Secodnary Methods

Question 1

What are secondary methods

Answer 1

Researcher analysing information that already exists

Question 2

Examples of secondary quantitative data

Answer 2

• official stats = census
• police recorded crime
• the crime survey for wales and England

Question 3

What are official stats

Answer 3

• Collected by the national and local governments
• the main government agency responsible for collecting and publishing statistics about the uk is the office for national stats
• ons carries out the cenus

Question 4

Evaluation of cenus

Answer 4

• large sample
• stat lack detail
• ethical
• high reliability
• easy to analyse
• validity affected if not carried out properly
  Eg 2001 0.7% of population identified their religion as Jedi

Question 5

2 ways of stats measuring crime

Answer 5

Police recorded crime
The crime survey for England and Wales

Question 6

Police recorded data

Answer 6

• collected since 1857
• consists of crimes actually recorded by the police
• published every 6 months by home office

Question 7

Why might crimes not be recorded/reported

Answer 7

Recorded:
- lack of evidnece
- not important enough
- police priority = pressure not to record crime in order to make it appear police are meeting targets

Reported:
- fear of judgement
- victimless crime
- lack of faith in the justice system

Question 8

Dark figure of crime

Answer 8

• official crime stats cannot provide accurate picture of crime rate
• 25%-30% of all crimes appear on ocs
• victimisation survey introduced to combat this problem

Question 9

The crime survey for England and Wales

Answer 9

• annual victim survey
• representative sample via stratified sample = 98% population
• 75% response rate
• structured interview = interviewer reads out a list of crimes and asks ptps if they have been a victim of these crimes in the past 12 months

Question 10

Hard statistics

Answer 10

Reliable and valid and actually measure what they claim to measure

Eg marriage rates

Question 11

Soft statistics

Answer 11

Reliable, less valid and don’t measure what the claim to measure entirety

Eg crime rate

Question 12

Examples of qualitative secondary sources

Answer 12

• qualitative research from another sociologist
• personal documents
• public documents

Question 13

What is the mass media

Answer 13

Are a secondary source but some studies using the mass media produce primary data

Question 14

Content analysis

Answer 14

• documents and other sources are examined in detail to see what themes occur
• semantic content analysis = involves examining themes and identifying underlying meanings
• eg feminists look for evidence of gender role stereotyping in children’s books

Question 15

PERVERT of quantitive

Answer 15

P
- cheap + quick to obtain large amount of data
- legal restrictions sometimes
E
- issue already dealt with who collected the data
R
- high = collected regularly in the same way using large samples
V
- hard stats = high validity
- soft stats = low vaildity
- lower understand what not why
E
- census
- police recored crime stats/ the crime survey of wales and England
R
- high - care taken to select large representative sample
T
- favoured positives

Question 16

PERVERT of qualitative

Answer 16

P
- quick to obtain
- only source available if historical topic
- can be costly
E
- issues already dealt with
- need to ensure consent if using personal documents
R
- low = open to interpretation/one instance being studied
V
- high = rich in detail lowered if bias in the source
E
- personal documents eg Willis - diaries
- public documents
R
- low one instance being studied
T
- favoured by interpretivist

Question 17

What did Scott say secondary sources needed to be to be effective

Answer 17

1.Authenticity
2.Credibility
3.Representative
4.Meaning