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.

Psychology Film Club

Membership of the Psychology Film Club (just £25 + VAT per year) gives you unfettered access to a wide selection of our films specifically tailored to the needs of A-level teachers and students. Membership gives you complete on-demand access to the films across all devices (destop, laptop, tablet, mobile…) – plus automatic access to new films we publish during your […]

Crime in England and Wales: March 2022

While the latest set of Official Crime Statistics covering England and Wales come with what should, by now, be the familiar methodological qualifications concerning both their reliability – or, more pertinently perhaps, their unreliability – and validity, they are nevertheless useful as general indicators of crime patterns. As such, they’re worth perusing if you have […]

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 […]

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 […]

Podcasts with Pictures: Evaluating Sociological Research Methods

Alexandra Sugden’s YouTube Channel contains a load of online lectures, for both GCSE and A-level, covering areas like crime and deviance, education, sociological theory, research methods and a tiny bit of religion. The Channel’s well worth a visit and a watch if you have the time and inclination and, as with many of the other […]

Psychology: Lesson Elements

As with its sociological counterpart – except more-so, this set of resources from the OCR Exam Board is designed to support teaching and learning for their A-Level Specification and while some of the resources may fall outside the scope of other Specifications there will probably be plenty here that doesn’t. In other words, you can […]

Of Methods and Methodology 6 | 3: Theoretical Research Considerations

Theoretical research considerations – from methodological perspective to questions of reliability and validity – form the third part of the P.E.T. (Practical, Ethical, Theoretical) triumvirate of research considerations and they represent an important counterweight to the idea that sociological research simply involves choosing the right tool for the job. In everyday life, when faced with […]

Of Methods and Methodology: 5. Triangulation

methodological pluralism While it’s necessary, for the sake of illustration, to differentiate between different sociological methodologies, this doesn’t mean positivism and interpretivism simply occupy their own unique social space into which the other cannot enter – an idea reflected in the notion “positivists” would not use qualitative methods for methodological reasons, because such methods “lack […]

Of Methods and Methodology: 3. Realism

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 […]