• Experimentation—is the scientific standard to which most researchers aspire. Experimentation is a means by which a researcher tests a specific hypothesis concerning the relationship between two or more variables in an attempt to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship. The strength of the experimental method is that it allows the collection of quantitative data (i.e., numbers) and facilitates easy replication of the research to enhance the integrity of the results. The central weakness in the experimental method is that it is often very difficult to conduct when investigating people interacting within their social environments. For example, controlling for the interaction of variables in an experiment may be possible in the laboratory, but it is exceedingly difficult when applied to social environments.
  
  
• Surveys—gather information from respondents through questionnaires or interviews about their behaviours, attitudes, emotions, etc., that are not directly observable. By asking people questions, researchers are able to query individuals and hopefully uncover information relevant to the particular interest at hand. The survey method is a useful technique in that it gathers a great deal of information from many people at one time (e.g., through phone or direct mail surveys). A weakness when using surveys however, is that they are often expensive to implement, time consuming and, depending on the specific survey technique, may result in low participation rates.
  
  
• Participant observation—is a qualitative (i.e., a relative comparison between elements) technique requiring the researcher(s) to enter the social and physical environment of those they wish to study and participate in their routine activities. The goal of participant observation is to learn about the particular environment first-hand and by doing so, gain a deeper understanding of it. One excellent example of participant observation is seen in Dan Wolf’s study The Rebels: A Brotherhood of Outlaw Bikers (1991). Wolf rode with The Rebels (a motorcycle gang in Edmonton, Alberta) for over 3 years both as both a member and a Ph.D. student compiling information for his dissertation.
  
  The strength of participant observation is that it often provides the researcher with a wealth of rich and detailed data on the group or society in question and the researcher's experiences within it. However, this strength is considered by some to be a weakness. Participant observation is inherently subjective (i.e., any research into a foreign social organization may be interpreted differently by individual researchers) and some may challenge the validity and reliability of its results.
  
  
• Secondary analysis—is an investigation into already existing research that has been reported by others. Good examples of secondary analysis are the findings and reports by Statistics Canada or the journal articles you may read when writing a term paper. All of these secondary resources demonstrate that research does not always need to gather “new” data, but instead, offer new analyses and interpretations on what already exists. For example, even though there may be hundreds of term papers written by Canadian sociology students about teenage prostitution, each is a separate and unique analysis of the materials each student had at their disposal.
  
  The advantages of secondary analysis are that it is inexpensive and saves researchers a great deal of time. The approach also allows for exploratory research as well as historical analyses (e.g., investigating voting patterns from the 1920s and comparing them to today). The major disadvantage of secondary analysis is that the researcher has no ability to control how the data was collected (and if any researcher bias existed in its collection) or its particular focus (e.g., the data on voting results from the 1920s is available, but not the results as separated by ethnic group).

Key concepts: validity, reliability, hypothesis, variables, cause-and-effect relationship, quantitative/qualitative data, replication, subjectivity, researcher bias.