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examBoard: Cambridge
examType: IGCSE
lessonTitle: The positivist approach - quantitative data
Sociology is all about studying human society and social behaviour. But how exactly do sociologists go about this? One of the main approaches is positivism, which treats sociology like a natural science and focuses on collecting facts and figures to explain social patterns.
Key Definitions:
Positivists follow a scientific approach to studying society:
Positivists believe that:
Positivists prefer to use quantitative data because it can be measured, compared and analysed statistically. This type of data helps them identify patterns and make generalisations about society.
Structured questions with fixed response options (like multiple choice) that can be given to large numbers of people.
Example: The UK Census collects data from millions of households every 10 years.
Face-to-face interviews with standardised questions that produce numerical data.
Example: Asking the same set of questions to 100 different teenagers about their social media habits.
Data collected by the government and other organisations.
Example: Crime rates, unemployment figures, or exam results.
The positivist approach has several strengths that make it popular in sociology:
Positivist methods are often reliable - they can be repeated by other researchers to check if they get the same results. For example, a survey can be conducted multiple times with different samples to see if the findings are consistent.
Quantitative methods can study large samples of people, making it easier to generalise findings to the wider population. For instance, a survey of 2,000 randomly selected UK teenagers is likely to represent teenagers across the country.
Positivist research is good at identifying social patterns and trends over time. For example, tracking changes in divorce rates over decades can reveal important social changes.
Positivist methods aim to be objective and free from researcher bias. Using standardised methods helps ensure that the researcher's personal opinions don't influence the results.
Despite its strengths, the positivist approach has been criticised for several reasons:
Quantitative data often provides breadth but lacks depth. It might tell us what is happening but not why or how people feel about it. For example, statistics might show that bullying is common in schools, but they don't explain why children bully or how it affects victims.
Human behaviour is complex, but positivist methods often reduce it to numbers and categories. This can oversimplify social reality and miss important nuances in people's experiences.
Critics argue that truly value-free research is impossible. Researchers' values influence what they choose to study, what questions they ask and how they interpret results.
People have thoughts, feelings and free will - they're not like objects in the natural world. They can change their behaviour when being studied (the Hawthorne effect) and interpret the same situations differently.
Émile Durkheim's study of suicide (1897) is a classic example of positivist sociology. Instead of seeing suicide as just a personal tragedy, Durkheim analysed official statistics from different European countries to identify social patterns.
He found that suicide rates varied between different social groups but remained stable within those groups over time. For example, Protestant countries had higher suicide rates than Catholic ones and suicide was more common among unmarried people than married people.
From this quantitative data, Durkheim concluded that suicide has social causes, not just personal ones. He identified different types of suicide based on social integration and regulation, showing how even something as personal as suicide could be studied scientifically using statistics.
Today, positivist approaches remain important in sociology, especially in areas where measuring social trends is crucial:
The British Social Attitudes Survey is an annual study that has been tracking people's social, political and moral attitudes since 1983. Each year, it interviews around 3,000 randomly selected adults across the UK.
The survey uses standardised questions to collect quantitative data on topics like family life, gender roles, religion and views on government policies. By asking the same questions over time, it can identify trends and changes in public opinion.
For example, the survey has tracked how attitudes toward same-sex relationships have changed dramatically over time. In 1983, only 17% of people said that same-sex relationships were "not wrong at all," but by 2018, this had increased to 66%.
When evaluating the positivist approach for your exams, remember to consider both its strengths and limitations:
Positivism is valuable for identifying patterns and testing theories about society. Its methods produce reliable, representative data that can inform policy decisions. However, it may miss the depth and meaning of social experiences that more qualitative approaches can capture.
In your exams, avoid simply saying positivism is "good" or "bad." Instead, explain why positivist methods might be appropriate for some research questions but not others. For example, if you wanted to know how many people experience homelessness, a positivist approach would work well. But if you wanted to understand what it feels like to be homeless, you'd need a different approach.
The positivist approach treats sociology like a natural science, using quantitative methods to collect objective data about society. It helps identify patterns and trends through surveys, structured interviews and official statistics. While positivism offers reliability and representativeness, critics argue it lacks depth and oversimplifies human behaviour. Understanding both the strengths and limitations of positivism is essential for a balanced evaluation in your exams.
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