Category Archives: Research Methods

My 'life', Research Methods, Things I like

Turn off your TV – it’ll make you feel better

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devolution
devolution

Following a spate of angry blog posts about biased TV coverage, I’ve done the logical thing and I’ve now had my TV turned off for a week (except for watching the programme I blogged about last night’ – I’m no purist).

This has got me thinking about ‘TV turn off week’, which I think is a thoroughly good idea! The next one’s due in mid April. This quote – taken from the centre for screen time awareness nicely sums up the advantages of turning off yer TV –

“I really didn’t like TV-Turnoff Week except that I did notice that my grades went up and I was in a good mood all week.” – Second grader Drew Henderson, Donora, PA

The site above outlines the fact that people spend a phenomenal amount of time engaged in watching TV and using computers – mainly playing games and on social networking sites., but points to the fact that health and well being are generally better when we limit our use of such forms of media.

I haven’t got the time to go into huge detail here about the effects of the media – but the first stage in measuring the impact media has on our lives is simply to keep track of how much time you spend using media technologies – both new and old, what you use them for, and how ‘purposeful’ that use is – are you actively using the media to achieve something, or just idling the time away.

I think I might I might set the following as homework for students next week –

1. Week 1 – Keep a diary of media use for a week.

2.  Week 2 – see how much you can cut down your use of old and new media. Can you give up TV for a week? Facebook? The mobile phone?

3. Weeks 2 and 3 – Either note down the effects of your week of abstinence or reflect on why you failed to abstain,

4. Reflect on the meaning of the words ‘freedom’ and ‘addiction’ in relation to your media use. We often think of TV as something we do with our ‘free time’ and Facebook as something that allows ‘freedom of expression’ – but if you can’t give either of them up, are you truly free?

Research Methods, War and conflict

Website of the Week – The Global Peace Index

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PeaceIndex

This is an excellent resource for A level students studying Global Development – and it also demonstrates the ‘macro approach’ to Sociology extremely well.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) ranks Independent countries by their ‘absence of violence’. The Index is composed of 23 indicators, ranging from such things as

  • a nation’s level of military expenditure
  • its relations with neighboring countries
  • the level of respect for human rights.

The index uses the latest available figures from a wide range of respected sources, including The World Bank, various and UN offices and Peace Institutes and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The project’s ambition is to go beyond a crude measure of wars—and systematically explore the texture of peace. The hope is that it will provide a quantitative measure of peacefulness, comparable over time, that will provide a greater understanding of the mechanisms that nurture and sustain peace. This, in turn will provide a new platform for further study and discussion, which will hopefully inspire and influence world leaders and governments to further action.

This Guardian article has a good summary of the data and this video below has more on the GPI

If you go straight to the bottom ranking countries you ge a real feel for the fact that while much conflict is found in the developing world, it is not limited to the poorest countries – suggesting there are complex and varied causes of conflicts the world over. The other thing that this analysis misses out on is the role of the west – need I remind of the US’s role in destabilising Iraq and Afghanistan? Anyway, the bottom ten or so are…we will be looking at some of these as case studies in the development module.  

  • Nigeria
  • Columbia
  • North Korea
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo
  • Chad
  • Georgia
  • Russia
  • Israel
  • Pakistan
  • Sudan
  • Somalia
  • Afghanistan
  • Iraq
Research Methods

Thinking Allowed – softer masculinities

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In this podcast A Sociologist reveals his findings about masculinity and identity based on 5 months participant observation with students in a sixth form in the South of England. The podcast focuses on ideas about heterosexuality and homosexuality.

This is a nice 15 minute summary of a paper entitled ‘It’s just not acceptable any more:  the erosion of homophobia and the softening of masculinity at and English sixth form by Mark McCormac and Eric Anderson. Below is a summary of some of the main findings –

Contemporary attitudes to homosexuality stand in contrast to the 1980s and 1990s when there was awareness of homosexuality but it was stigmatized –young men did not want  to be associated with homosexuality and thus they would engage in displays of overtly masculine behavior such as fighting and be openly homophobic in order to demonstrate their heterosexuality – the theory was that they did so in order to reinforce their heterosexual, traditionally masculine identities.

In the latest research the researchers were surprised at the wide spread acceptance and tolerance of the notion that some people are gay, the condemnation of homophobic behavior and even criticism of the school for not doing enough to promote sexual equality –students were actually critical that there were no openly gay teachers at the school and about the lack of discussion of gay issues in lessons.

Another finding was that many of the male students seemed to be extremely comfortable with expressing more traditionally feminine aspects of their identities – even if not themselves gay – two such examples were the high degrees of physical contact between boys – sitting on each other’s laps, hugging and so on, and the attention paid to appearance – fake tan and moisturizer. However, most boys did engage in a practice that the researchers termed ‘heterosexual recuperation.’ In which they would jokingly make comments about fancying their friends – as a means of ironically asserting their heterosexuality.

