Research methods Assessment

Thomas Rutherford
1. A commonly sighted deferens between the Sociological and the common sense
explanations is that Common sense explanations are often subjective and based on a
person’s life experiences and often not backed up by credible research making them much
more prone to bias. Conversely the Sociological explanation are based on research and use
objective knowledge that is much more likely to be unbiased and fair. For example, a
common sense explanation of Income inequality would be that the people who do not have
high levels of are lazy or that they lack a good work ethic where as a sociological explanation
would that while work ethic does play a role in the level of inequality as person experiences
there are many factors such as when and where a person is born that they cannot control
that will have a strong influence on an individual. A second difference would be how the two
explanations see inequality. A sociological view would be that the inequality a person
experiences is a product of their circumstance and had that person been placed into
different circumstances the level of inequality the experience would be different where as a
common sense view would be that it is the individual is at fault for the inequality they are
experiencing.
2. The Literature review is gathering and evaluating various bodies of research done in the
area a researcher wishes to study this process allows the researcher to gain a greater
understanding of the topic area to start this process the researcher will select a topic for
their research, they will then collect and evaluate relevant articles and bodies of research,
after which they will write a review (Research methodology, 2019.) The second stage of the
research process is forming a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a testable statement about the
relationship between the variables in your research, the hypothesis is an important part of
the research process as it provides a direction and focus to research (Research
methodology, 2019.) The third stage is the operating measurements stage, this is where the
variables involved in a body of research are converted into a measurable form, some
variables such as height, or distance are easy to do this with as they already have empirical
measurements, where as other such as happiness are much more subjective and difficult to
measure, in this example happiness could be measured by asking a participant to rate their
happiness from 1 to 10 (Research methodology, 2019.) The fourth stage is conducting the
research. This stage involves the researcher conducting their research using their chosen
method of research, some examples of research methods include, experiments, observation
both covert and overt, interviews and case studies (Research methodology, 2019.) This fifth
stage is Processing the results, in this stage the data that has been collected in stage four is
analysed using measurements of central tendency such as mean median or mode and
measurements of dispersion such as the range and standard deviation this data is the
typically plotted on a graph and if needed a calculation of the correlation coefficient is done
(Research methodology, 2019.) The sixth stage is Analysing the data, this stage involves
drawing conclusion from your results and discussing the meaning of your findings, this is
then linked back to the original hypothesis to see whether they hypothesis was correct or
not (Research methodology, 2019.) The seventh and final stage of the research process is
the presentation of your results, this is where a researches results and process are written
down in a pre-established format typically following this structure: Title, Abstract,
Introduction, literature review, Method, results, discussion, conclusion, references and
appendices, but other subjects may have different structures used specifically for them
(Research methodology, 2019.)
3. Plagiarism and intellectual property are important issues in social science research.
Intellectual property is the ownership of an idea or concept meaning that these ideas belong
to that researcher and no one else. Intellectual property laws are important because they
protect researchers from plagiarism and provide an incentive to conduct your own research.
plagiarism lowers the overall value and integrity of the work being produced as rather than
producing your own ideas, you are just stealing someone else’s, however the works and
finding of other can be very useful in your own work so this is why academic citation is not
considered a form of plagiarism, as while you are including someone else’s work as a part of
your own, you are also giving proper credit and expanding upon their original ideas thus
creating something new (EduBirdie, 2019)
Bibliography
EduBirdie. (2019) [online]. Available from: https://edubirdie.com/blog/why-is-plagiarism-important
[accessed: 12th Dec 2019]

Research Methodology. (2019) [online]. Available from: https://research-methodology.net/research-

methodology/research-process/ [accessed: 12th Dec 2019]