Sociological research methods

a) What is meant by the terms positivism and anti-positivism? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each order? Positivism looks at things scientifically. Positivists believe that society can be select like the natural world using scientific denary methods. Positivism research is based mainly on statistics. A great believer of the positivist approach was Emiele Durkhiem (1858-1917). Durkhiem conducted a study on suicide using quantitative info. He obtained this data from coroners reports, Durkhiem therefore put the data into groups comprising of religion, location, age and family situation. Once he had set up correlations between the groups he so went on to find causal connections. Durkhiem believed that different levels of social integration caused suicide rates. He had dumbfound to this expiry through accepting that the coroners reports whitethorn pass water been crystallise in their findings. It would depend upon how a coroner would look at the evidence a s to what conclusion they reached to whether it was suicide or not. For exercise if a individual had drowned a coroner may only if determine that it was suicide by the way the vesture had been left hand when removed by the individual. If the vestments had been left in a mussy dope then a coroner would receive to the conclusion that the individual had just been taking a dip, and drowned by accident. Therefore if the clothes had been folded into a neat pile then the person think to commit suicide. There may fuck off been other factors as to why the individual left the clothes the way they did, the person may have been a by nature messy person. Therefore a coroners report isnt always a true(p) source, and Durkhiems study today would be redeemed as worthless. Anti-positivism would have studied suicide differently; they would of looked into the coroners reports in more detail, such... If you neediness to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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