Scly2 21st may 2013

Okay thank you! I'll look that up tonight Does anyone know what you would write if an essay came up on social surveys? I was not taught this either :c

the only one i know you can write about is
a normal survey
longitudinal survey
pilot survey

i am not sure though what else you would include
hope it helps though

I'm really sorry I don't record the years in my notes it's so odd we get told we need them in my Psychology but not Sociology! But I know Fuller used observation (the headteacher told her that if she used interviews she would need more permission), Troyna and Williams I think was a lot of secondary resources, mostly public documents so school prospectuses/websites but not 100% sure on that one

I know most struggle with Methods in Context so I thought I'd give some advice and drop a full mark answer here.

Basically, your response is put into levels;

Level 0-Just about education (not methods, max 8 marks)

Level 1-Just about a method in general (no application to education, 11 marks max)

Level 2- Method is applied to education (but not to the topic, so you talk about how you need permission from a headteacher but only generally, max mark is 15)

Level 3-Method is applied to education and the topic in question (For example, you need permission from a headteacher to carry out an unstructured interview, yet they are unlikely to allow you access to an anti-school subculture as it presents the school in a negative light)

Hope this helps

That helps so much! Also, the essay is really good, but to improve you could write about the theoretical approaches, who would most likely to use it. So in this case positivists would most likely use official statistics as they would like to compare statistics, they also prefer scientific methods and to them this is more scientific but interpretivists don't like this method they would prefer secondary data letters and diaries, but part from that the essay is really good!

However, this is just my thinking maybe you don't need to include interpretivists?

Thank you and no worries, oh I got told if I don't know the name of the study or the year then don't bother even writing about it. Also, do you know the name of fullers study?

Sorry to bug you once again but by any chance do you know anything about vocational education and training? and training schemes? As I just looked through what should be taught in this sociology topic and this was on the list. I would be really grateful if you could give a sum up on these if it's possible, if not no worries

Here you go !!! There are some Grammar and Spelling errors - just ignore them. this was a very had essay I didnt know many advantages of participant observation so its a bit muddled .

Participant observation and investigating truancy from school (20 marks)


Participant Observation is a qualitative primary research method which allows the researcher to investigate truancy first hand and see the reasons why this happens. One strength using participant observation when researching truancy is that the researcher would be able to join the students who don’t go to school and understand why this has increased over the past years. Hence, this will allow the researcher to gain rich knowledge and reasons for truancy. Understanding that perhaps the researcher is going to be matured it would be obvious that the participant would know that the researcher is observing them hence this observation would be covert participant observation. However, one disadvantage of this is that observation type is that it could create the hawthorn effect, this is when participant alter their behaviour, hence contributing to the fact that the findings could lack validity.

Further, many sociologist who use questionnaire have problems with the lack of response rate, however, in a participant observation there is no worrying as the researcher would complete all the information.

Positivists argue that participant observation is not a suitable research method as it isn’t scientific enough. The researcher would be interpreting behaviour in his/her own way therefore information and opinions of the interviewer is subjective. However using more scientific research methods such as questionnaires would allow the researcher to gain objective results and therefore more validity. A questionnaire would also allow the researcher to find out whether delinquency (youth crime) is linked to truancy, whereas it would be difficult for observer to find out this unless the observer is observing the participants for a long period of time. Positivists also argue that participant observation is not necessary when researching about truancy as most student and teachers would give truthful information as it mostly anonymous (hence, not demand characteristics).

It would be very difficult to observe students when they truant as the parents might not be aware of this so it is difficult to arrange with a student to observe them truant. Hence, some sociologist would argue that perhaps using interview would be able allow students to express their feelings more and see if they are developing anti-school-subculture. Davis Hargreaves used interview as he thought that this would allow him to talk o students and gain the perspective of what the students thought about school and why some boys create an anti-school-subculture. As both truancy and anti-school-subculture are linked it might be ideal for the researcher to use interview than participant observation.

On the other hand it is arguable that participant observation is better as it is primary data, data which has been collected by the research himself. This will allow the researcher to be sure that information is valid, not out of date and that the data concentrates on the specific sample he/she chose. Therefore, using official statistics would be not as good as it has been collected by other researchers. Moreover, the researcher sample would be students; hence the findings then would be representative (so the research can generalize his findings to students who truant).

As past research has shown that many students who truant have aggressive behaviour and are involved in delinquency it might be dangerous for the research to actively engage and interact with the students as they might use violence. This was a problem Paul Willis had to face in his ‘Learning to Labour’ study and argued that he had to be very cautious and sometimes involve in little pranks as he couldn’t reveal his identity.

In conclusion, it can be seen that there are many negative aspect of participant observation when researching truancy; hence, it might be advisable to use triangulation. This is when researchers use multiple methods to increase their validity of the research. I would suggest that participant observation can be used as one of the method but in addition could use semi-structured interview or/and questionnaires.



Hope this helped

The Male Gaze is another factor which reinforces gender identities. Mac and Ghail use this term to refer to the way male students and teachers view females as sexual objects. This therefore means that feminity is devalued.

What's the chances of theories coming up tomorrow as a 20 marker?

I don't think they're likely to do theories though it would be a great question! My teacher said he thinks it'll be on government policies, I hope it is!

I don't think they're likely to do theories though it would be a great question! My teacher said he thinks it'll be on government policies, I hope it is!

Oh no I hate policy! What would come up on policy?

Be careful with how you use validity reliability and representativeness. There are a number of occasions where you mix them up.
Also Willis' learning to labour was overt, not covert. He was not hiding his identity, and combined participant observation with group interviews.
David Hargreaves used non-participant observation not interviews.


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