types of secondary data

• official statistics

  Statistics that are collected by the government.
• unofficial statistics

  statistics that are collected by businesses, charities and other agencies.
• personal documents

  Qualitative data that reflects individuals/groups - they talk about feelings, attitudes and behaviours people have.
• historical/public documents

  Documents that are produced by the government, state agencies and other organisations.
• prior research

  Research that has been done by someone else on the same or similar topics.
• official statistics - AO3

  -large sample size - representative.

  -time and cost effective to use.

  -ethical - confidential.

  -over/under representation.

  -government bias.
• unofficial statistics - AO3

  -might lack validity.

  -charity/organisation bias.

  -sample sizes might be smaller.

  -might lack representation.
• statistics - application to education

  -exam results - published by schools and the government. Modood used this to see why grades vary on social class and ethnic minority.

  -Gillborn & Youdell looked at the A-C economy. Wanted to see why groups underachieve because of the interactions they have.
• personal & public documents - education

  -Hey (1997) personal documents: looked at notes girls passed in class. Notes were hard to get hold of - lack of access. Girls were not protected from psychological harm and did not consent.

  
  

  -Ofsted, public documents: qualitative and quantitative data - assessing the school. Everyone can access this data.
• 4 things looked at when assessing documents

  -authenticity

  -credibility

  -representativeness

  -meaning
• personal & public documents - AO3

  -unethical (sometimes) - informed consent & protection from harm.

  -may lack validity if people know the documents will be read.

  -lack of representation.

  -can be cheap to use.

  -easy/hard to access.

  -time consuming to analyse.
• content analysis

  -make/consider categories.

  -decide what sources will be used e.g., newspapers.

  -see how many times the categories come up.