Write up a 500 word summary on what you have learned this week about validity and reliability issues with your sources:

When investigating media violence and how it effects children, one of the most important things to consider when conducting your secondary research is to ensure they are reliable and credible which will give you a strong argument when showing your research. Credible mean that the research is high quality, reliable and that you can trust where the information is all coming from.  Important factors you need to consider when gathering research, one being that you have to ensure that the author’s expertise is reliable. This can be checking whether they have an advanced degree in the topic or whether the research has been peer reviewed by other universities experts. Also, you must check what the author’s point of view is as they may be coming from a biased opinion which could be intentional sometimes. It is best if the research is peer reviewed by professionals so it can help filter out any bias and unreliable opinions that is not needed.

Another way of testing validity and reliability is through the CRAAP test.

Currency which determines if the date of publication of the information is suitable for your research and if it is relevant to the topic. It is best if you type in the years you are looking for when online searching as it will give a higher chance of recent data.

Relevance which is to determine how applicable the information is for the purpose of your research. This checks up that the information you are researching is the right topic in which you are focusing on and it is always good to pick sources that give you an overview of the work to make the search easier.

Authority determines if the source author, creator, or publisher of the information is the most knowledgeable. Ensure that the author’s expertise is reliable, this can be checking whether they have an advanced degree in the topic or whether the research has been peer reviewed by other universities experts.

Accuracy determines the reliability, truthfulness and correctness of the content. This means you must always check up that your information matches and backs up all the other data that you have collected.

Purpose determines the reason why the information exists e.g. Is it a sponsorship? Is it made to educate, entertain or influence?

Write up a 300 word conclusion discussing the limitations and opportunities of each of your chosen 6 research methods appropriate to the investigation into violence and children:

When investigating media violence and how it effects children, one of the most important research methods to use to conduct your data is Primary research in which I made a survey. The survey asks Parents different questions on whether they think that media violence has an impact on their children. A survey is a good research method to use because it is free and quick to develop and it is also easy to collect valuable data which will help me justify my research and compare it with Secondary sources. Also with a large amount of replies of at least 30 people will increase the reliability of the results as the sample should be representative of the population to ensure that we can generalize the findings. Another way in which surveys can be a good way of collecting primary data is the fact that it is anonymous so it is most likely that the replies were honest as the audience would not be afraid to tell the truth. However, a disadvantage may be that the survey questions may not be relevant to the hypothesis making it harder to actually find any conclusion.
Another way of conducting data would be experiments as you are able to get a natural and honest reaction from the experimented to see if something affects them and you would be able to engage with what’s going on in the experiment. The limitations of conducting experiments are that sometimes the person being experimented may know and may put on a filtered reaction which automatically makes it unreliable and dishonest. Observations are similar to experiments, they are good when conducting research as you are able to witness first-hand what is going on in a natural environment. However observations, the same as experiments makes it harder to have a true representation as they may have filtered reactions creating a fake image in the findings. To add, theories is a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles and limitations could conclude that it is purely based on opinions making it harder to be completely reliable.
Moreover, when investigating it is critical that you ensure you use academic resources as it should be the first thing you research. Academic research is a good way of conducting data as it is all written by professionals from universities who know exactly what they’re talking about, it is all based purely on facts which all around makes it more reliable. However there are some limitations from using academic resources such as the fact that some of the information received may be out of date or may not even be UK data and you may not even realise.
The last method of conducting research is through news articles which should be the last type of secondary research that you use as it is mostly used to back up all of the other secondary research you conducted. The reason in which you would usually use the news articles last is because of the limitations it carries; one being that most of it may be biased which means that it filtered to fit others beliefs. It also contains clickbait in the online news articles, meaning that it says it’s about something that it isn’t making it fake news which makes the searching process longer and more difficult.

Write up a 500 word summary on what you have learned this week defining the purposes:

Primary research is not always the first place you go first when doing your research as it is more useful to see what other people have said about the topic you are researching first.  You first conduct your secondary research and then build what you found from your primary research which is new research, carried out to answer specific issues or questions. It can involve questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups. Some of the Drawbacks of primary research would be that it is expensive to conduct and mostly time consuming whereas, some of the benefits may be that it is tailor made and that the completion does not have any access to it.

Secondary research is the first type of research you conduct, this can be anything from; academic resources, newspapers, magazines, television resources or even books. The most reliable type of secondary research is most likely to be academic resources that are written by professionals from universities. The benefits from having secondary research is that is can be quick by gathering online data whereas the drawbacks may be that it is out of date.

Qualitative research is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, personal responses, tastes, beliefs, experiments and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas for the hypothesis, some methods can be through focus groups and interviews. Some of the drawbacks for this would be that it ca be biased as it is people’s opinions and not actual facts and figures.

 

Quantitative research collection methods are much more structured than Qualitative data collection methods. This research is related to facts and figures which makes the results more reliable as it isn’t opinions that is collected and this can be through structured techniques such as online questionnaires, surveys or interviews. A disadvantage is that if there isn’t a large sample then the results will not be reliable; the larger the sample of people researched, the more statistically accurate the results will be.    

In research terms a sample is a group of people, objects, or items that are taken from a larger population for measurement. The sample should be representative of the population to ensure that we can generalize the findings, when doing a sample you should consider age and gender to ensure that there is a variation in the findings.

Open questions are questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no and requires a developed answer which may need time to think about the answer and allows people to go into interesting detail with opinions.

Closed questions gives the person interviewed a limited choice such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘true’ or ‘false’, ‘agree’ or disagree’ etc. These types of questions would usually be used in a survey or questionnaire as they are quick and easy questions to ask.

 Secondary Research :
For my secondary research I made sure that I used my resources right, firstly I went on google scholar to find some reliable content, the reason in which I'm certain that this source is reliable is because the content is made by professionals who know what they are writing about. The first book that i found was from researchers Cynthia Carter and C.Kay Weaver and they stated that "everyday representations of violence in the media help, over time, to normalize and legitimize the presence and use of violence in society today", along with other facts and statistics. From my other secondary research I was also able to determine which genre of film and television young people tend to watch that influences violence and those were action and horror as well as video games such as GTA and Call of duty. I also went onto other websites to search for articles to back up my other secondary research and I came across the new York times article which stated "psychologists Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman found a statistically significant strong relationship between watching violent media and acts of aggression or violence in later life". 

Primary Research:
For my primary research I will be conducting a survey on the website surveymonkey with a large amount of replies of at least 30 people to increase the reliability of the results. The questions in which I will be asking will be aimed towards parents of young children, the questions will be built around my secondary research and will be able to determine whether it was the right research for this topic. The reason in which I am conducting a survey for my primary instead of e.g. a interview is because from a survey there is a higher chance of reliability as it is anonymous and parents wont feel the need to twist the truth and can give me the honest results.