A paper which looks at sociological research methodologies, with particular reference to the conflict and rational-utilitarian perspectives of sociological theory.
Name of Research Paper File: JL5_JL2dyads.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Having developed a number of research methodologies which have been tested and seen to be valid, in the sense that the given parameters operate as anticipated even
in repeated experiments, the student now needs to look more closely at the way in which these techniques could be applied to a sociological study.
The
research question to be investigated must have a social element, which indicates that it needs to be related directly in some way to human social behaviour, in the way that
the research experiment using dyads revealed certain insights regarding the way in which power dynamics and gender interact. The properties which are used in the study should reflect accurately the
particular areas which are to be investigated, and their parameters explained clearly: in a study which looks at the interaction between males and females in a particular social situation, for
instance, physical behaviour in the form of body language might be one of the properties included, and the student would need to consider what kinds of stance or movement indicate
power, which indicate submissiveness, and so on.
The investigation needs to be not only based on a suitable topic, but the methodology must take into account the ways of
collecting data which are available: some interesting issues of social behaviour do not lend themselves easily to quantifiable analysis, whilst there are other topics which might prove suitable in themselves