Social research methods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Social research methods - Essay Example A â€Å"survey† can be anything from a short paper-and-pencil feedback form to an intensive one-on-one in-depth interview (Firebaugh, 2008). From the foregoing explanation, it becomes necessary to explain the reasons behind the selection of the survey design used in this exploration. Firstly, social research aims at finding social patterns of regularity in social life and usually deals with social groups (Halsey, 2004) but not with individuals per se. Since this exploration is social in nature, it was necessary for the researcher to conduct the said study using a survey. This report presents the conduction of a social research using a questionnaire to collect views on â€Å"racism in UK†. The author has divided the report into various sections discussed hereunder. Background to the study area Racism is an ideology that preaches the inferiority of one race to another. It justifies discrimination and in its extreme form, violence towards and murder of people because of th eir skin colour. Bowling and Phillips (2002) believe that these ideas haven’t been in existence, nor are people born racist but these ideas have been created and spread for specific purposes and in a conscious way. Racism is used by those who wish to sustain this oppressive society in order to divide and rule the working class. It is the views of proponents of peace to continually oppose all forms of racism and unite people from all walks of life in the fight against the real enemy of racism (Adamson and Cole, 2006; Chau and Yu, 2001). Based on this revelation, the current author fully commends the sensitization of members of pressure groups to join hands in the fight against racism. Some facts about racism have been laid bare in the face of the world by a number of earlier studies in this area. Cole (2008) for instance claims that racism comes in a number of ways; whether through name calling, bullying or even actual physical attacks. Whichever form it takes, racism eventual ly tears away the social fabric that holds communities together (Garland and Rowe, 2001). As pointed out in a report by Cole (2008), racism cannot be tackled merely as a moral issue but as a multiplicity of concerns. Racist arguments are found to provide powerful explanations for the poverty and unemployment that many young people face in UK. These and many other lies and misconceptions about racism including the immigrants’ perceived responsibility for crime and the lack of jobs and decent housing for UK nationals forms the basis of this report. Similarly, many insinuations to the fact that immigrants have come to UK and taken plump jobs from the indigenous people have been branded ‘a racist lie’ (Bowling and Phillips, 2002). In fact, racist groups are reported to having claimed that it is possible to get rid of unemployment by stopping immigration and ‘sending foreigners back where they came from’ (Adamson and Cole, 2006; Cole, 2008). This opinion is negated by the fact that about 8.1% of the working population of UK is officially unemployed; only 5% of the total population is composed of immigrants (Chau and Yu, 2001). In the views of the current author, these insinuations are found to be very retrogressive and help fan the racism fire, a fact that must be fought at all cost. It is the essence of this report therefore to come up with