Secondary data

• Official statistics are a source of secondary data. They're produced by local governments, central government and government agencies.
• Statistics are a source of secondary data? (1)

  1. Hard stats are objective, politicians can't fiddle with them and stats on birth and marriages are hard stats
  2. Soft stats more subjective. Politicians can fiddle with them, stats on crime,poverty and unemployment are soft. In 1980s & 1990s, government changed the method usually measure unemployment over 20 times
  3. social trends was a collection of government surveys published annually until 2012- great source of secondary data
• Statistics are a source of secondary data? (2)

  4) The Uk consensus is a survey of every household every 10 years. Every household has to fill in the form by law

  5) The crime survey for england and wales (CSEW) looks at victims of crime. The data collected by a qustionnaire.
• Non-official statistics are statistics collected by organisations other than the government. For example:

  1. Tv ratings collected by british audience research Bureau
  2. Surveys carried out by special interest groups, such as charities or by other sociologists
• Documents & Mass Media are a source of secondary data? (1)

  1. Doc is written text. Either on paper or in digital format e.g. online text
  2. Docs can be personal- like letters, diaries, autobiographies and memoirs. Docs can be official, like school records, health records. Public docs produced by charities, businesses and local government
  3. Docs can be expressive- more to do with meaning like a diary. Documents can be formal- official docs. Interpretivists prefer expressive docs bc they a big source of qualititative data
• Documents & Mass Media are a source of secondary data? (2)

  4) Content analysis is a method of systematically analysing a communication e.g. speech,film or letter to understand its meanings. It is often used to study the mass media, e.g. research by the Glasgow university media group

  5)Problems with documents. They can be difficult to understand if they're old. They might be fakes. they might contain lies -especially personal documents
• Sociologists compare different secondary documents? (1)

  1. Sociologists look for similarities and differences between secondary documents. They can compare different times, different cultures and different groups within society by looking at secondary data
  2. Researchers can analyse real social behaviour and make comparisons without having to set up artificial experiments
• Sociologists compare different secondary documents? (2)

  3. Durkheim used this comparative method in his famous 1897 suicide study. Looked at rates of suicide in different European societies. Found suicide rates were consistent over time, but varied between societies and varied for different groups within society