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Sociology: Research Methods - Case Studies 3

This is the third quiz based on Case Studies regarding the AQA A-Level Research Methods topic in Sociology. Below are the words which need to be matched to their definitions: Eileen Barker (1984) Jane Elliott (1968) Aaron Cicourel (1968) Ned Flanders (1970) Cecile Wright (1992) Ronald King (1984) Maxwell Atkinson (1971) John Irvine (1987) Thomas & Znaniecki (1919) Glenys Lobban (1974) David Gillborn (1995) Valerie Hey (1997)
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Last updated: January 14, 2024
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First submittedJanuary 11, 2024
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David Gillborn (1995)
This sociologist, in his study of racism and schooling, was able to access a wide range of school documents, including school policy statements, local authority guidelines on anti-racism and the minutes of staff meetings and working parties:
-These documents gave him the 'official' picture of what was happening in terms of racism and anti-racism in the schools he studied.
-He then compared this with the data he collected from interviews and observation.
Maxwell Atkinson (1971)
Interpretivist sociologists such as this one regard official statistics as lacking validity:
-They argue that statistics do not represent real things or 'social facts' that exist out there in the world.
-Instead, statistics are socially constructed - they merely represent the labels some people give to the behaviour of others.
-In this view, with regard to Durkheim's 1897 study on suicide, suicide statistics do not represent the 'real rate' of suicides that have actually taken place, but merely the total number of decisions made by coroners to label some deaths as suicides.
-The statistics therefore tell us more about the way coroners label deaths than the actual causes of these deaths.
-Rather than taking statistics at face value, therefore, interpretivists argue that we should investigate how they are socially constructed.
-For example, this sociologist uses qualitative methods such as observing the proceedings of coroners' courts to discover how coroners reach their decisions to label some deaths as suicides, others as accidents and so on.
Glenys Lobban (1974)
This sociologist used content analysis to analyse gender roles in children's reading schemes:
-She found that females were portrayed in a range of roles that was both limited and stereotyped.
-For example, she found that female characters were generally portrayed playing domestic roles.
Thomas & Znaniecki (1919)
These sociologists' study, 'The Polish Peasant in Europe and America', used personal documents to study migration and social change:
-As interactionists, they were particularly interested in people's personal experiences of these events.
-They used personal documents to reveal the meanings that individuals gave to their experience of migration.
-The documents included 764 letters bought after an advertisement in a Polish newspaper in Chicago and several autobiographies.
-They also used public documents, such as newspaper articles and court and social work records.
-With these documents, they were able to explore the experiences of social change of some of the thousands of people who migrated from rural Poland to the USA in the early 20th century.
Cecile Wright (1992)
At the time this sociologist was carrying out her research, there were few Black teachers and she found that her African Caribbean ethnicity produced antagonistic reactions from some White teachers:
-On the other hand, she found that many Black pupils held her in high esteem and would ask her for support.
-A White researcher may well have found the opposite.
-This is an example of personal characteristics affecting the process of observation.
Aaron Cicourel (1968)
This Interactionist sociologist conducted a study using participant observation of how police and probation officers categorise juveniles by making unconscious assumptions about whether they are criminal 'types':
-Precisely because they are unaware of their assumptions, it would be pointless for the sociologist to ask them questions about these.
-For this sociologist, therefore, the only way to get at these assumptions is to observe the police directly in their work.
Valerie Hey (1997)
This sociologist made use of the notes (as personal documents) girls passed to each other in class to understand their friendship patterns:
-However, the notes were not always easy to obtain, as the girls were experts at hiding them from teachers.
Ronald King (1984)
This sociologist tried to blend into the background of an infant school by initially spending short periods of time in the classroom to allow the children to become familiar with his presence:
-So as not to be seen as a teacher, he avoided eye contact and politely refused their requests for help.
-In an attempt to be unobtrusive, he even used the classroom's Wendy House as a 'hide'.
-This example shows how difficult it is for an adult observer to reduce the effect of their presence on pupils' behaviour.

Evaluation:
-Ball (1993) asks, what did the children actually make of the tall man hiding in the Wendy House? In other words, the danger is that the children's awareness of King's presence may have changed their normal behaviour and so undermined the validity of his observations.
John Irvine (1987)
Marxist sociologists such as this one take a different view from interpretivists:
-They do not regard official statistics as merely the outcome of the labels applied by officials such as coroners.
-Instead, they see official statistics as serving the interests of capitalism.
-They see capitalist society as made up of 2 social classes in conflict with each other, the capitalist ruling class and the working class, whose labour the capitalists exploit for profit.
-In this conflict, the state is not neutral but serves the interests of the capitalist class.
-The statistics that the state produces are part of ruling-class ideology - that is, a part of the ideas and values that help to maintain the capitalist class in power.
-Unemployment statistics are a good example of this process - the state has regularly changed the definition of unemployment over the years.
-This has almost always reduced the numbers officially defined as unemployed, thus disguising the true level of unemployment and its damaging effects on the working class.
-Similarly, Marxists argue that official police statistics systematically underestimate the number of people taking part in demonstrations against government policies.
-This gives the public the impression that there is less opposition to capitalism.
Eileen Barker (1984)
This sociologist used overt participant observation to study the ‘Moonies’:
-She lived with the members both at home and abroad over the six years.
-Her role as a participant observer went through three distinct stages.
-The first stage was passive observation, then interactive observation and finally aggressive observation.
-During the participant observation stage, it was always known that she was not a 'Moonie' herself.
-She was free to ask probing questions without causing offence or discomfort or risking harm to herself or others.
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