The Dead Grandmother Problem | 2: Some Lessons

A few years ago (4 to be precise) I did a post on Mike Adams’ “Dead Grandmother Problem” and I’ve finally got around to updating it with some Methods-related suggestions about how you could use “The Problem” in the classroom.

The Sociological Detectives: Trial: And Error

The latest addition to the burgeoning Sociological Detectives™ Universe is a role-playing simulation of the Research Process – and Popper’s Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research in particular – that uses the analogy of a criminal investigation to help students understand and experience how and why the research process is structured. The simulation takes the students […]

Crime as a Cause of Crime? Evaluating Routine Activities

Felson and Cohen’s Routine Activities approach (1979) has arguably been one of the most-influential recent theories of crime, one that sits squarely within contemporary New Right / Realist explanations for crime and deviance. This post looks at a couple of useful ways students can evaluate the approach. A Quick Outline… The main objective of this […]

Of Methods and Methodology: 2. Interpretivism

A methodology is a framework for research that focuses on how it is possible to collect reliable and valid data about, in this instance, the social world. It’s shaped by two main considerations: 1. Our beliefs about the fundamental nature of the social world (ontological concerns). 2. How we believe is possible to construct knowledge […]

Trial: And Error: Online version

While PowerPoint is fine for displaying via desktop devices it’s not quite so clever when it comes to the different devices, from tablets to mobiles, potentially being used inside and outside the a-level classroom. If, therefore, you want a portable (html5) version of the Sociological Detectives Research Process Simulation that has the same functionality as […]

Trial: And Error Frontend

In response to quite literally no-one asking for it, we’ve created a Frontend – what people in The Olde Days laughingly used to call “a Menu” – for the Research Process sim. This brings together three elements of a possible lesson (the Simulation PowerPoint, Hypothetico-Deductive PowerPoint and “Nature of Science” pdf) in one handy, easy […]

9 | The Research Process: Part 2

The focus here is quantitative data and research, with the free chapter split into three discrete, but necessarily related, parts. The first part outlines a selection of primary quantitative research methods (questionnaires, structured interviews and content analysis) and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. The second part does something similar for secondary quantitative methods (official and […]

Sociology ShortCuts F’sheet

I’ve posted a couple of times about the Sociology Factsheets produced by Curriculum Press –  particularly about how it might be an idea for teachers to get their students to make their own versions as both a revision aid and teaching resource for future sociology students – and I thought it might be interesting to […]

PowerPoint: The Hypothetico-Deductive Model

This is a simple one-slide PowerPoint presentation of Popper’s classic model of scientific research. The presentation contains two versions: Click-to-advance: this allows teachers to reveal each element in the model at their own pace. This is useful if you want to talk about each of the elements before revealing the next. Self-advancing: if you want […]

A2 Psychology: Research Methods Free Chapter

One of the simple pleasures of Wandering the Web™ for a living, made all the more enjoyable by that intangible sense of the unexpected (I know, I live my life through contradictions), is coming across Stuff That Is Free. My not-so-little face lights up at the mere thought of finding Something For Nothing, even though […]