Research Methodology in Sociology Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Ethnography focuses on the subjective viewpoint.

Ethnography is the detailed, first-hand study of a people's way of life through long participant observation and informal interviews. Its aim is to understand the world as the members of the group see it, their meanings and categories (the 'native's point of view' in Malinowski's phrase).

Objective analysis and neutrality are the ideals of positivist survey research, and structured interviews, with fixed questions, are a survey tool rather than the ethnographer's method.

Answer: C

The role is equal and participatory.

Post-structuralists such as Foucault and Derrida question the authority of any single, privileged voice, including that of the researcher. Research is seen as a shared construction of meaning, so the researcher is expected to work alongside participants as an equal rather than as an expert who interprets them from above.

An authoritative or prescriptive role is precisely what this approach rejects, and 'ideal' does not describe a research relationship.

Answer: B

The suitable method is the mailed questionnaire.

When respondents are spread over a vast area, personal interviews and observation become costly and slow. If the respondents are educated, they can read and answer a questionnaire on their own, so sending it by post (or now by email) reaches all of them cheaply.

Personal enquiry, direct observation and focused interviews all require the investigator to meet respondents, which is impractical over a wide area.

Answer: B

For nominal data the measure is the mode.

Nominal data are categories with no order, such as religion or blood group. The only meaningful average is the most frequent category, the mode.

The median requires the data to be ranked, so it needs at least ordinal data. The arithmetic and harmonic means require numerical (interval or ratio) values that can be added or inverted, which nominal categories are not.

Answer: C

The range is 4 and the mean is 6, so the answer is 4 and 6.

\[ \begin{aligned} \text{Range} &= 8 - 4 = 4 \\ \bar{x} &= \frac{4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8}{5} = \frac{30}{5} = 6 \end{aligned} \]

'3 and 6' gets the mean right but takes the range as one less than the difference. '2 and 5' and '1 and 5' are wrong on both values.

Answer: C

Popper's characteristic of scientific method is falsifiability.

In The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper argued that no number of confirming instances can prove a universal theory true, but a single contrary observation can show it false. A theory is scientific only if it makes claims that could, in principle, be refuted by evidence.

Replicability, hypotheses and experimentation are general features of scientific work, but they are not Popper's criterion for separating science from non-science.

Answer: A

Such data are primary data.

Primary data are collected first-hand by the researcher from the respondents for the specific purpose of the study, through interviews, questionnaires, observation or experiments.

Secondary data were collected by someone else for another purpose and are reused, such as census figures or published reports. 'Tertiary' refers to compilations of secondary sources, and 'biased' describes a flaw in data, not a type.

Answer: A

The answer the key accepts is the target population.

A pilot study is a small trial run of the research instrument before the main survey. Its sample is drawn from the same population the study is about, the target population, so that the questionnaire and procedures can be tested on the kind of people who will answer them.

'Stratified' and 'clustered' describe sampling designs, not populations. The sampled population is the frame from which the main sample is actually drawn, which the key does not treat as the reference here.

Answer: A

The measure important for higher statistics is the mean.

The arithmetic mean uses every value in the data and can be handled algebraically, so it is the basis of the standard deviation, variance, correlation, regression and tests of significance such as the t test. It is also the most stable measure from sample to sample.

The mode and median do not use all the values and are not suited to algebraic treatment, and the harmonic mean is used only for special cases such as averaging rates.

Answer: D

Survey information cannot be gathered through Observation.

A survey collects data by asking people questions: orally, as in an interview schedule; in writing, as in a mailed questionnaire; or by a combination of both. Its data are the respondents' answers.

Observation is a separate method, in which the researcher watches behaviour directly rather than asking about it.