What is a questionnaire ?

Questionnaire are sets of written or typed questions that are mailed to the respondents or mailed to them personally.

Describe two advantage and two disadvantages of using official statistics in sociological research.

One advantage of using official statistics in sociological research is it is easy to find. Researcher can find the it in the public libraries and on the internet, researcher does not need to provide such a big amount of money since it is cheap.

Another advantage of using official statistics in sociological research is it is highly valid and moslty accurate information especially for the ‘hard’ statistics because they have the same definiton. For example : birth rates and death rates.

One disadvantage of ussing official statistics in sociological research is they are not really accurate especially for the ‘soft’ statistics because they have problem in deffinitions so it cause the statistics might not valid because a person that working in the governments might have different definition compared to the sociologist. For example : divorce rates and unemployment rates.

Another advantage of using official statistics in sociological research is the governments and politicans might manipulate the statistics. They do this because they do not want to look bad in front of public.

Describe two possible ethical issues raised by the use of experiments in sociological research.

One possible ethical issues raised by the use of experiments in sociological reserach is the researcher does not inform the group or the respondents that they are being studied for a particular research, therefore researcher must tell the respondents or the groups that is being studied the purpose of the research that is conducted so that it will not cause any missunderstanding later on, and the respondents or the groups that are being research are right to know.

Another possible of ethical issues raised by the use of experiments in sociological research is the researcher conduct an illegal research, therefore the research cannot be illegal. For example : when doing a research, the researcher observes that there is a criminal so the researcher have to inform and report to the police so that the groups or the pople that being studied are not doing any criminal that might harmful for the others.

Distinguish between primary and secondary research resources.

Primary research resources is when the researcher does not change anything in the answers or data that the respondents gave. The researcher just write down the report based on what the respondents give without changing anything towards respondents answers therefore, primary research resources is highly valid.

Secondary research resources is when the researcher might add another information that he/she in the answers that the respondents give in making the report. For example : mass media, newspaper, etc. we do not know the information that the researcher add on is 100% valid or not therefore, secondary research resources is not highly valid.

What is covert participant observation ?

Covert participant observation means when a researcher/sociologist take part and being involved in a particular group that he/she studying for without telling anyone his/her identity to anyone in the group members in order for them to have the normal behaviour and normal activity so it will not affect the result to the research.

what is non-participant observation

Non-participant observations is when the researcher/sociologist does not take part or being involved in the research. For example: when a researcher/sociologist wanted to study a group of kindergarten children, he/she just observing them because it is impossible for the researcher/sociologist to become a kindergarten children.

What is official statistics ?

Official statistics is the data collected by the government over a period of time. For example : death rates, birth rates, divorce rates, etc.