Research methods can be divided into two categories, these are Primary Research and Secondary Research: The difference between these methods are that Primary Research is carried out by the researcher themselves, where as Secondary Research is of material researched and presented by others. The Primary research methods include books, newspapers and magazines. The Secondary research methods include Literature searches, media analysis, technology based research, statistical analysis and case studies. Secondary resources are useful if statistics are needed because they have been collected over a long period of time, which we are unable to complete ourselves, although the terminology may be difficult to understand.
I chose the topics 'Bullying' and 'Diet' to discuss whether Primary research or Secondary research would work the best.
Bullying: It would be good to interview the child being bullied to get their qualitive view. It is an opportunity to get the honest view of the child's emotions and the problems bullying has caused for the child. Interviews are much better than questionaire because in interviews you get give ur full opinion, where as in questionaires they only want yes or no answers. Observations are not realistic, because if a child see's somebody watching their behaviour then are goin to act differently and not bully any other children. Although observations may also be useful as the subjects being studied are in their natural environment. Preparing questionaires for teachers and parents would be useful to see if the child's behaviour has changed sue to bullying, if the children feel comfortable enough to talk or the teachers or their parents about the child being bullied. Creating the questionaire give you the opportunity to relate the questions directly to the hypothesis, although they may not provide much depth into the subject considered. Using books would not be useful as they are not up to date, it takes at least 1 year for a new book to be published. A good secondary source to use would be to look at journals such as 'Nursery World', internet, newspapers (The Times) as these sources are kept up to date and have alot of recent information about child bullying.
Diet: Questionaires to the parents and their children might be good as the questions would be based upon what the parent provide their children with in their lunch box's, does the parent know what the child should be eating, although the parents could lie by saying they do provide their child with the adequate amount of fruit and veg a day which is necessary in the childs holistic development. A long side doing a questionaire it would be a good idea to complete observations, to see what are in the childrens lunch boxes, use this information to compare with what the questionaire shows. Complete experiments with the children, you would do this by putting 2 plates on a table, 1 plate has chocolate, the other plate has fruit, then ask the child which they would choose, this may help show what children do really eat. Using experiments is good because it is possible for other researches to duplicate the experiment and test the replicability of the results. Experiments are also good as they can be designed to test very specific theories and hypothese. The data collected from the experiments is nearly always quantitive, allowing statistical interpretation of the results. Although it would be difficult for the experimenter to control all factors affecting the behaviour of the subjects. Interview the children about what they would eat at home, the children would tell the truth where as parents would lie. Television programmes would be a good source as they keep records of the dieting in schools and often there are documentarys focused on the 'obese child' or 'Childrens health are at risk due to poor diet' etc. Also there are childrens programmes informing children on which foods they should be eating, this targets the specific audience well. The internet and books explain how to promote healthy eating, it also helps by giving people recipies to cook healthly. Journals are also good as they have the right statistics and help to promote dieting.
Bibliography
- Green.S (2002) BTEC National Early Years, Cheltenham , Nelson Thomas Ltd
