HND Social Science

A Short Guide to doing Social Research

Below we will go through a fairly standard nine stage model. To illustrate we will apply this model to the issue of gender to draw out the distinction between carrying out research work and a traditional essay.

This may initially be quite broad such as ‘race’, or you may have a fairly specific idea in mind such as the experince of ethnic minorities in Scottish schools.

In our case we have generated possible research questions on gender in the diagram above; we now narrow it down to:

In our gender example we want to gather some general information on how boys and girls are treated. Just (informally and non-intrusively) watching children with their parents in shops, on buses, or at home should give you a range of ideas. Talk to people about the ideas they have about child rearing or their own experiences of childhood. Look at the way male and female children are treated on TV programmes in children’s books or magazines.

A useful book on this topic (Possible key text, you must write a ‘book review’ of a key text) is There’s a Good Girl (Women’s Press, 1989) by Marianna Grabrucker, in which the author keeps a diary recording her own and other people’s behaviour towards her daughter for the first three years of her life.

Item A below illustrates some of the things she observed. Keep notes on all your background enquires. From this initial research you will begin to get some ideas for a hypothesis.

(You might want to present a Sociological and Psychological explanation; perhaps using; Feminism, Functionalism, Psychoanalytical and Behaviourist perspectives)

11 May 1983 (21 Months)

I take Anneli to the playground. Two mothers are already there, sitting talking whilst their children play in the sandpit: Stefanie who’s a month older than Anneli, and Erich who’s a month younger. These two children know one another very well and often play together, but they don’t know Anneli. Anneli wants to use Erich’s spade. He doesn’t notice, but the girl comes along and takes hold of the spade so Anneli can’t have it. I interpret Stefanie’s action as a form of defence against a stranger who is intruding on the preserve she and her friend have established. The other two mothers see things differently and say so loudly: ‘ The way Stefanie looks after Erich! He doesn’t pay any attention at all, but look how she takes care of his things for him. That’s just like a man’ (this man is 20 months old)

Five minutes later, although neither of them know Anneli at all, they comment on Erich being the cheekiest, although he’s the youngest. This is because he has been throwing sand around, common enough in both sexes I would have thought.

18 May 1983 (21 Months)

I have been bust sewing cute little buttons on her jeans, blouses and dresses; they are brightly coloured and depict little animals, fruit etc. And I can’t help but enjoy seeing the sweet little girl in Anneli and wanting to cuddle her. I want her to look nice when we have visitors or when we do something special.

In general, I notice that I tend to buy bright, cheerful colours for her, often choosing pink, red, turquoise, yellow or light blue. Ellen on the other hand says, that for her four year old son she tends to buy brown, blue, gray, green etc and won’t buy anything too fashionable – it after all has to be suitable for a boy.

14 June 1983 (22 months)

Mothers sit talking while the children play in the play area.

Four-year-old Hanna is playing on the apparatus with great enthusiasm. She climbs higher and higher, moving with absolute confidence and in no apparent danger. Then her mother rushes across to her, drags her from the climbing frame, enfolds her in loving, protective arms and says ‘Darling, you could fall off there, its dangerous to climb so high’. Daughter yells but mother finds an alternative diversion for her in the sand playing with little Anneli. Peace is restored.

We continue our conversation and Hanna’s mother now tells me of her five year old son’s hobbies. ‘He loves making things, and sometimes it is dangerous when he is using tools or a knife, but a boy’s got to learn to judge this for himself. It’s no good just taking things from him or forbidding him to use them. There is a risk involved, but that’s part of being a boy, otherwise he doesn’t feel right’

It is useful to have a definite question, which you want your research to answer. This can often be stated as a hypothesis or a general statement of what you expect to find out which your research can then test. It doesn’t matter if your hypothesis is proved wrong.

The issues as stated above in the area of interest is too broad, so we want to narrow it down to a manageable piece of research. A possible hypothesis is:

This focuses the research on parents rather than all people who are involved with children, and on children between the ages of two and five. Another interesting question is whether male and female parents are equally sexist or non-sexist in their responses to children.

This will depend on what you are studying, which disciplines you are choosing to use, time, money. And access to information or people and other practical considerations. Remember that often researchers use more than one method, but remember to be realistic and only do what is achievable.

It would be possible to test our hypothesis using a number of different research methods including participant observation, informal interviews, a survey. In our example a social survey will provide quantitative data from which to derive general trends, and is supported with more personal accounts from diaries.

In our case a key question is how to select the right sample of people to survey.

This means selecting people who are relevant to our hypothesis. In other words they must be parents with at least one pre-school child aged two or older. Because we want to see if the sex of the parent is relevant, we should seek to have equal numbers of male and female respondents.

If this is impossible then answers can still be compared using percentages, but it is vital to use enough of each sex to make generalisations possible.

If people have more than one child in the right age group it is important to make sure that they answer your questions referring only to one.

It would be useful to have equal numbers of male and female children included in your sample.

This might seem too complicated, but unless you decide who you want to ask before you do your survey you may find many of your completed questionnaires are not useful.

