Research suggests that whilst membership of mainstream political parties has decreased in recent years, participation in other ways has increased ÛÒ namely involvement in pressure groups and new social movements. One interesting trend has been a recent one in terms of Labour Party membership. Students could begin by researching the ‘Jeremy Corbyn effect’, What were the figures for Labour Party membership before the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader? What were they afterwards? How does this compare with other political parties? Some background reading for staff could be the following article: Learn More More than 15,000 join Labour party
Psephologists are people who study patterns and trends in voting behaviour. This is done not only for the purpose of Sociological research but also for the purpose of composing campaign strategies and persuasion tactics for members of the public.
Students could work in groups to investigate the patterns and trends in the 1997 General Election and the 2015 General Election. What reasons can they identify for the patterns in voting behaviour that they identify?
Research Methods is a compulsory component in all A-level (and many other) Sociology courses a...
This is the process of gathering the information for your study/research. In this computer-bas...
A correlation exists when there appears to be a dependent relationship between two variables. ...
Data analysis involves looking at the raw data you have collected in your research with the ai...
Most people will be familiar with the notion of an 'experiment' from their Science lessons at ...
Interviews are a widely used method in Sociology and we can think of them as existing along a ...
A naturalistic experiment is an experiment that some sociologists refer to as a 'quasi-experim...
Observation is typically favoured by interactionist sociologists who seek to gain 'verstehen' ...
Sampling is the process by which a researcher takes a smaller group from the target population...
The Hawthorne Effect is a situation where an individual or group of people know they are being...
The scientific method in Sociology sets out to be a systematic and objective way of investigat...
Statistics are the collection and analysis of (typically) large amounts of quantitative data....
Many students get a little muddled initially by these two concepts and so it may be helpful, a...
Writing a clear and measureable research question is a task which can take a considerable amou...
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