Official statistics have the following advantages:
- Published statistics are readily available and cost little or nothing to use.
- Care is taken to select representative samples and sample sizes are often large.
- Surveys are often conducted regularly. This allows for comparisons over time.
- Sometimes official statistics are the only major source of information on a topic.
However, official statistics have faced much criticism. For example, who decides what statistics are collected and published? They may reflect the concerns of government rather a desire to provide reliable data. Do official statistics really measure what they claim to measure?
Despite the advantages and disadvantages of primary and secondary data, sociologists find both types of data useful in sociological research and often use both together in order to create a full picture of social life.
2. The theoretical perspective of the sociologist largely determines their choice of research method, as different sociologists have a different understanding of society. For example, structural theorists believe the only way to understand society is to analyse it, whereas interactionists believe in empathising with individuals. There are two main approaches linked to research methods - positivism and interpretivism.
Positivists support a theoretical model of society that is based on the idea that there is some form of structure that exists independently of individual views or perceptions, known as the structural model of society. There are two main approaches that are linked to positivism - functionalism and Marxism. This approach strongly favours using quantitative methods, such as surveys, questionnaires and case studies. It is concerned with the meanings people attach to their behaviour and more with the behaviour itself.
Positivist sociology attempts to measure behaviour by translating it into numbers. This makes it possible to use statistical tests to measure the strength of relationships between various factors.
Some research methods are more likely to produce data in a numerical form. Questionnaires are an example. It is fairly easy to translate the answers to a questionnaire into numbers. And some existing data is available in numerical form, for example, official statistics.
Surveys are used by positivists to uncover straightforward, factual information about a certain group of people, e.g. their voting intention. This is because a survey allows information to be gathered from a large range and a number of people, and provides information that can be easily and clearly measured.
There are two ways to analyse society. One is to start from the top, looking at society and how it influences people. The other is to start from the bottom, looking at individuals and work up to society. Interpretivists believe analyses should start at the bottom with theories that stress how people perceive the world and interact with one another. The main theory associated with this approach is interactionism.
Interpretive researchers largely reject the use of quantitative methods and prefer qualitative research. Qualitative research methods refer to any approach in sociology that sets out to uncover the meaning of social action, rather than measuring it through statistics.
Interpretive researchers prefer qualitative methods for a number of reasons. They allow sociologists to search for the meaning for participants of events, situations and actions in which they are involved. This reflects the belief of interpretative approaches that only by understanding how individuals build up their patterns of interaction, can a full understanding of society be presented.
An example of the type of research method preferred by Interpretivists is participant observation. This is seen as a suitable method for discovering the meanings which guide their actions. Interpretivists also tend to favour in-depth, unstructured interviews since this method gives people the opportunity to talk about their behaviour as they see it. Asking them to fill in a questionnaire is unlikely to provide such freedom of expression.
Interpretive research usually studies small-scale groups and specific situations. This allows the researcher to preserve the individuality of each of these in their analyses (in contrast with positivistic research, which is based on large samples, representing society, rather than the individual).
Interpretivist sociology attempts to discover and understand the meanings and definitions that direct social life. It assumes that some research methods are better than for this purpose.
Outside the main approaches is feminism. These have their own ideas on what research method should be used to get useful information. Feminist sociologists routinely use focus groups for their research. This is because focus group research is less artificial than other methods because it emphasises group interaction, which is a normal part of life. As women are able to discuss issues in the company of other women, they are more likely to divulge their true experiences than in more artificial situations. Feminist research is concerned to minimise differences in power and status that can occur in research situations, where the more powerful sociological researcher may dominate the interaction. Focus groups tend to even out the power.
Reinharz suggests that the most effective way to study women is to use ethnographic methods. She argues that these allow the full documentation of women’s lives through the eyes of a woman, rather than from the typical male sociological standpoint. Feminist sociologists have also adopted the in-depth interview as their most used tool of research. Oakley argues that structured interviewing is exploitative, creating inequality in power, and that unstructured interviews prevent this.
There is a distinction between research methods and the sociologist’s perspective, but in real life research, however, things are more complicated. While one group of sociologists are largely in favour of using quantitative methods and other sociologists are largely in favour of using qualitative methods, both groups will dip into the ‘other side’s’ methods if they think it will be useful. The use of the multiple methods is called triangulation and is used to improve validity, reliability and generalisability.
