Quantitative An Qualitative Research Methods Essay

Assess the position that in sociological query vicenary research methods ar superior to qualitative research methods. Sociologists have a number of different types of research that spate be used to acquire information. They can be traced back to Max Weber (1864) regarded as the ease up of interpretivism, was opposed to the melodic theme that human doings is exactly quantifiable. Human fashion is based on the idea that affable interaction is surrounded by consciousness action and unpredictability (emotions and feelings). For intrepertivists the social world consists of and is constructed by means of meanings for role model attending school on a daily basis helps to recreate the structure of education. On the other hand Auguste Comte (1798) is largely regarded as the founding father of positivism who studied social behavior in ways similar to those used by intrinsic scientists to study behavior in the natural world. Social systems consist of structures that exist independ ently of individuals.They represent behavior at the intuitional level of society and pack experience structures as forces that push persons to behave in ways that shape individual behavior choices. For example the rules of language, structure the way persons socially interact. In social sciences there are two types of research methods valued and qualitative. They are very popular in the fields of sociology because the need to study society and the mint financial support in and institutions within societies encourage growth and change in both micro and macro systems. The script quantitative express data that is subject to measurements and numbers its basically employ data that is bearing generalized and statistical. Durkheim (1895) believes that the analysis of statistical data can indicate both cause and correlation. For example the rest between neighboring terra firmas in terms of attitude towards state government, would mostly utilize a quantitative research design which w ould offer comparison and statistics to demonstrate the differences between both states. The general idea of quantitative research is to get information that can be inferred to large populations of the great unwashed, in this instance it is general successful because they allow for the collection of factual data.On the other hand qualitative research would not dish up this type of inquiry well (the example above regarding attitude towards state government). In order to send qualitative research with large populations of people is difficult. The idea of qualitative research is to interview or continue a small separate ofpeople to be able to determine what that specific group is experiencing. consequently the information gathered would not be able to generalize to a large population such as across two states because the sample size would be to small and evoke. However for intrepretivists, facts about behavior can be established, but these facts are always context-bound they wi ll not apply to all people at all times, in all situations. They may not even apply to different people in the same situation.thitherfore persons should not directly interact with the people they are studying since this might influence their behavior (non-participant observation is acceptable, but participant observation is more problematic). Quantitative research methods are acceptable because they tend to offer higher potential levels of reliability than qualitative research methods, not needfully superior. On the other hand qualitative research methods have to reflect the fact people consciously and unconsciously construct their own sense of social reality. Conversely quantitative research methods indicates no personal, state of a person emotions and feelings unrepresentative samples can sometimes be drown, thus leading to inaccurate and disable information. Although not compulsory, it is extremely beneficial to use qualitative and quantitative research methods during a researc h to upgrade efficient outcomes.Qualitative and quantitative research methods will obtain results that are through, logical, and realistic is several ways. There is no particular rule for which research methods to use in sociology. Like sociologists, try to utilize methods that is perfect for research by obtaining effective results. In sociology, different theories will tend to prefer different data collection methods. For example Barker (1984) research of the unification church, or moonies lead Barker to understand the group because of the use of statistical (quantitative) data and in-depth explanation (qualitative).In some instances, a qualitative research method proves to be more appropriate than a quantitative upon the nature of the subject under investigation. For example if the police detective wants to understand a rape victims point of view, an unstructed questionnaire would yield more valid results than say a social survey. However feminist theory often makes use of qual itative research methods to better describe intimate and personal accounts of marginalized women in societies. Remember that both quantitative and qualitative analysis have proved recyclable and within respective fields and individual studies.