secondary data

• official statistics - quantitative data collected by the government.
• official statistics strengths:

  • cheap to access
  • usually up to date
  • can give patterns and trends
• official statistics weaknesses:

  • open to political abuse - statistics can be manipulated
  • may not represent a complete picture of the social problem because definitions used by data-collecting organisation may be different
• unofficial statistics - quantitative data collected by non government sources, such as employers
• content analysis - a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts within some given qualitative data
• content analysis strengths:

  • cheap
  • comparative method - it can be longitudinal
• content analysis weaknesses:

  • time consuming
  • can be subjective