Another method of research is interviews. There are two types of interviews, structured and unstructured.
An unstructured interview is a guided conversation rather than a list of structured questions and the interviewer will have an idea of the areas to be covered. The questions are open-ended. The advantages of an unstructured interview are that it has higher response rate than postal questionnaires, interviews can talk at length using their own words and ideas and questions can be rephrased and misunderstandings clarified. The disadvantages are the interviewer may influence the interviewee. It I also time consuming and expensive and it’s difficult to check for reliability as all interviews will be different.
After researching the strengths and weaknesses of questionnaires and unstructured interviews, I have decided to use structured interviews for my research. The advantages of using a structured interview are the same as those of a questionnaire. The disadvantages, however, are that in an interview, interviewees may give answers which they think the interviewer wants to hear or which shows them in a positive light. In this way they might not reveal their true feelings so the results may be invalid (not give a true picture of the respondent’s point of view). When doing my research I also have to consider ethics. The way in which I will do this is by making sure that my questionnaire is not offending anybody in any way and making sure that it is also sensitive towards people’s feelings.
CONTENT, FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS-
The graph shows that 53% of girls asked were 16
and 47% were15.
The graph shows that most of the girls asked were
White-British .
The graph shows that most of the girls asked were
Christian.
The graph shows that 7 fathers do white collar work and 6 fathers do blue collar work and 2 are not applicable.
The graph shows that 5 mothers do white collar work and 9 mothers do blue collar work and 1 is not applicable.
The graph shows that most of the parents are married, a few are single and an equal amount are divorced or separated.
The graph shows that 93%ogf the girls asked want to get married in the future and 7% are not sure. Nobody said no.
The graph shows that 60% of the girls asked thought that the idea of marriage was becoming less popular among them and 27% said no.
The graph shows that most of the girls would like to get married between the ages of 24 and 29
The graph shows that 54% of the girls asked wouldn’t like to live with their partner instead of getting married.
The graph shows that 80% of the girls asked would like live with partner before they get married.
The graph shows that most of the girls asked think that it is less important to get married now a day than 10 years ago.
‘Marriage is officially going out of fashion, according to the latest government statistics. New regional figures from the Office for National Statistics show the number of marriages taking place are decreasing with more people opting to live together. In 1996, there were 317,500 marriages in the UK, nearly 76,000 less than 1986, according to Regional Trends 1998. And on average a quarter of people in the UK aged 18 to 49 were living together between 1994 and 1996. The highest number of people living together is in the south east England with more than 30% of people cohabiting while only 10% of people live together in Northern Ireland, the lowest number. In Scotland there were 35,800 marriages in 1986 compared to 30,200 10 years later while Wales saw 14,800 marriages in 1996, nearly 5,000 less than 10 years before.’
‘Some members of the New Right subscribe to the view that marriage, and therefore nuclear family life is under attack and in decline. The New Right argue that marriage is becoming less popular, as shown by the fact that marriage rates have declined in the U.K. However, the majority of people in the U.K marry. Many people still see marriage as a desirable objective in their lives. The number of remarriages (i.e. in which one or both partners have been divorced) has increased as a percentage of all marriages from 15% in 1971 to 40% in 1996. these people are obviously committed to the institution of marriage despite their previous negative experience(s) of it. Robert Chester (1985) argues that we are not witnessing a mass rejection of marriage. Rather, he suggests, people are delaying marriage. In other words, people are marrying later in life, probably after a period of cohabitation, for economic reasons.’
After completing and gathering the results from my primary research (my questionnaires) and collecting some secondary research, I can now analyse them and see if they help me prove my hypothesis.
Looking at my primary research and secondary research, I can see that there are some points which relate to one another. One of these points is in the second piece of secondary information – ‘The New Right argue that marriage is becoming less popular ….’. This is related with my question – Do you think the idea of marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls? 60% of the girls asked said that they thought marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls. However the problem with my question is that it only asked teenage girls and not other people. This piece of information can also be linked to my aims as it tells me that marriage is becoming less popular and it is also becoming less popular among girls. However in the question asked about whether or not they want to get married, 93% of the girls said yes. This shows me that although they think the idea of marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls, it is not becoming less popular among the girls asked. Another point is that in the second piece of secondary information there is mention of couples wanting to get married after a period of cohabitation. This relates to my question – would you like to live with your partner before you get married? 80% of the girls asked said yes to this question.
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION-
Now that I have completed my research, I can now draw conclusions and see if I have proved my hypothesis.
There are some strengths and weaknesses to this project which have affected the outcome of my results. The strengths of the project are that I believe I have proved my hypothesis and my research method worked well. However I could have improved this project in different ways. One of these ways would be by changing my project hypothesis to – Marriage is becoming less popular among teenagers. Doing this would allow me to get ideas of both boys and girls about marriage. I think that I have proven two of my aims. The first one was to find out if marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls. This, I believe, I have proven. The other aim that I think I have proven is that if marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls, why? I have proven this because I have found that marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls and the main reason for this was that most of the girls asked wanted to start a career before they thought about marriage and children. The third aim was to see what influences girls about marriage. After completing my research, I noticed that I didn’t in any way include this in my project. This is another point which I could improve on.
Now that I have completed my research and analysed it, I can come to the conclusion that marriage is becoming less popular among teenage girls, and there could be many factors that influence this but the main factor would be that women are now becoming even more independent and want to pursue a career which they feel happy in before they think about marriage and children. Also more couples are looking to cohabitate rather than get married. This is down to many factors, but mostly because of economic reason.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
- Dave Longmate and Grahame Coates- GCSE sociology social life- 2001
- Pauline Wilson and Alan Kidd- sociology for GCSE and modern studies- 1998
