young peoples' rights - sociology

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By Sonal Varsani 11E

Contents page

Chapter:                                         Page number:
Introduction…………………………  3                                

Methodology………………………..  4                              
Content and analysis of results….   8
Evaluation………………………….  22

Introduction

Aim of project:

I am a member of a year 11 GCSE Sociology class and I will be investigating the rights and responsibilities of young people in the law and older people’s opinions on this.

Why the topic is of interest:

Many young people think the law is unfair and does not give them reasonable rights. I want to investigate further and find out what rights and responsibilities they think they should have and compare it to the law.

Hypotheses:  

1) Young people in Britain consider themselves to be more mature than the law does because they are eager to enter adulthood.

2) To a large extent children today are protected from child abuse because there are many organisations today helping children to cope with abuse.

Methodology:

The primary evidence I intend to use:

The sample:

The sampling frame I will use will be two students, a male and a female from every year in Hendon School so in total I will have a quota-sample of ten young females and ten young males. I am choosing this sample of young people because I want opinions from a wide range of young people aged from eleven to sixteen.

I will also use a sampling frame of adults in which I will draw out a quota-sample of five male and five female teachers from Hendon school, so I can investigate older people’s opinions on young people’s rights and responsibilities.

The method I will use to collect evidence from this:

The method I have chosen to use with my sample is a questionnaire.  I will be creating twenty questionnaires, ten for younger people and ten for older people. In my opinion I think this is a valuable method because it will be easier for me to gather evidence from. The problem I may have is people not taking the questionnaire seriously but I have solved this by me being present so the person will fill it in properly and ask me for any help in their understanding of the questionnaire. I will also be in a certain distance from them so my presence does not intimidate them. My questionnaire will be ethical, as I am not asking any self-incrimination questions such as ‘do you steal’ and completing my questionnaire is completely voluntary. Also I am not asking any personal questions either. Because my questionnaire will be basic I will not need a pilot study, as I will be with them while they fill in the questionnaire.

The method I considered but thought was unsuitable was in-depth interviews. The reasons I considered this to be unsuitable was people may be intimidated by my presence, they may not take it seriously and it will require a lot of time and patience.

The secondary evidence I intend to use:

From textbooks I hope to find information about the different ages young people have to be to obtain certain rights. If this fails to be a success I will then browse the Internet for evidence.

Other secondary information that will be useful to me are websites such as Child line and NSPCC. This will help support my second hypothesis, which is to a large extent children today are protected from child abuse. It will help me judge the effectiveness of the current protection given to children when dealing with abuse. The advantage of my secondary sources is I will be able to compare the results with my own results from my sample. The disadvantage is that I may not find the information I need. There will be no bias brought about from my secondary evidence, as the websites are clearly appropriate for my hypothesis I am testing. Nspcc and Childline are registered organisations for protecting children against abuse, making the websites non-bias. My secondary evidence is ethical, as I am not looking into any in-appropriate websites.

The main survey

The sample:

The sample I have chosen consists of:

Younger people:

 

Older people:

I chose these sampling frames my own secondary school, Hendon School. I approached them and asked them to fill out the questionnaires. Fortunately all of them accepted to fill in my questionnaires.

How I collected data from the source:

Copy of my questionnaire for the sampling frame:


Content and analysis of results

The results from my sampling frame of younger people (students):

Join now!

The results from my sampling frame of older people (teachers):

Hypotheses:

1) Young people in Britain consider themselves to be more mature than the law does because they are eager to     enter adulthood.

2) To a large extent children today are protected from child abuse.

Primary evidence I have collected:

The age young people should be allowed to:

  1. Leave school

Young people’s responses                                     ...

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