Quantitative and qualitative methods; research design: Practice Questions

• a.Official government statistics on crime rates.
• b.Results from a laboratory experiment.
• c.Responses gathered from a structured questionnaire.
• d.Personal documents such as diaries and letters.

• a.By learning to take the role of the other and seeing ourselves as others see us.
• b.Solely through the passive absorption of dominant ideological state apparatuses.
• c.Through the internalisation of social facts and external constraints.
• d.As a direct result of biological predispositions and genetic inheritance.

• a.It focuses entirely on the statistical analysis of income inequality rather than the subjective experience of the worker.
• b.It places more emphasis on the role of culture and the 'culture industry' in maintaining capitalist hegemony rather than just economic structures.
• c.It argues that the proletariat will naturally develop a revolutionary consciousness without any external influence.
• d.It rejects the idea that class conflict is a relevant factor in modern capitalist societies.

• a.

  It reduces practical costs by allowing the researcher to collect data from a smaller, non-representative sample.

• b.

  It eliminates the need for informed consent by anonymizing the participants through multiple data sources.

• c.

  It guarantees reliability by ensuring the exact same results are produced across different time periods.

• d.

  It increases validity by using different methods to cross-check findings and offset the weaknesses of a single method.

• a.Because the subjective meanings of actors are irrelevant to the identification of social causes.
• b.Because science often studies unobservable underlying structures (like magnetic fields) through their observable effects.
• c.Because sociology only deals with closed systems where all variables can be strictly controlled.
• d.Because social facts are external to individuals and can be measured using exactly the same tools as physics.

Write your answer out first, then check it against the worked solution.

Write your answer out first, then check it against the worked solution.

Write your answer out first, then check it against the worked solution.