This study is also interesting from a methodological point of view – involving 5 months of overt participant observation

As part of the research, the researchers took steps to gain the respondent’s confidence by dressing in similar ways and hanging about with them watching the same TV shows and it helped that they shared similar tastes in music – they also bought clothes from similar shops – an interesting case for selecting researchers who are close in characteristics to the people they are researching.

Ethics are also interesting – the researchers were prepared to openly discuss their sexualities – the feeling being that this would put them on an equal footing with the respondents.

One also has to ask how representative the study is – it was carried out in one middle class, secular school – however, McCormac says he repeated the research in a religious college and a ‘failing’ school… he said there were differences but the similarities were greater.

It might, however,  be worth considering whether this tolerance of homosexual identities is found amongst younger boys – 13-15 year olds for example – but I guess child protection issues might preclude you from researching this.

There is also the possibility that the lads were playing up to the researchers, but the researcher denies this because of the length of stay in the institution – you can’t keep an act up for so long.

All in all this is an interesting study that shows that there is increasing tolerance of marginal sexual identities among older school children in the United Kingdom, which stand in contrast to previous research that found evidence of homophobic bullying in schools

Research Methods, Uncategorized

The British Social Attitudes Survey and the Myth of Meritocracy

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The latest findings of the British Social Attitudes Survey were released recently. The survey involves over 3,000 interviews annually and participants are selected using a technique called random probability sampling.

The chapter on peoples beliefs about ‘meritocracy’ is especially interesting in the context of education. Meritocratic factors are seen as being the most important when it comes to a person “getting ahead” in modern Britain….

  • 84% say hard work is important;
  • 74% think a good education is important
  • 71% say ambition.
  • 33% think knowing the right people is important.
  • 14% think that being born into a wealthy family was thought to be important
  • 8% thought that a person’s race/ethnicity was important

So since 1989, people believe that the importance of ‘ascriptive factors’ (which people are born with or into)in influencing where you end up has fallen. Your own individual effort and ambition is seen to be much more important!

image002

Now this seems to be at odds with the actual facts – there is just too much evidence suggesting a strong relationship between private schools and the top jobs (you have to come from a wealthy background to get into a private school).

Just a couple of examples of the links between wealth (ascription) and ‘getting ahead’-

In this post I mentioned the following – Of 80,000 15-year-olds who’d been on free school meals in 2002, only 45 had made it to Oxbridge- compared to the high-end private Westminster school which averages 82 successful applicants every year

And in this post – quoting George Monbiot ‘A new report by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) shows that intelligent children from the 20% of richest homes in England are seven times more likely to attend a high-ranking university than intelligent children from the poorest 40%

You might also remember the post in December which reminds us that black students are much less likely to get into Oxbridge.

It may be that our society is more meritocratic than 20 years ago but class and ethnic background matter more than people think – the British public at large are surely here suffering from a ‘myth of meritocracy’ – perhaps because it is more comforting to delude yourself than face the stark truth that our society is still riddled with class inequalities?

Research Methods

Nigeria – The happiest place on Earth?

This article, entitled ‘Nigeria: The Happiest Place on Earth’ – is based on the fact that Nigerians ranked top in a recent poll by Gallup on how optimistic people are about the economy in the coming year. Nigerians are the most optimistic and French the least – there are other articles today claiming that the French are the ‘most miserable’  
 
The Guardian article goes onto explain why Nigerians are the happiest people on earth.
 
 

This article and the arguments therein are hugely problematic – I don’t remember where I read it now (slack of me sorry!) but in Nigeria there is cultural pressure to be seen to be happy and optimistic – thus if someone comes along and asks you ‘ are you optimistic about the economy’ you are more likely to say ‘yes’ – this doesn’t actually mean that in your private, inner world, you really are optimistic – I think for the average Nigerian to be upbeat about their prospects for wealth in the coming surge in Nigeria’s economy would be delusional.

Optimism won't be universal in Nigeria
Optimism won't be universal in Nigeria

Also, the author suggests, based on her experience, that optimism in Nigeria stems from the fact that you ‘can make it if you try’ – hence her case ‘proving’ that Nigeria really is a place where opportunities for advancement abound – this, having  pointed out that she comes from a background that ‘shielded her from the worst excesses of crime etc in Nigeria’ – how this person can claim to talk for 150 million Nigerians – many of whome live in rural areas and have poor literacy levels is beyond me. Speak to people in the Niger Delta – where the oil that fuels Nigeria’s economic growth comes from – and I’m sure you’ll get mixed reports of ‘optimism’

To delve deeper into criticism – Isn’t it obvious that someone stating that they are ‘optimistic about the economy’ isn’t the same as them being happy or miserable? Obviously, as suggested by Inglehart’s World Values Survey, your wealth and security have an impact on how happy you will be – but does anybody seriously believe that the nation of Nigeria, where 80% of  people are optimistic about the prospects of economic growth has a greater net ‘happiness’ than the nation of France, who are, on averge, ten times richer, and where only 30% of people are ‘optimistic’ about growth?  

