SOCI 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Participant Observation, Randomness
5 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
Commonly used in sociology because relatively few people can be asked questions about their experiences, thoughts and beliefs and then the results generalized to a larger population. Often accurate but will always face questions of validity and reliability. Making sure the questions a valid and reliable. Observation studies simple include the researcher going into the field (often as a member of that group) and recording the behavior of others. Allows us to study things often not possible by other means. A personal interview is a form of field research (ex: tearoom trade) Confidentiality: not going to release that person"s identity anamonity: assign a number or name to your participants. The method employed is dependent upon the nature of the central research question (s) It is fair to say that the classical experiment is often effective in terms of reliability but less so in terms of validity.
