Secondary Sort
Helping Students Make Sense of Qualitative Secondary Sources When teaching research methods, qualitative secondary sources can sometimes feel harder for students to get hold of…
Participant Observation Fishbowl
A Simple Classroom Activity That Makes Observation Methods Click One of the challenges when teaching observation methods is that students often understand the definitions before…
Reliability Test: Using Video to Teach Reliability in Non-Participant Observation
Teaching research methods can sometimes feel abstract for students. Terms like reliability, observer agreement and structured observation are easy enough to define, but much harder…
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Homework Activity: Sampling a Population
Sampling in Practice: A Homework Activity That Helps Students Move Beyond Definitions Sampling is one of those areas in sociology where students can often learn…
The Ethnographer’s Toolkit
Ethnographic research is one of the most vivid and engaging methods to teach in sociology. Students are often drawn to it because it feels closer…
Activity: Does the IV Cause the DV?
This activity helps students practise the difference between correlation and cause and effect by looking at sociological hypotheses and deciding whether the independent variable (IV)…
Focus Groups in Action: Investigating Inequality in Cambridge OCR A Level Sociology
Group interviews, often called focus groups, are a really useful way of helping students understand both sociological methods and substantive issues such as inequality. This…
Bad Sociology
Research studies that crossed ethical lines Ethics can sometimes feel like the least dramatic part of teaching research methods. Students often meet terms such as…
Bias Detective
Helping Sociology Students Explore Values and Bias in Research One of the most important things students learn in Cambridge OCR A Level Sociology is that…
Researcher Values – Card Sort Activity
One of the most useful things students can learn in Cambridge OCR A Level Sociology is that research is never just a mechanical process of…
The Sociology Guy 