Society is like the nature, an objective factual reality; it is a "real" thing made up of social facts that exists "out there", independently of individuals. They seek to discover the causes of patterns they observe to produce general statements or scientific laws, like natural scientists do. In order to do this, they use objective quantitative research, meaning value-free and number based data. They make up a hypothesis and test it in systematic and controlled ways, like in experiments. So these methods produce reliable data that can be checked by other researchers, which is one of the most important features in science.
This shows that many parents are sceptical to the vaccinations, what might have negative consequences for children. The reason why in 1990s and 2000s many children did not receive their vaccination was the publication of The Lancet study by Andrew Wakefield talking about a link between autism and MMR vaccination. The strong phrase that some people still remember is that vaccinations are dangerous. Despite the fact that science has proven this is wrong some people still believe there is link between autism development and MMR vaccination. Therefore it is strange that they are making informed choice.
WHY--not natural settings, impractical , want to look at meanings in the context of social settings. Field experiments- these are observations in a natural setting, people are usually not aware that they are being studied. If people know they are being studied it may cause the Hawthorne effect. Comparative method- this is where events that have happened are compared by the sociologist. t identifies two groups that are similar and comparisons are made- it seeks to discover cause and effect, avoids artificiality, can be used to study past events, no ethical problems .
He said we all need conditional positive regard from our parents, and if we did not receive this is can lead to psychological problems in our future. Humanistic psychologists try to understand behaviour from the actor themselves rather than relying on observations. Behaviourists take the phenomenological perspective, this means that they take an objective unbiased view about something, and they go about studies scientifically. The humanistic approach looks at subjective experiences people have and analyse them from their point of view. All humanistic studies are conducted unscientifically.
This evidence can be seen as reliable since it was scientific, conducted in a laboratory, and produced quantative data that makes it easy to summarise and compare with other data. However, it can be argued that this experiment lacks mundane realism and does not reflect real life memory tasks, also that it doesn’t take into account people’s varying ways of remembering words, which may bias the results. Furthermore, individual differences, such as people’s attention spans were not taken into account, which could
There could be ethical |natural setting. | |problems or deception and consent with this particular method of |Controlled: behavior is observed under controlled | |observation. |laboratory conditions (e.g. Bandura Bobo doll).
Although this research has helped many psychologists (Erickson et al, Everett waters) with their experiments this one may not be very valid, because the results may not apply to infants with different cultures and beliefs, therefore we cannot generalize the results as it was only tested on middle-class US children. Another fault in the experiment was that it didn’t take into account the extraneous variables which may have
When conducting observation research traditionally researchers are usually concern about ethical issues. Observational research has different types of research, which some show strengths and weaknesses. Naturalistic observation is where the participants have no involvement by the researcher. This type of research happens naturally in a natural environment, this type of research makes no error of manipulating the environment Leedy, & Ormrod, 2005). The participant observation is where the researcher reacts with the environment.
Strength / Weakness - research that is in the form of naturally occurring phenomena (Roberts and Lamb) has good ecological validity but is not scientific or replicable as variables were not highly controlled and because it is not artificial. It would also be unethical to test eye witness testimony when a real sensitive subject is being discussed.
Ethical issues: ethical concerns relate to the right of participants in research. An appropriate methodology is required when conducting research to endure those results and any conclusions drawn are: * Reliable * Valid * Authentic Authenticity – Research aims to add new knowledge and understanding either by: * Generating new data. * Interpreting or applying existing knowledge in a new way. Research is based on the principle that the researcher is a natural observer of a phenomenon and does not distort or alter the observations made of the natural world. Validity – validity depends on what the claims are made about a piece of research and how well the claims are supported by the evidence or result from the research.