not

looking at each other at all you can

make some inferences about that

particularly if you're asking questions

about say for example satisfaction

within the relationship or uh whether or

not your spouse may have been cheating

on you so watching what's going on while

you're asking the questions in a

qualitative research project is

essential the second kind of method that

we use is observation and this is

collecting information through direct

participation or by watching a group or

community and this can be done covertly

or overtly we mostly do what we call

participant observation which is where

we join a group to get a sense of how it

operates and we do have some sociologist

who specialize in ethnography

ethnographies take a very long period of

time to complete and they talk about an

entire higher social setting and so

ethnographies uh are more similar to

anthropology or cultural anthropology

than are the other forms of social

research it's interesting we have some

very fascinating participant observation

studies out there and there's a debate

over the value of covert versus overt

participant observation research you

know if if you're covert then basically

you're going in and infiltrating a group

you're behaving as if you're one of them

and you're taking your notes on the sly

and no one knows that you're a

researcher and while you can get some

really really good information this can

be dangerous there are some situations

in social science research where

researchers have been put In Harm's Way

because they've been outed at a point

during their research and the group that

they were with really didn't take too

kindly to that

conversely with overt observation the

group knows that you're researching them

it can change the way they behave

ethnographies are a little bit less um

dangerous than that and in an

ethnography you generally do spend

enough time with the group that uh they

get to where they'll let their guard

down with you and by a lot of time I'm

talking some ethnographies take a few

years of observation

before you're even ready to start trying

to compile and gather the information

together to publish it okay the next

kind of method that we're going to talk

about is the experiment now this is an

artificially created situation that

allows the researcher to manipulate

variables and we almost always have here

an experimental group and a control

group

now experiments are of limited value to

sociologists they're interesting yes

some experiments in the recent past as

far as sociology is concerned are

fascinating we can look at the zimbardo

prison experiment we can look at the

mgrm shock experiment we can look at the

ash experiment on Conformity they have a

kind of

voyerism about them the problem with

experiments for sociologists is that

they don't

replicate the real natural setting of

the social world and so they're limited

value when we want to make

generalizations to the population yes we

can make some statements about what's

happened in the lab when we applied the

stimulus but it's it's a far way to

assert that that's the way that people

would also behave in the general

population so we you know while

experiments can can prove to be

beneficial we have to be careful with

the assertions we make with regard to

how far we can take those

and with experiments we have to be very

guarded against the Hawthorn effect this

is the unintended influence of observers

or experiments on the subjects this is

when a subject knows they're being

watched and their behavior change

changes because of it this comes from a

famous experiment that was done at the

Hawthorne Electric Plant uh several

researchers came in and said we're here

to observe your productivity for the

next several days and no matter what

stimulus was applied to the workers in

the plant productivity increased and

what we really found there was because

the subjects knew they were being

researched and wanted to please the

researchers their productivity increased

so it's something that we have to bear

in mind use of existing resources is

also a good way to do sociological

research and there are a couple of

different things we do here one of the

techniques we use is called secondary

analysis and this makes use of

previously collected and publicly

accessible information and data for

example example I may want to find

something out about the southern region

of states in America and so I could rely

on census data to find that out the

information's already been collected all

I have to do is go in and find the

variables and ask the question basically

problematic with secondary analysis is

that I don't have contact with the

research subjects and so if there's a

question that I might need to follow up

with or if I'm not exactly sure about

somebody's response I don't have contact

with that person and so it is of value

for some types of research but if you

have to get into depth with your

research questions then you might run

into some problems with secondary

analysis but we do now have in the

United States many very very good

longitudinal studies that have been

publicly funded where the data banks are

right online and available for anybody

to go in and use the the other Technique

we use here with existing sources is

what we call a Content analysis and a

Content analysis is where we might for

example take some literature and code

the words that are in that literature to

see how many times they come up and then

make some assertions about that or we

might for example take pictures there

was a famous content analysis done

several years back now of children's

books and when these researchers went in

and coded the pictures and the language

in children's books what they found was

the the characters that represented

males whether they were in little boy

form or animal form tended to have more

Authority in these books than the

characters that portrayed little girls

or girl animals uh they tended to be

more passive and so a statement could be

made then about the positions or the

roles of men and women in society or

little boys and little girls in society

technology really has extended our range

and capability to conduct research and

the software packages that we have now

enable us to store and analyze much

larger amounts of information than we

ever were able to do in the

past we'll talk again soon take care

bye-bye