secondary sources

Question 1

what are the 4 types of secondary data?

Answer 1

official statistics
other research
media
other sources

Question 2

examples of official statistics:

Answer 2

suicide stats
health stats
crime stats
education stats

Question 3

examples of other research:

Answer 3

by sociologists
by journalists
by government departments

Question 4

examples of media:

Answer 4

tv and radio
newspapers and magazines
internet
DVDs and films

Question 5

examples of other sources:

Answer 5

diaries and letters
photographs
autobiographies
historical documents

Question 6

what type of data are official stats?

Answer 6

quantitative

Question 7

what type of data are documents?

Answer 7

qualitative

Question 8

how can official stats be used for policy making?

Answer 8

birth stats can be used to plan the number of school places needed in the future

OFSTED and DfE (department for education) use exam results to assess the effectiveness of schools

Question 9

what are the 2 ways of collecting official stats?

Answer 9

registration e.g law requires parents to register births

official surveys e.g census or General Household Survey

Question 10

practical advantages of official stats:
(5)

Answer 10

free source of huge amount of data (saves time and money)

only government can gain certain data

may be only way to find out about certain topics

allow comparisons amongst groups

gathered at regular intervals so show trends and patterns over time

Question 11

practical disadvantages of official stats:

Answer 11

may not gather stats on specific topics

certain information is protected so no access to it

definitions used for official stats may be different

Question 12

Durkheim - practical disadvantages of official stats:

Answer 12

did a study of suicide where he wanted to look at religion but it wasn’t something the government had recorded

Question 13

theoretical advantages of official stats:

Answer 13

representative- large sample size

reliable - produced in standardised way and can be replicated and comparisons can be made

Question 14

theoretical disadvantages of official stats:

Answer 14

hard stats can provide validity e.g birth rates
but…
soft stats give less valid picture e.g police stats don’t record all crime and educational stats don’t record all racist incidents in schools

Question 15

positivist view on official stats:

Answer 15

favour as it is quantitative data

see as true and objective

Question 16

interpretivist view on official stats:

Answer 16

see them as lacking validity as there is no qualitative data and are social constructions

Question 17

Atkinson- official stats

Answer 17

used qualitative methods to look at how coroners reach the decision to label death as suicide
concluded suicide stats are not a true reflection but social construct defined by coroners, doctors and relatives

Question 18

what are documents?
+examples

Answer 18

any written text e.g diaries, letters, newspapers, emails and bank statements

can also be paintings, photographs, radio, TV etc

Question 19

what are the 3 types of documents?

Answer 19

public
personal
historical

Question 20

define public documents:

Answer 20

produced for public knowledge

published by organisations e.g government, schools, businesses

can include official reports of public enquiries

Question 21

define personal documents:

Answer 21

usually private documents for a persons own use

first hand accounts of events

usually include personal feelings and attitudes

Question 22

define historical documents:

Answer 22

personal or public documents created in the past so often the only source of information available

Question 23

Thomas and Znaniecki - documents

Answer 23

used personal documents (particularly letters) to look at meanings individuals gave to their experiences of migration

Question 24

Aries - documents

Answer 24

looked at paintings from children in the past to see the change in childhood over time

Question 25

3 criteria of assessing documents:

Answer 25

authenticity credibility representativeness

Question 26

example of authenticity with documents:

Answer 26

Adolf Hitler’s diaries were purchased for millions and deemed authentic by top historians but later found to be forged

Question 27

example of credibility in documents:

Answer 27

Thomas and Znaniecki- migrants may have lied in their letters home to family about how good life was in the USA to justify their decision to migrate

Question 28

advantages of documents: (4)

Answer 28

personal documents enable researcher to be close to reality and get qualitative data sometimes documents are the only source of information e.g if in the past documents can often ‘extra check’ results observed by primary methods they are a cheap source of data because someone has already done the research

Question 29

what is content analysis?

Answer 29

a way of turning secondary qualitative data into primary quantitative data this increases reliability and representativeness

Question 30

give an example on how content analysis works:

Answer 30

researcher decides what categories to use they will study the source the researcher can count the number of time the category comes up in the source and compare