Research methods -
Topic 3

Secondary Data

Already exists - collected previously
Split into:

  • Quantitative Data
  • Qualitative Data
  • Private Documents
  • Public Documents

Private Documents

  • Letters
  • Diaries
  • Photographs

Quantitative Secondary Source

  • Includes a huge range of statistical data produced by groups (companies / charities)
  • Mass of official statistics collected by national and local government (census data, stats on births, marriages, deaths and social services)

Official Statistics

  • Created by government departments and agencies
  • Offer data on a wide range of social issues (crime, education, etc)
  • Collected and presented as quantitative data
  • Produced as part of the day - mentoring of governments departments

Disadvantages

Interpretivists argue stats aren't objective facts but are social constructions (product of process of interpretation and decision making by those with authority - treat statistics with caution:

Health Statistics

  • They depend on people persuading doctors they are ill = doctors decision making
  • Doctors may diagnose an illness/death incorrectly - reflecting state of doctors knowledge (stats may not be accurate)
  • AIDS deaths recorded as other diseases like pneumonia before AIDS was discovered
  • Not all sick people go to the doctor and not all people that persuade doctors they are ill actually are (hypochondriacs)
  • Private medicine = makes profit (more likely to diagnose illness - patients receive treatment producing profit)

Crime Statistics

  • Often Inaccurate (don't show full extent of crime in society)
  • They only include crimes known to the police - 1/4 crimes get reported, there's a 'dark number' of unreported crimes
  • Low clear-up rates
  • Only about 1/4 of all crimes reported to the police and recorded by them as 'cleared up' - offender identified with taken action
  • 75% of known offences are committed by very different criminal types from those who come before the court
  • Unreported Crime
  • People may not report offences to the police

Suicide Statistic

  • Atkinson and other interpretivists argue that suicide statistics are social constructions representing coroners, doctors, relatives - and their definition of suicide (they tell more about the decision - making process of living than the intentions of the dead and the real numbers of suicide

Attempts to overcome the inadequate statistics of official crime and make more accuracy using victim surveys to discover the 'dark number' of unrecorded crime

Produced by the state - public statistics may be 'massaged' - not accurate (avoids political embarrassment) - affects what stats are collected and which aren't - makes questions on validity

Collected for admin purposes rather than sociological, definitions and classifications adopted may be unsuitable for that reason

Advantages

Avoids any ethical issues, publicly available, unlikely to breach personal confidence or cause harm to individuals

Background material for other issues that will be studied - identifying a hypothesis for investigation

Allows intergroup / international comparisons (between working and middle class, family size, divorce)

Covers a long lifespan, allows the examination of trends over time - can be used for 'before and after' studies

Often comprehensive in coverage, large samples - more likely to represent

Important for planning and evaluating social policy (responding to housing needs, transport and education planning and meeting care needs of elderly)

Interpretivism - Social Construction of Official Statistics

  • Statistics are a 'product' of negotiation and the opinions/judgements of people (reflect prejudice)

Desired by positivists (measurable and useful for correlations) (School - high truancy and correlate with grades)

  • Objective, factual, measurable (macro approach - representative)

Hospital League Table

  • Assessed performance

Crime Statistics

  • Annually, Home Office list number of crime and police effectiveness assessed

Before recorded it has to have been:

  • Observed
  • Identified as a crime
  • Reported
  • Investigated
  • Dealt with by court

At each stage people make decisions - not a factual process but a subjective one based upon opinions

Marriage and Divorce Rates

Census

  • Demographic data collected each decade

League Tables

  • Academic performance

Unemployment Figures

  • Monthly, shows increase and decrease

Qualitative Data

Disadvantages

  • Scott, ' In A Matter of Record' 1990 said theirs 4 criteria for judging secondary data

Content Analysis

  • RM = Primary data from study of secondary qualitative sources
  • Done through sorting categories and looking through documents (analysing content)
  • Glasgow Media Group
  • Analysed tv news bulletins over a year - categorised them and evaluated them
  • Showed media is biased towards managers (calm surrounding) and against workers (busy and noisy)
  • Gave impression that managers are more rational (research challenged media’s claims of impartiality

Disadvantages:

  • Depends in category the researcher chooses
  • Mainly concerned with describing things, not explaining it
  • Interpretation differs on the researcher so it doesn’t fit into a category

Advantages:

  • Cheap
  • No people involvement
  • Reilable data that others can check
  • Enables discovery beyond things before the anaylsis (stereotyping in children’s books)

Credibility

  • is evidence believable / reliable
    Media is often biased
  • Published autobiographies from politicians = scepticism (selected material included only) promotes downplay negatives

Meaning

  • What do the document mean
  • Do they remain the same as the first product

Representativeness

  • Is it complete?
  • Anything missing (history)
  • Government often ban publication of official records
  • Past people couldn't read/write
  • Secondary data represents privileged?

Advantages

  • Useful for assessing worry / concern (advice columns - what they want to know) (complaint letters - expectations)
  • Useful for interpretivists who wish to see worldwide ideologies (personal documents)
  • Valuable source of information in an area (history)

Primary Data

Collected by researcher themselves
Split into:

  • Quantitative
  • Qualitative

Public Documents:

  • Government
  • Welfare state
  • School (Ofsted)
  • Reports

Qualitative Data

Public Document

Private Documents

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