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Secondary Data in Education - Coggle Diagram
Secondary Data in Education
Secondary data refers to data that is already available to the sociologist as opposed to primary data which they produce themselves. It can either be qualitative, such as diaries, newspapers or government reports, or quantitative, as with official statistics, such as league tables.
Personal Sources
Personal documents are first-hand accounts of social events and personal-experiences, and they generally include the writer’s feelings and attitudes. They include such things as letters, diaries, photo albums and autobiographies.
Life documents are created by individuals and record details of that person’s experiences and social actions. They are predominantly qualitative and may offer insights into people’s subjective states. They can be historical or contemporary and can take a wide variety of forms
In education:
School reports on pupils
Pupils written work
Pupils’ and teachers’ diaries
Notes and text messages passed between pupils
Official sources
Official Documents are produced by organisations such as government departments and their agencies as well as businesses and charities and include OFSTED and other official government enquiries. These reports are a matter of public record and should be available for anyone who wishes to see them.
In education:
Ofsted and Inspection Reports
School Websites
School prospectuses
School policy documents
School text books
Official Statistics
any set of data collected by the government or other official body, for example official crime statistics, unemployment figures, demographic statistics collected from the census, etc.
Advantages
free and accessible= practical
they are likely to involve a much larger sample than a sociologist could ever achieve (often referring to the entire target population rather than a sample of it)
Disadvantages
researchers has no control over how that data was produced. It will have been produced for a purpose and it is very unlikely to have been for the purpose it is now being put. For example, statistics might be produced for political reasons and be subject to manipulation or bias.
Can be manipulated for the government's political advantage (e.g. trying to make it look as though unemployment levels are falling by changing how the data is calculated).
Practical
Advantages
Schools publish many policy documents e.g. student codes of conduct, equal opportunities policies, implementation of safeguarding policies- give an account of the ‘official’ picture of schools in Britain from the perspective of management. Also made available to researchers on request, since they are a matter of public record.
Since 1988 Education act: many public documents on education are freely available to the public – OFSTED reports on schools are easily obtainable, schools publish a wide variety of information about themselves in their prospectuses and on their websites = easy access, less time consuming, free with internet access= practical
Disadvantages:
unlikely that researchers will be allowed access to students personal mobile phones or laptops to see private messages and texts, and even if they could gain access, conversation may have been deleted, especially the more ‘anti-school’ messages
Personal Documents= very difficult to access. Things like teacher mark books, records of conversations with students, work of students and disciplinary records may not be available because of the ethical requirement to safeguard children’s privacy.
Personal documents may be harder to interpret e.g. text messages, notes passed in class.
Ethical
Disadvanatges
Ethical issues arise when using private or personal documents e.g. if the researcher is given access to teacher mark books, records of conversations with students, and disciplinary records this won’t necessarily be with the informed consent of the pupils for example.
Advanatges
There are no particular ethical problems with using publicly produced documents, since they are already available to the public
Unlikely to cause harm as no contact with teachers, students or parents is involved.
Theoretical
advantages
Reliability: They are collected through a standardised data collection, under controlled conditions= objective and reliable.
Validity: statistics on educational achievement e.g. GCSE results have to be verified independently and collected by a second party- not the school. This means statistics produced should be true to picture as they are collected under controlled conditions and there is no risk of bias from the school.
Representativeness: All schools have a legal obligation to post their data online= representative of the whole population. Generalisations can be made on achievement= social facts can be derived and can determine future outcomes…
Produces quantitative data=easy to make comparisons and see correlations which can allow gov to see which groups underachieve and make policies targeted to them.
Disadvantages
Less validity: credibility of public documents produced by schools is undermined as they aim to advertise the school in a positive light= put a positive spin on the school to maximise funding and attract students. May not give accurate portrayal of school e.g. gloss over poor behaviour, attendance, truancy etc.
Although schools are required to publicise their results, they do have some freedom to emphasise the way they report them so they can portray themselves in the best possible light.
Less representativeness: OFSTED inspectors usually get to see one lesson by each teacher, which is not representative= some schools that feel as if they have been harshly judged, and question the validity of OFSTED reports, as the grade they’ve been awarded does not reflect the reality of school life. Also the focus of different OFSTED inspectors will be different in different schools= schools are not being judged by the same standard.
Less representativeness: whilst OFSTED reports give greater insight into what’s going on in a school than the statistical snap shot of GCSE results, inspections only last for 3 days, typically only done every four years= easy for a school to put on an act and produce a better performance than usual= not representative.
Less validity: Policy documents produced by schools e.g. student codes of conduct tell you how schools function in an ideal-world, but tell you nothing about how many students actually stick to the code of conduct or what’s done with students who break the code of conduct. more insight requires gaining access to individual reports of each student, which would be more difficult to obtain.
Readily available personal documents are likely to be of a public nature (e.g. social media accounts)= they would have been subjected to impression management in order to fit what is acceptable = doesn't give what people actually think about school life. The more ‘personal’ and private a document is, the higher the validity is likely to be but the number of people who write down in-depth personal accounts of their school experiences is tiny.
Schools are given warning when OFSTED are coming= prepares teachers and students on how they want to appear than real behaviour (Hawthorne effect) = less validity