Ethnocentrism
Issues and Debates: Does psychology have ethnocentric biases? This film begins by explaining the key concept of social construction and then illustrates three sources of potential ethnocentrism: researcher conceptual and reporting bias. It also stresses the importance of evaluation. Is there clear evidence of ethnocentrism? Is ethnocentrism becoming less of an issue in a […]
Ethics and Ethical Issues
Issues and Debates: This film begins by looking at how stricter ethical guidelines were developed in psychology. Using one of our on-going research projects, it illustrates contemporary ethical guidelines and the issues arising from the potential conflicts between protecting participants and producing socially useful research. It ends by asking if ethical guidelines might have gone […]
Ghostsite: The Sociology Tutor
Every so often I chance upon web sites that have been started by teachers with what seems like a shed-load of initial enthusiasm. They create and distribute lots of free resources in a relatively short space of time and then suddenly just abandon their baby before it’s had a chance to really grow. One of […]
Beyond the Bystander Effect
The Bystander Effect has long been used to explain the general lack of public help towards people who have been harmed, or are at risk of harm. This film looks at more recent research that takes us beyond the Bystander Effect and explains the lack of help for James Bulger, a two-year-old who was abducted […]
Introducing Geographical Offender Profiling
Profiling: Geographical offender profiling is now being used by police forces around the world to help focus investigations into a connected series of crimes where there are no obvious suspects. This film introduces students to the principles and key concepts of geographical profiling – least effort principle, distance decay, crime pattern theory and opportunity spaces […]
Geographical Profiling Applied: the M25 Rapist
Profiling: One evening a couple were watching tv when they heard a knock on their front door. On the doorstep was a shivering 10-year-old girl wearing only a t-shirt. She had been snatched from outside a community centre in town and raped. The following summer there were eight further rapes of girls and women around […]
Criminal Offender Profiling
Profiling: An area that’s captured the public imagination from tv shows like Mindhunter and Criminal Minds is criminal profiling. But what’s the reality behind the hype? What is criminal profiling? What do profilers do? Does profiling work? In this film we address these questions through contemporary UK profilers and psychologists, look at some famous […]
Unmasking: The End of Debate?
Sociological Theory: Unmasking is an extreme form of criticism that is becoming increasingly prevalent in social science and everyday discourse where individuals are accused of being fraudulent and ideas are exposed as illusions, making debate and argument irrelevant. In this film we look at Professor Peter Baehr’s analysis of unmasking, provide some key examples, and […]
Making Friends with Research Methods
Research Methods: Understanding research methods isn’t easy for many students and, strange-to-say, a lot of them also find it boring. This film uses different techniques to make research methods more interesting, accessible and easier to understand. It looks at three key questions: Why do students have to study research methods? What are research methods? And […]
Introducing Triangulation
Research Methods: All research strategies, practices and methods have their limitations and the most common way of trying to offset these limitations is by using a technique called triangulation. This film uses real life research studies to illustrate the four key types of triangulation: data researcher theoretical and methodological. Triangulation is not only a […]
Case Studies
Research Methods: If you go and see your doctor or a therapist, you’ll become a ‘case’ to them. They’ll want to know a lot more about you. Similarly, sociological case studies involve putting a social group, an event or a place ‘under the microscope’. This film looks at a classic sociological study, The Kendal Project: […]
Participant Observation
Research Methods: Some research questions can only really be studied by sociologists getting out of their offices and interacting directly with the people they want to study. Starting with the famous Chicago School of sociology, this film uses a range of classic and contemporary studies to illustrate: why participation observation is used in sociology its […]
Self-Report Methods: Interviews and Questionnaires
Research Methods: How do school students negotiate the pressures to perform well academically alongside the pressure to be popular and cool? Carolyn Jackson combined questionnaires and interviews to research this question and this film uses her study, Lads and Ladettes, to illustrate: why these methods are chosen their respective strengths and limitations and how the […]
Secularisation: The Decline of Religion?
Religion and Beliefs: With contributions from leading experts on the study of religion, this film gives students a new take on secularisation theory. While secularisation theory assumes that in pre-modernity religion was everywhere whereas in modernity it’s almost nowhere, more recent research suggests that rather than disappearing, religion is undergoing a process of diversification, with […]
New Religions, Alternative Spiritualities
Religion and Beliefs: Sometimes practised far away from the world and sometimes in the full glare of hostile media, there are thousands of new religions. With examples, such as the Moonies, Scientology, the Missionary Church of Kopimism, Paganism and the doomsday cult Heaven’s Gate, this film identifies some of the characteristics of these new religious […]