secondly methods and data

• what are official statistics?


  these are numerical data collected by government agencies or other public bodies
• why are official statistics a good thing?


  useful for identifying social trends on a large scale, such as changes in crime rates or marriage patterns.
• why might official statistics be a bad thing?


  the validity of official statistics can be questionable, and sociologists must recognise potential bias or inaccuracies.
• what are personal documents?


  diaries, letters, and emails

  they can provide deep insight into personal experiences and perspectives
• what are public documents?


  government reports, newspapers, and company records can offer useful information about broader issues and contexts
• what are some issues to consider with document analysis?


  authenticity, representativeness and meaning which the author originally intended
• what are media outputs?


  they can provide insights into societal values, norms, and beliefs. this is valuable for study areas such as gender, race or class representation .
• what types of analysis can be done on media outputs?


  qualitative content analysis: studying themes and narratives

  quantitative content analysais: counting frequency of certain items
• how can you avoid bias when analysing media outputs?


  by maintaining an objective and critical approach in media analysis
• what is big data?

  massive data sets collected by tech companies from online behaviours can be analysed to observe patterns and relationships
• what is online ethnography?


  this method studies online communities an social phenomena in the digital realm
• what issues may emerge with the use of digital data?


  privacy, consent and data validity
• why might someone use secondary data?

  secondary data analysis can be cost-effective and less time-consuming, as the data is already collected

  it provides the opportunity to study past social conditions and changes over time
• what might be an issue with using secondary data?


  reliability and validity can be hard to verify, and may not exactly fit the researchers needs