Secondary data (methods in context)

• Main secondary sources used by sociologists to study education

  • Official statistics
  • Documents (personal and public)
• Official statistics on education

  • Cover many issues sociologists are interested in, such as ethnicity, class, gender and educational achievement
  • School attendance, truancy and inclusion
  • League tables, marketisation and school performance
  • Gender and subject choice
  • Education, work and training
• Much of the educational data is published and available to sociologists, saving them time and money
• Governments gather statistics to monitor the effectiveness of their educational policies
• Governments collect statistics for their own policy purposes


  May not be the same as those of sociologists
• Official statistics on education are generally highly representative as they cover virtually every pupil in the country
• Official statistics on education are generally very reliable as the government imposes standard definitions and categories
• Changing definitions and categories used in official statistics makes it difficult for sociologists to draw comparisons over time
• Interpretivists question the validity of educational statistics as they are socially constructed
• Schools may manipulate their attendance figures, undermining the validity of educational statistics
• Types of documents sociologists can use to investigate education

  • Public documents (e.g. school websites, government guidance, school prospectuses)
  • Personal documents (e.g. pupils' written work, school reports, diaries)
• Public documents on education are often easily accessible to researchers
• Personal documents can be more difficult for researchers to access
• There are fewer ethical concerns with using public documents compared to personal documents
• Some official documents are legally required of all schools and colleges, making them more representative
• Personal documents are often less representative as they are collected in unsystematic ways
• Many public documents are produced in a systematic format, enabling reliable comparisons
• Documents can provide important insights into the meanings held by teachers and pupils, making them high in validity
• All documents are open to different interpretations, reducing their validity