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Study Guide for Bryn Hafren students

Sociological Methods

Interviewing People

This can be a difficult method to use because some people do not like asking people detailed questions, but it has the advantage of giving you in-depth information about people's feelings. Make a list of general areas of questioning and talk to people in depth about their feelings and ideas.

Designing a questionnaire

This method is best for discovering factual information about people, such as their drinking habits or the amount of time that they spend with various members of the family. You could ask about how much time they spend reading books or watching TV. This is useful because you can ask a lot of people questions.

Observing people

This simply means that you watch people behaving naturally over a period of time and watch what they do. You can analyse the results. You could watch children in a playground to see the differences between the way that girls and boys behave. It is difficult to make notes, but is very interesting to do. It can be difficult to write this work up unless it is well designed.

Content analysis

This is most useful for studying the mass media when you look at exactly what is written and then you analyse it. You could for instance count the amount of space devoted to stories of crime over a period of time, or look at the way that a paper reports crime and deviance. You might count the number of photographs of men and women or the amount of space given to stories about men's sport and women's sport.

Designing an experiment to carry out

You could take pictures of toys and ask children in a class to see if the toys were for girls or boys. This would show you that children already have clear ideas about the sort of toys that are suitable for each sex.

Case study

Instead of asking a lot of people questions about a given topic, you could study one person in detail over a period of time to show what has happened in their lives and how they cope.

Focus group

This is where you gather together a group of people and discuss topics. They can all contribute ideas to the conversation

Triangulation

This is not a method. Sociologists use two different types of method to compare their results with one method against another. It offers depth of understanding.