types of data

Question 1

Definition of data

Answer 1

simply means information. It can be primary,secondary, qualitative or quantitative

Question 2

Primary data

Answer 2

Information collected by sociologists themselves for their own purposes. This purpose could be to test a hypothesis.

Question 3

How can sociologists collect primary data

Answer 3

• Social surveys(asking people questions in a written questionnaire or an interview)
• Participant observation(Sociologists join in with the group that they are interested in)
• Experiments(Field experiments and comparative methods)

Question 4

Give a strength of Primary data

Answer 4

It allows sociologists to get the precise information they want to test their hypothesis.

Another strength is that because it is recently collected it means that research is up to date.

Question 5

Give a limitation of primary data

Answer 5

• Time consuming and costly.
• its validity and reliability can be undermined due to flaws in research design
• it can have ethical limitations. (field exp=people dont know they are being experimented on-informed consent)

Question 6

Secondary data

Answer 6

information that has been collected or created by someone else for their own purposes but which sociologists can then use.

Question 7

Give examples of secondary data

Answer 7

Official statistics(produced by government) or Documents(e.g.letters, paintings)

Question 8

A strength of secondary data

Answer 8

Cheap and quick, since some1 else has collected it already.

Question 9

A limitation of secondary data

Answer 9

• the data may not have specific information that the sociologist is looking for
• This type of data may contain bias introduced by the original researcher.

Question 10

Quantitative data

Answer 10

-information in numerical form.

Question 11

examples of quantitative data

Answer 11

shown through graphs, pie charts and tables

Question 12

How is quantitative data collected

Answer 12

closed ended questionnaires, structured interview and experiments.

Question 13

Strengths of quantitative data

Answer 13

easy to analyse because its presented on graphs, tables.

Allows for comparisons to be made

Question 14

Limitations of quantitative data

Answer 14

This type of data doesn’t make it possible for the researcher to explain the reasons for people’s behaviour as it lacks depth. so it lacks validity as it only shows us ‘how much’, not ‘why’.

Question 15

Qualitative data

Answer 15

information presented in words.

Question 16

How is qualitative data collected

Answer 16

unstructured interviews, observations and secondary sources such as diaries or letters.

Question 17

Strengths of qualitative

Answer 17

This data is in-depth(rich), more meaningful and can be used to explain human actions.

Question 18

Limitations of qualitative

Answer 18

Lacks objectivity- contains bias.