For our task we will use a stratified sample as follows:

25% mothers to answer questions on their daughters

25% fathers to answer questions on their daughters

25% mothers to answer questions on their sons

25% fathers to answer questions on their sons

This should show in general terms whether male and female children are treated differently, but should also show if the sex of the parent affects gender-specific responses.

The sample size needs to be large enough to generalise from but must also be manageable. The sample size must be large enough to include enough people of each type (males, females) to make comparisons possible. A sample of 100 parents, 25 of each type would be reasonable.

There are several possibilities, although all have limitations, which must be commented upon in your analysis.

1. It would be possible to start by asking people you know and getting them to recommend other people (a ‘snowball sample’). This may be practical but is not random in any way.
2. By selecting (at random or through contacts) groups such as ‘mother and toddler’ groups and going along and asking people to answer your questions.
3. By getting health visitors to agree to give out your questionnaire for you. All of the above methods would probably only get mothers and you would likely have to ask them to take questionnaires home for fathers to fill in.
4. A quota sample selected by positioning yourself ‘on the street’, possibly outside a children’s shop, and stopping people who fit your sampling needs

Test your survey by first carrying out a pilot survey. Get a small number of people to fill in your questionnaire and comment on it. Ask a couple of people for whom it is designed (i.e. parents of young children), to fill in the pilot survey, and ask them if there are any questions :

• which they don’t understand
• where the answer they want to give is not an option
• which are double or leading
• which are too personal
• which they feel are important but haven’t been asked

From your pilot survey workout how long it will take to complete the main survey. If after the pilot survey, you need to modify or even rewrite your questionnaire, it may need to be re-piloted!!!

(Remember you are reading and judging explanations from two disciplines as well)

If you have planned it carefully this should be fairly straightforward, but record any problems you experience in your research diary.

Before conducting your survey consider:

1. Will you tell people exactly what you are studying? It is important to give respondents some explanation but you need to decide whether knowing your hypothesis might influence their answers. In this case it may be sufficient to say that you are studying child-rearing patterns and not mention gender differences?
2. How will you collect completed questionnaires? How will you try to ensure a high response rate?

This stage is very important. You must make sure that you relate back to your initial hypothesis and try to reach a conclusion. You may find that your research has raised more questions than it has answered. This is acceptable as long as you describe fully the process you have followed the problems you have experienced and possibly make suggestions for future research.

Once all the questionnaires are returned, sort them for analysis. Record all your answers either on a computer or manually on paper. This allows you to count up responses and to look for patterns. It is important to analyse results with the initial hypothesis in mind.

To what extent can the hypothesis be supported? What problems did you experience? How might these have influenced the results?

The survey will have provided mainly statistical data, which could be supplemented by gaining more detailed descriptive accounts by asking a smaller number of people to record their experiences with their child in the form of a diary. Refer back to the extracts from M. Grabrucker to see the type of data that you might get from a diary.

If you use diaries as a method of research it is important to consider:

• What exactly you want to find out and what guidance you will give to parents to help them complete their diaries.
• How many diaries you need, and how you will select people to fill them in.
• How typical of parents are your respondents likely to be?

Therefore what can you make of your results?

In what ways did the data provided from each source differ? Using all the available data is the hypothesis supported or not? What further research if any do you think is required?

9-9-2002: Since we talked about gender in sociology, I keep observing how boys and girls behave differently and are treated differently. I’d like to find out when this different treatment starts. So I have decided to do my research project on the way parents treat young children of different sexes.

19-9-2003: Spent the weekend with my sister who has three year old twins, Tony and Susan, I tried to observe all of the ways in which they were treated differently and the ways in which they were treated the same. I noticed a clear difference in clothes and in the way Mary was expected to be neater and cleaner, when eating for example. There were also subtle differences like the tone of voice used to praise them and to tell them off. There was no difference in the types of games they played or their favourite toys although this surprised me. I think I’ll concentrate my research on toys, clothes, discipline, types of play and expectations about cleanliness, tidiness etc.

23-9-2003: Spent ages in the library trying to find social science books on childrearing and articles on childrearing patterns. There seems to be very little at least in my local library. Talked to Rab, my tutor, about my hypothesis, he says it would be too difficult and I need to look at a more concentrated age group than just young children. He also suggested I look at how the attitudes of mothers and fathers differ.

2-10-2003: Decide to use a questionnaire as my main method as I want to see if there are any general patterns, I’d like to find away of backing this up with more personal and detailed information though. Wrote out some questions.

10-10-2003 Asked my sister and her husband to fill in my questionnaire and to talk to me about the questions. It’s hard to word the questions in a way which doesn’t give away what I’m trying to find out. I don’t want to do this because most people don’t like to think that they are sexist and might ‘fix’ their answers.

I need to rewrite a few questions. They pointed out a few questions I could ask.

24-10-2003 Spent the last two weeks revising my questionnaire. Contacted the manager of Mothercare to see if I can stand at the entrance and hand out my questionnaire.

4-11-2003 Stood at Mothercare for two hours this morning handing out questionnaires, Very few people refused. I thought that a Saturday would be best if I wanted to get men as well as women, but I’ll still need to go into town again to get some more men. Maybe I should go to a different shop to get a less biased sample?