Examine the view that theoretical issues are the most important factor influencing sociologist’s choice of research methods.
Many sociologists argue that theoretical issues are the most important factors to affect choice of method. Theoretical issues refer to what we think society is like and if we can obtain an accurate and truthful picture of it. There are four different concerns regarding theoretical issues which influence sociologist’s choice of research methods. Validity is a method that gives a true or genuine picture of what something is really like, which helps the researcher easily find out the truth. Sociologists argue that the use of qualitative methods such as Participant Observation gives a more valid, truthful account as it provides us with a deeper insight through firsthand experience. The next issue that influences sociologist’s choice is reliability which comes from Latin, replica meaning an exact copy of something. This results in the method being able to be repeated and creates a less bias and more accurate research again and again. Quantitative methods such as written questionnaires can be used as they are more reliable results than qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews. Another theoretical issue is representativeness which refers to how much of the characteristics you are looking for is represented by the people being studied. For example if a sociologist is researching single parent homes, you will not interview nuclear families, because they are not representing the variables they are looking for. Similarly if someone is investigating delinquency, they will not conduct their research in a place that is very well developed or a place that has a lot of wealthy people living there, because it would not be representative of the phenomena they wish to study.
The last theoretical issue is methological perspective which is a choice