The organization and carrying out a social research demands professional skills and knowledge. However there is not always an opportunity to involve the expert or the research company as their services are expensive. And it is almost impossible to find the sociologist in the rural area. But you should not refuse the idea: quite really to conduct a simple social research by own efforts.
It is required to you
- - skills of work in the programs MS Word, Excel, Power Point or similar;
- - grants on carrying out social researches;
- - sociological publications on a research subject.
Instruction
1. Previously get acquainted with sociological literature on the studied subject. Choose textbooks and grants in the spirit of sociologyfor teapots" " where process of preparation and carrying out a research is described in a form, available to the nonspecialist. Besides, it is desirable to find publications where results of already conducted researches on the interesting problem are presented. It will help to understand how other researchers solved similar problems, to adopt the used approaches and techniques.
2. Develop the program of a research. It is the document in which the purpose and tasks, an object and a subject of study, a hypothesis, methods of data collection and processing, sample volume are briefly stated. The program also includes working tools of a research, for example, the questionnaire, the form of observation or the scenario of focus group. In the organizational plan paint stages and terms of performance, necessary material resources and the budget.
3. Start a field investigation phase – direct data collection by means of tools. If you use a questionnaire method. Then will late correct "jambs" in the questionnaire. The professional research companies have network of interviewers and observers. It is difficult to one person to conduct quantitative survey, but it is real if there is a possibility of carrying out group questioning or connection to poll of the employees, pupils, etc.
4. Create the computer database and make statistical processing. Professionals use the SPSS program or other statistical packages, but the main operations can be performed also in Excel. If not really you are on friendly terms with statistics, it is better to ask for the help the expert. Anyway, no calculations manually should be. Static methods of data processing are not required if you conduct a qualitative research, for example, using methods of focus groups or a deep interview.
5. Start writing of the research report in in advance defined format – text or in the form of the presentation. Get acquainted with models of submission of sociological data in the form of tables, schedules, charts and schemes. In practical sociology the visualization of data is important. However if write the diploma or the thesis, you should not abuse drawings in the main text of work: it is better to take out a part of tables and charts in applications.