Methodology

'Research questions, methodologies and data collection methods will go a review of the varied
forms of literature that are relevant to your own research ideas' (Matthews and Ross 2010,
p93), which begins early in the work of dissertation and shall be discussed first.
This methodology section presents the reasons for and an account of conducting literature
based research for this topic. Then, the systematic methods used are presented in detail,
followed by the advantages and limitations (including how they are resolved for this
dissertation). Lastly, the ethical issues are considered leading to a reflection on the overall
methodology that has been used.
The dissertation discusses in the ways that social science research contribute to the
understanding of individual ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in contemporary society. It talks about how,
why and what impressions are formed towards people’s success and failure which happens in
our daily life. ‘A research question is a question designed to indicate what the purpose of an
investigation is’ (Bryman 2010, p10) I will break down the topic into 3 research questions,
namely ‘What explanations are provided at a situational/ macro level?’ and ‘What explanations
are provided at a micro level?’, also with the last research question ‘What messages does this
analysis of social science contributions provide for social policy?’. My research questions are
important as they could display the phenomena and reasons behind the hierarchy of people in
social group and by that we might be able to use the information to fill the gap of literatures
and work on the problems accordingly in social policies.

Literature based research is used throughout the dissertation and here are the reasons. Firstly,
‘Many academic libraries have become gateways to information rather than storehouses of
knowledge’ (Hart 1998, p3). The libraries contain many useful materials, which are convenient
enough to provide enough information for a research topic like this. Secondly, the historical
nature of literature allows us to review case studies and analyses in the past, which is useful
acting as a foundation knowledge for the research. Thirdly, since the researcher will be
constantly using theories from aspect of social psychology and sociology and social policy to
analyse the research, literatures could always provide the content the writer needs and are
particularly useful in this research. Lastly, 'In order to know the nature and character of the
implications of a development you need to know the intellectual context of that development'
(Hart 1998, p26) This is to ensure a high quality of work by reading adequate amount of
readings.

'A review of the literature is important because without it you will not acquire an understanding
of your topic, of what has already been done on it, how it has been researched and what the
key issues are' (Hart 1998, p1). It is a basic requirement to understand and gain knowledge of
the subject and be able to apply the research writing later. The purpose of a literature review,
according to Hart, is 'to develop the skills and abilities of the researcher as well as having a
public dimension' (Hart 1998, p.26). This means the researcher could it to help on the overall
planning and also display its educational purposes of the research.

The data collection methods requires certain amount of researching on the topic before writing,
whereby the key data for the study are searched for and systematically assessed for usefulness
and appropriateness for the study. The data collection methods are as follows. Firstly, the key
words for investigation are first found out from the overarching questions that framed the topic
area. Then readings are chosen from the key words and from the researchers’ interest area
like ‘success and failure’, ‘impression formation’, ‘attribution theory’, ‘semiotic’,
‘social division’ and by reading the abstracts and entries of readings in the databases. The
readings include journal articles, books, textbooks and websites and the database of research
are mybham, reading list from studied courses and possibly ASSIA, Social Sciences Citation Index
and PsycInfo. The search parameter for readings will be limited to these 30 years of publication
around contemporary world. Case studies could be searched globally. Readings where
appropriate are followed up for further review.

This literature review research method brings benefits. Literature based research is beneficial in
avoiding some of the ethical issues that would occur by involving human participants (Bryman
2010, p139). This brings less worries in uncertainties. Moreover, the online search catalogues
are easily accessible to a large amount of books and articles, thus make the research process
easier by searching books one by one in the library.

However, sometimes searching books online would have a problem. Usually researchers search
readings in ‘the best result comes from using specific terms and putting in as many as
possible’ however, ‘it indexes the titles of books and journals, but not their content’ (Grix
2010, p59). It is only realised the reading is not appropriate for the research when reading the
article, thus wasting the time spent. As a solution, we could use bibliographic databases to
search for readings.
The research is wholly based on literature which are secondary sources, and what ethical issues
would be most concerned is the Internet. ‘Problem faced by social researchers wanting to use
the Internet for data collection is that we are in the middle of huge growth in the amount of
research being conducted in this way’ (Williams 2007, cited in Bryman 2010, p139) The lack of
monitor of the Internet gives space for not adhering to ethical principles. As a solution, the
researcher shall ‘start by considering the ethical expectations established by the venue’
(Association of Internet Researchers). Other than that, there are no other ethical issues and the
dissertation does not deal with primary sources.

Reflection and adjustments in practice

 exclude some materials found due to lack of relevance and / or if you found the process of selecting
appropriate information challenging in practice

In summary, literature based research is a suitable method for this dissertation. It provides
enough accessibility to readings for this topic area of ‘success’ and ‘failure’, this allows
forming a good foundation of knowledge which will be used later to critically analysis about.
Literature is selected through the use of key words and then narrowing down the topic.