Summary on evidence by roger sapsford Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Summary on evidence by roger sapsford - Essay ExampleIn this light, the article by Sapsford is introductory in its essence, or, alternatively, recapitulative, if a reader is aiming to vex a starting point in tackling tasks that seem to defy easy methodological approaches to them. In this role, the writing by Sapsford is very adequate as the pen manages to consequently present the general overview of conventional divisions of methods applicable in social psychology, such as divisions exemplified by oppositions between naturalistic and controlled, structured and unstructured, and specific and generalizable types of experiments and approaches to the entropy analysis (Sapsford 1996, p. 146). With this general but very instructive distinction in mind, the author devotes an extended attention to the exploration of the division of methods of social research on the ones inspired by scientific and qualitative approaches. Scientific research, according to Sapsford, is characterised by the o bservance of the rules of clear measurement and logical design (Sapsford 1996, p. 147), which in practice direction adherence to the formalised ways of data gathering and analysis, such as questionnaires, creation of personality inventories, organisation of control groups, etc. Perhaps even more insightful is the association by the author of the scientific research with the underlying assumption of researches that the objective knowledge is out there in the world, and that their task is to befall ways to obtain that knowledge. In its turn, the philosophy behind the qualitative research is based on the assumption that it is too often the case that straightforward approaches akin to those of the scientific research may miss the true complexity of the real world, can fall a victim to the subjectivity of researchers, and, moreover, may influence, even though inadvertently, the object of