*Secondary Sources Flashcards
What are official statistics?
Numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy.
What is a distinct advantage of official statistics compared to privately collected data?
They are more likely to be shared with the public because they’re paid for by taxes.
What is the cost implication of collecting official statistics?
Far from cheap to collect; for example, the 2011 census cost hundreds of millions of pounds to produce.
What is a primary purpose of collecting official statistics?
Official statistics are collected for administrative purposes rather than for research purposes.
True or False: Official statistics are always suitable for specific research purposes.
False.
What ethical concern is associated with the collection of official statistics?
The collection of statistics might really be about surveillance and control.
How can the collection of school performance statistics affect education?
It can lead to more teaching to the test, a decline in creativity, and increased stress in education.
What is a key theoretical limitation concerning crime statistics?
Certain crimes are notorious for being underreported to the police, such as rape and domestic violence.
What do structural sociologists believe about official statistics?
They serve the interests of elite groups, with data only collected on things that don’t harm those in power.
What do positivists believe regarding the use of official statistics?
It provides a detached and generalizable understanding of the world.
What are Scott’s four criteria for assessing the quality of documents?
- Selection bias of search engines
- Effectiveness of keywords
- The transient nature of websites
- Rapid development of new approaches
What is a strength of using documents in research?
They provide access to a wealth of different types of secondary qualitative information.
What is a limitation concerning the authenticity of historical documents?
Parts of the document might be missing due to age, and authors may not be verifiable.
Define secondary qualitative data.
Information that already exists in written or audio-visual format.
What types of documents can be considered secondary qualitative data?
- Government reports
- Newspapers
- Novels
- Letters
- Diaries
- Pictures
- TV and radio output
What is content analysis?
A systematic reanalysis of data to identify examples of specific codes or themes.
What was the conclusion of Boepple and Thompson’s study on healthy living blogs?
The blogs spread messages that are ‘potentially problematic’ for behavior change.
What is the goal of thematic analysis?
To convert qualitative data into quantitative data by identifying trends in language.
According to Braun and Clarke, what should a theme capture?
Something important about the data in relation to research questions, representing patterned meaning.
What distinguishes official documents from personal documents?
Official documents are produced by organizations, while personal documents are first-hand accounts of social events.
Give examples of personal documents.
- Letters
- Diaries
- Photo albums
- Autobiographies
What is a significant concern regarding the representativeness of historical documents?
Documents may not be representative of the wider population, especially older documents.
