Primary & Secondary

Question 1

What is Primary research?

Answer 1

Research the sociologist has conducted themselves. Interviews, observations, focus groups, questionnaires.

Question 2

What is Secondary Research?

Answer 2

Research the sociologist has acquired, which has been collected by other people.

Question 3

What are the three types of Secondary Research?

Answer 3

Documents (personal or official)
Mass Media (newspapers, news, tv, radio, social media)
Official Statistics (produced by local governments, central governments and government agencies such as the police)

Question 4

Pros & Cons of Primary Research

Answer 4

You can make sure it’s valid, you know how you conducted the research so it is reliable.
But it’s time-consuming and so less representative, and could be biased which would make the results invalid.

Question 5

Pros & Cons of Secondary Research

Answer 5

It is more representative and less change of bias.
But you can’t check the accuracy and it is not reliable or necessarily valid and there’s less chance of the data covering the exact topic you want to study and might be less representative of that particular topic.

Question 6

Pros & Cons of Documents (Secondary Research)

Answer 6

e.g letters, diaries, suicide notes. Valerie Hey notes.
Accurate and depending on the document, can be valid.
But not always ethical, biased so not necessarily valid (subjective) and can’t check the reliability.

Question 7

Pros & Cons of Mass Media

Answer 7

e.g tv, broadsheets and tabloids. Fawbert Hoodies.
Inexpensive, and representative and easy to collect.
But you can’t check the reliability and it’s biased and therefore invalid.

Question 8

Pros & Cons of Official Statistics

Answer 8

Durkheim- Suicide
Hard statistics cannot be manipulated e.g birth and marriage (they are objective and factual) but soft statistics can e.g poverty, crime and unemployment.
They are large scale and accurate.
But can be manipulated which would decrease validity and data is quantitative so lacks detail (invalid).