Lower Secondary GP. Research Methods

​Global Perspective

Starting with Research Skills
Lesson 5: Research Methods

​Data

• ​Piece of information

• ​Gathered body of FACTS​

• In short, DATA is information or facts that can be collected to help people solve problems, understand trends or simply to entertain!

There are 2 types of data

​Qualitative Data

​Also known as CATEGORICAL data

​It categorizes or ​describes an element

​​So, operations like addition, subtraction, etc are NOT meaningful for such type of data

​Quantitative Data

It is also known as NUMERICAL data as you can count it.

So, operations like addition, subtraction, etc are meaningful for such type of data

​​It is expressed in number form (not as letters or words) such as....

Multiple Choice

Gender

• Categorical

• Discrete

• Continuous

Multiple Choice

Hair colour

• Categorical

• Discrete

• Continuous

Multiple Choice

Eye colour

• Categorical

• Discrete

• Continuous

Multiple Choice

Height

• Categorical

• Discrete

• Continuous

Multiple Choice

What is an example of numerical data?

• Most popular video game

• How much each dog weighs (how heavy)?

• Favorite day of the week

• How happy is he?

Multiple Select

What are example of categorical data?

• Most popular video game

• How much each dog weighs (how heavy)?

• Favorite day of the week

• How tall is he?

Multiple Choice

Data that focuses on information that can be counted is called?

• Qualitative Data

• Quantitative Data

• Categorical Data

Multiple Choice

Data related to a person's experiences as represented through words is called

• Qualitative Data

• Discrete Data

• Continuous Data

Multiple Choice

TWO TYPES OF RESEARCH

• Qualitative and Quantitative
• Discrete and Continuous
• Nominal and Ordinal
• Primary and Secondary

Collecting Data

• Primary Research is gathered ‘first hand’ by the sociologist, perhaps by asking people questions or watching them behave.

• Secondary Research is data which has been collected by somebody else and published or written down, for example, government statistics or newspaper articles.

Word Cloud

One strength of using primary research.

Multiple Choice

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe first hand data collected by the researcher.

• Quantitative data

• Primary data

• Secondary data

• Qualitative data

Primary and Secondary can take different forms

❑ Quantitative data is numerical, often presented as numbers shown in statistics, in graphs, bar charts, etc.
❑ Qualitative data is in-depth material, usually descriptive and presented in a written form.

Labelling

What type of data is this?

Drag labels to their correct position on the image

Qualitative

Quantitative

Categorize

Options (10)

Cost

Time Consuming

Subjective

Low Reliability

Descriptive

More insight

In-depth Analysis

Validty

Lacks comparisons

Researcher bias

Strengths and Weaknesses of Qualitative

Strengths

Weaknesses

A questionnaire is a list of written questions which are completed by a large number of people called respondents. They are normally handed out or posted out for people to self complete, but occasionally the questions are read out to respondents instead.

Open Ended

​Write an example of a closed question:

​Identify one ethical issue that you would need to consider.....when investigating relationships within families and explain how you would deal with this issue in your investigation. [4 marks]

Open Ended

​Write an example of an open question:

​•Reliability: A method is reliable if it consistently produces the same results when repeated by anyone or at a different time.

•Validity: Data is valid if it accurately reflects the true picture of what is being studied.

Open Ended

One weaknesses of observations is the 'Hawthorne effect'. What does this mean?

Multiple Choice

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe research that involves studying the same participants over a long period of time?

[1 mark]

• cross-sectional study

• case study
• experiments

• longitudinal study