Finally, this article is based around a poll done face to face, by phone and online – I refuse to believe that this is in anyway representative of the averge Nigerian given that most of the country isn’t online or on the phone network.

So – to The Guardian – please sack Bim Adewunmi – now that she’s served her useful purpose by providing us with a good example of an extremely bad piece of journalism –

Research Methods

Public attitudes towards benefit claimants

The results of the latest British Social Attitudes Survey are out today (or mabe yesterday by the time this goes up!) – one of the sections is on attitudes to benefit, taxation and inequality.

According to the Daily Telegraph today – the British Public are more right wing than under Thatcher.

“A major analysis of social attitudes over the last three decades also found fewer adults wanted the Government to redistribute income and many believed inequality was down to “individual laziness on the one hand and hard work on the other…  public opinion is “far closer” to many of Thatcher’s core beliefs than it was when she left office. [Also] after 13 years of a Labour government, the study found more people were against disproportionately taxing the better off.

Summarising the report further the article says –

Asked why some people were “in need”, 26 per cent said they were lazy and 38 per cent said inequality was simply an inevitable consequence of modern life.

Only 57 per cent of people said the Government was responsible for reducing inequality – compared with 64 per cent two decades ago – and just 36 per cent said the Government should redistribute income.

The study also found only a quarter of people believed the Government should spend more on benefits – half the number that believed this in the mid- to-late 80s.

Miss Young added: “The survey points to a nation at political crossroads between left and right: it is perhaps little surprise that the election resulted in a Coalition. On the one hand we are seeing a hardening of attitudes towards welfare reform whilst on the other there is strong support for investment in health and education.”

However, if you read the summary of the report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation they point out that according to their previous research most people strongly supported progressive tax and benefit system and were supportive of targeted interventions to improve life chances for the disadvantaged, when presented with evidence about unequal life chances.

It’s worth bearing in mind that British Social Attitudes Survey does ask very general questions without any context. If, as JRF says, and if, as I do in AS Sociology right at the beginning of the year, you contextualise poverty by looking at the experience of being poor and focussing on lack of opporunity, you generally get a more symapethic left wing view.

However, in wider society (with the exception of those ‘how the other half live programmes’ which were on recently which were sympathetic to people living on benefits) the public generally don’t get to see the wider context of why people are on benefits – they just see J Kyle blaming the poor for being poor. Unfortunately lack of context means ignorance about the issue – and ignorance breeds intolerance.

Robert Reiner in ‘Law and Order’ also argues that neo-liberal societies tend to breed intolerant attitudes – people generally have harsher attitudes to those less fortunate to themselves – blaming other people for their own misfortune, when of course the reality is that the neo-liberal state (if you follow Harvey) has actually create more unemployment and less stable jobs that lead to more people being on benefits.

Now I’m feeling depressed – time to go drink some spiritual gin – well it is Christmas after all!

Research Methods

Tuition Fees – the public just aren’t that interested

Given that opinion polls suggest the public are against the university fees increases I got to wondering how much people actually really care about the issue! (Apologies btw – I posted this twice – the last version formatted oddly)

Obviously this isn’t an easy thing to research – but I thought a quick trawl through the Guardian online public commentary might provide some insite.  

This is obvioulsy non -representative – you could in fact call it a purposive sample – but this should tell us something  – my reasoning – Guardian readers are likely to make up the main base of wider public support against the raising of tuition fees –  the readership is older, left wing and middle class – so if these readers don’t seem interested in the protests, one can reasonably assume that there is no popular groundswell of meaninful, passionate opinion against the rising of tuition fees, even if the opinion polls tell us that 75% of the population are oppossed.

There are 36 million unique hits on the Guardian website every month – but if you look at the commentary on items sucha as this about the tuition fees and students protests – you find a few hundred comments, maybe a thousand,  which to my mind doesn’t represent an engaged civil society debating the issue online, and it certainly doesn’t suggest popular heartfelt support for the student protestors.  

