Ghostsites: Wathistory
WatHistory is a YouTube site I’ve been meaning to write about but, for whatever reason, never got around to doing so until now. I guess I was inspired by the sociology ghostsites theme because this site seems to have something of a chequered history. Although the Twitter account ceased trading in 2018 and the .com website may never […]
Methods in Context: Crime in England and Wales
Keeping abreast of the various statistical sources and data on crime can be both time-consuming and somewhat confusing for teachers and students – both in terms of the volume of data and the reliability and validity of different data sources. For these reasons the Office for National Statistics statistical bulletin is a brilliant resource for […]
Revision Tools: Personal Learning Checklists
Personal Learning Checklists (PLCs) are a useful revision tool for both students and teachers because they allow both to identify areas of strength and weakness in an overall revision strategy: students, for example, have a list of everything they’re expected to know by way of preparation for their exams and teachers can identify any areas […]
For A Few (A-Level Sociology) Organisers More
Every now and then – between creating short-but-beautifully-crafted films and resources that both push the a-level envelope and suggest interesting new ways of doing familiar things – I like to revisit old hits as a way of reassuring myself that, when it comes to creating interest and generating those sweet, sweet, Likes, you just can’t […]
Sociological Scenarios™: Research Methods Revision
Revision is probably one of the least-interesting things you’ll ever do as either a student or a human being, and if you haven’t been revising throughout your course, you’ll be faced with a few weeks of staring blankly at your “Notes” (a word I use optimistically) trying frantically to remember “stuff” that you can somehow […]
Left Realism: The Islington Crime Surveys 1986 – 2016
One of the initial features of Left Realism, as it was developed by writers such as Young, Matthews and Lea, was the use of a very particular survey method aimed at gathering large amounts of data about a relatively small location: the local crime survey carried-out, in this instance, by Young et. al. (1986) in […]
Making Friends with Methods
Many students seem to find research methods difficult and, if we’re being honest, a little dry. The two conditions may well be related. In our selfless – and possibly never-ending – quest to make sociological research methods just a little bit more moist, our latest film builds on our previous efforts (Case Studies, Self Report […]
Research Methodology: Neo-Positivism
As Jurgenson (2014) notes, positivism reflects the idea that, “if enough data can be collected with the “right” methodology it will provide an objective and disinterested picture of reality” and it is, in this respect, based upon two fundamental beliefs about the social world: 1. It involves patterns of behaviour that are capable of being […]
China In Your Hand: Gig Economy Research
Avid consumers of this blog (anyone?) will be aware that from time-to-time I get the chance to post examples of the research work done by Dean Aldred’s A-level students from the Shenzhen College of International Education in China and this post is given-over to two short pieces of research into the lives and experiences of […]
Revision Mapping Research Methods
While I’ve previously posted a Revision Map on Sociological Perspectives I never, for some reason, got around to posting further Maps (at least, not in pdf format – there have been Flipbook versions). Until now. In order to remedy the omission, therefore, I thought I’d start with a range of Maps dedicated to Research Methods. […]