Research using secondary source

Question 1

What is secondary data?

Answer 1

Data that already exists

Question 2

Why might sociologists use secondary data?

Answer 2

• Widely available

- Cheap and easy

Question 3

Quantitive - secondary

Answer 3

• Birth rates
• Crime rates
• Unemployment statistics
• Census

Question 4

Qualitative - secondary

Answer 4

• Diaries, letters
• Documentaries
• Autobiographies
• Other sociologists work

Question 5

Official statistics - Quantitive

Answer 5

This is quantitive data gathered by the government or other official bodies, help the government make policies for the future

Question 6

Official statistics - Quantitive examples

Answer 6

Crime statistics

- However crime statistics may not give a full picture as not all crimes are reported

Question 7

What are reasons for not reporting crimes to the police?

Answer 7

• Bribed
• Person is afraid
• Bystander effect - someone else will
• Person knows the criminal (family member, lover)
• Involvement
• Don’t know they’re a victim
• Lack of evidence
• May be threatened
• Fear of reprisal (harm)

Question 8

Why are interpretivists critical of quantitive secondary data?

Answer 8

As there is a dark figure of crime

- The British crime Survey asks 40,000 what crimes have been committed against them

Question 9

Strengths of using official statistics

Answer 9

• Quantitive date = easy to analyse/reliable/positivist
• Availability = lots of data is freely available, like crime stats, marriage statistics
• Identification of patterns and trends = identify changes over time
• Capacity to make international comparisons = Compare different countries pay gay/marriage stats
• Generalisations can be made - on a macro scale, typical of the whole society

Question 10

Weaknesses of using official statistics

Answer 10

• The data has not been collected with the sociologist in mind = not exactly what the researcher wants/needs
• They don’t explain why = something has happened - not explained why
• The way statistics have been collected change over time = the categories used can be modified e.g. made difficult to compare contemporary statistics
• They might be manipulated = change statistics to make themselves look better

Question 11

Example of secondary qualitative data

Answer 11

The term document overs a wide range of secondary data, it includes letters, diaries, autobiographies, adverts, photos, tv etc

Question 12

Why might sociologists choose to use secondary data?

Answer 12

• Only source available

- Little effort (easy)

Question 13

Public documents

Answer 13

Produced by an organisation such as the government reports e.g. offsted reports

Question 14

Private/personal/life documents

Answer 14

First hand accounts by individuals e.g. Anne Franks Diary

Question 15

Using life documents

Answer 15

Can be found in the ethnographic (put yourself in their shoes) study by Valarie Hey ‘the company she keeps’

• Interested in exploring school girls and friendships
• Had to establish a rapport with the girls and even swapped her own personal diaries
• Took notes out of bins - unethical, didn’t gain consent

Question 16

Qualitative data strengths

Answer 16

• Provide rich data and detsail an high in validity
• Only thing available
• Easy to analyse someone else’s
• Interpretivists love meanings and motives

Question 17

Qualitative data WEAKNESSES

Answer 17

John Scott said there were 4 main problems

• Authenticity = we don’t know, could be forged
• Credibility = lack of credibility - not reliable
• Representativeness = can’t generalise: not typical of whole population
• Meaning = subjective, different ways of interpreting

Question 18

Examples of studies using secondary sources

Answer 18

MEDIA = Stan Cohen - used newspaper reports to study deviancy amplification 
YOUTH = Phillipe Aries - used paintings, historical accounts and sources to demonstrate that childhood din't exist in the past