So while a lot people say ‘I don’t agree with the increasing of tuition fees’ when aksed in a poll,when push comes to shove, the wider population just couldn’t care less. Students can protest all they like, the fees increase is here to stay

Having said all of that – a quick trawl through the ‘readers comments’ on  the Guardian online gives you a lot more to think about than a TV news item with ‘experts’. Below are some of my faves –

Comment 1 – [the recent protests] should remind us all that we have been living in relatively calm times for a while. Britain remembers times that were not very calm at all. It is just the beginning for the Government. If they think it will just go away because Dave shouts a few Headmasterish slogans, then they have another think coming. Read your history Dave. This is what happens when people feel like they have been treated unjustly. It has happened many times in our history, it will happen again.

Comment 2 – I am sure a lot of this is about more than fees for those who were running around Oxford street etc smashing things up – it is about seeing banks getting more and more money whilst whole community’s are targeted for the second time by neo-liberalism. First they came and took working class jobs and decimated industry and now they are coming for the benefits that have kept those people able to eat at least – and then they wonder where the anger comes from….And yesterday in the US the banks payed out bonuses early so their staff could buy Christmas presents whilst thousands protested outside them asking for jobs. People can see that what is happening is the biggest gulf opening up between ‘them’ and ‘us’ since feudal times.

Comment 3- I quote directly from Rachel Burden on 5live yesterday lunchtime “there look to be roughly 10,000 students protesting so far. All very calm at the moment so no real story yet, we’ll cross live if there are any developments” Kind of puts all the “if only they were peacful their message would get across” into perspective doesn’t it?

Comment 4 – I dislike the monarchy, to be fair I found it quite amusing

Comment 5  – I can’t believe senior police called their officers ‘brave’, what exactly is brave about dressing in full armor and attacking unarmed protesters? They really have done themselves no favors, and they wonder why the majority of people these days don’t like them. Fools.

Research Methods

Joseph Rowntree Foundation – Monitoring Poverty and Social Exlusion Annual Report 2010

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Or Modern Britain: What a mess
 
Fresh out today – the latest annual report from the JRF

OK, so you may accuse me of biased interpretation of the stats (see below) but I get the following impression – there are more people (13 million!) living in poverty this year compared to last – despite the fact that the wealth of the richest thousand people grew by £77 billion last year.

On the plus side, the number of children leaving school without qualifications has fallen, so our kids are better educated – however, the unemployment rate for 16-24 year olds is the highest in nearly two decades, so those qualifications won’t get them jobs, so aren’t that much use in lifting them out of poverty.Finally, the number of workless families who are in poverty has fallen in the last year, while the number of children in working families in poverty has risen – suggesting that combining work and having a family is economically irrational.

Maybe now that children from poorer families are better educated, they are in an even better position to figure out that work doesn’t pay compared to staying of benefits!

This is what I love about the JRF ‘monitoring poverty’ report – it’s a no nonsense guide to how messed up our country is!

In a summary in the Guardian Julia Unwin says –

‘Over the last decade we have seen poverty rates fall, before rising back up to their highest levels for years, with many of the gains lost years before the recession reared its head. In terms of income poverty, on the most-used measure, we are back to where we started at the beginning of the millennium, with rates now at the same level as 2000; having risen every year since 2004/05. The advances made during Labour’s first term did not hold.’

Some of the key stats from the summary

  • By 2008/09, 13m people were in poverty. Of these, 5.8m (44% of the total) were in ‘deep poverty’ (household income at least one-third below the poverty line), the highest proportion on record.
  • Despite the recession, the number of children in poverty in workless families fell in 2008/09, to 1.6m, the lowest since 1984, but those in working families rose slightly to 2.1m, the highest on record.
  • The numbers of 16-year-olds lacking five GCSEs at any level and of 19-year-olds lacking a level 2 qualification fell in 2009, and are lower than any time in the previous decade.
  • By mid-2010, the unemployment rate among those aged16–24 was, at 20%, the highest in 18 years, and three times that for other adults. After the last recession (1993), the rate was 16%, twice as high as for the rest of the population.
Research Methods, What is Sociology?

Web site of the week – the British Sociological Association

It may be aimed at post-grads and beyond, but The British Sociological Association is useful to the average A level student in five ways –

  1. The ‘what is Sociology’ section of the site is readily understandable – and of direct relevance to the ‘should sociology be a science’ debate
  2. The press releases section offers some nice summaries of recent research – (Interestingly for staff at the college who read this – one recent finding is that subcontractors on building sites maintain their contracts through offering kick backs to the company that runs the building project – which might help explain the poor build quality of just about everything that’s gone up since I arrived at the college 8 years ago. )
  3. The section on ‘what do Sociologists do’ might be useful to any student considering a degree in the subject – although I imagine such numbers will diminish following the Tory cuts.
  4. The ethics section – useful for research methods
  5. Finally, and a bit cynical this last point, reading around the site gives you an insight into how academics make quite simple sociological ideas sound more complex than they have to!

Enjoy!