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Sociology: Research Methods - Case Studies 3

This is the third quiz based on Case Studies regarding the AQA A-Level Research Methods topic in Sociology. Below are the words which need to be matched to their definitions: Eileen Barker (1984) Jane Elliott (1968) Aaron Cicourel (1968) Ned Flanders (1970) Cecile Wright (1992) Ronald King (1984) Maxwell Atkinson (1971) John Irvine (1987) Thomas & Znaniecki (1919) Glenys Lobban (1974) David Gillborn (1995) Valerie Hey (1997)
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Last updated: January 14, 2024
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First submittedJanuary 11, 2024
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Answer
Hint
Ned Flanders (1970)
This sociologist found that in the typical American classroom, 68% of the time is taken up by teacher talk, 20% by pupil talk and 12% lost in silence or confusion.
Glenys Lobban (1974)
This sociologist used content analysis to analyse gender roles in children's reading schemes:
-She found that females were portrayed in a range of roles that was both limited and stereotyped.
-For example, she found that female characters were generally portrayed playing domestic roles.
Thomas & Znaniecki (1919)
These sociologists' study, 'The Polish Peasant in Europe and America', used personal documents to study migration and social change:
-As interactionists, they were particularly interested in people's personal experiences of these events.
-They used personal documents to reveal the meanings that individuals gave to their experience of migration.
-The documents included 764 letters bought after an advertisement in a Polish newspaper in Chicago and several autobiographies.
-They also used public documents, such as newspaper articles and court and social work records.
-With these documents, they were able to explore the experiences of social change of some of the thousands of people who migrated from rural Poland to the USA in the early 20th century.
Aaron Cicourel (1968)
This Interactionist sociologist conducted a study using participant observation of how police and probation officers categorise juveniles by making unconscious assumptions about whether they are criminal 'types':
-Precisely because they are unaware of their assumptions, it would be pointless for the sociologist to ask them questions about these.
-For this sociologist, therefore, the only way to get at these assumptions is to observe the police directly in their work.
Jane Elliott (1968)
This educator conducted the 'Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes' field experiment in her class:
-She first conducted the experiment the day following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination - 5th April 1968.
-Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive in her classroom. Referring to Martin Luther King Jr., he asked, "Why'd they shoot that King?".
-After the rest of the class arrived, she asked them how they thought it feels to be a Black boy or girl.
-She suggested to the class it would be hard for them to understand discrimination without experiencing it themselves and then asked the children if they would like to find out - they said in a chorus, "yeah".
-She decided to base the exercise on eye colour rather than skin colour to show the children what racial segregation would be like.
-At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea that brown-eyed children were better than blue-eyed children.
-To counter this, she lied to the children by stating melanin was linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability.
-Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away.
-Those who were deemed 'superior' became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before.
-The 'inferior' classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored more poorly on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before.
-The next Monday, she reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior.
-While the blue-eyed children did taunt the brown-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, she reported it was much less intense.
-To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned.
Answer
Hint
John Irvine (1987)
Marxist sociologists such as this one take a different view from interpretivists:
-They do not regard official statistics as merely the outcome of the labels applied by officials such as coroners.
-Instead, they see official statistics as serving the interests of capitalism.
-They see capitalist society as made up of 2 social classes in conflict with each other, the capitalist ruling class and the working class, whose labour the capitalists exploit for profit.
-In this conflict, the state is not neutral but serves the interests of the capitalist class.
-The statistics that the state produces are part of ruling-class ideology - that is, a part of the ideas and values that help to maintain the capitalist class in power.
-Unemployment statistics are a good example of this process - the state has regularly changed the definition of unemployment over the years.
-This has almost always reduced the numbers officially defined as unemployed, thus disguising the true level of unemployment and its damaging effects on the working class.
-Similarly, Marxists argue that official police statistics systematically underestimate the number of people taking part in demonstrations against government policies.
-This gives the public the impression that there is less opposition to capitalism.
Cecile Wright (1992)
At the time this sociologist was carrying out her research, there were few Black teachers and she found that her African Caribbean ethnicity produced antagonistic reactions from some White teachers:
-On the other hand, she found that many Black pupils held her in high esteem and would ask her for support.
-A White researcher may well have found the opposite.
-This is an example of personal characteristics affecting the process of observation.
Ronald King (1984)
This sociologist tried to blend into the background of an infant school by initially spending short periods of time in the classroom to allow the children to become familiar with his presence:
-So as not to be seen as a teacher, he avoided eye contact and politely refused their requests for help.
-In an attempt to be unobtrusive, he even used the classroom's Wendy House as a 'hide'.
-This example shows how difficult it is for an adult observer to reduce the effect of their presence on pupils' behaviour.

Evaluation:
-Ball (1993) asks, what did the children actually make of the tall man hiding in the Wendy House? In other words, the danger is that the children's awareness of King's presence may have changed their normal behaviour and so undermined the validity of his observations.
Valerie Hey (1997)
This sociologist made use of the notes (as personal documents) girls passed to each other in class to understand their friendship patterns:
-However, the notes were not always easy to obtain, as the girls were experts at hiding them from teachers.
Maxwell Atkinson (1971)
Interpretivist sociologists such as this one regard official statistics as lacking validity:
-They argue that statistics do not represent real things or 'social facts' that exist out there in the world.
-Instead, statistics are socially constructed - they merely represent the labels some people give to the behaviour of others.
-In this view, with regard to Durkheim's 1897 study on suicide, suicide statistics do not represent the 'real rate' of suicides that have actually taken place, but merely the total number of decisions made by coroners to label some deaths as suicides.
-The statistics therefore tell us more about the way coroners label deaths than the actual causes of these deaths.
-Rather than taking statistics at face value, therefore, interpretivists argue that we should investigate how they are socially constructed.
-For example, this sociologist uses qualitative methods such as observing the proceedings of coroners' courts to discover how coroners reach their decisions to label some deaths as suicides, others as accidents and so on.
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