Topic 7 - Secondary Sources Flashcards
(26 cards)
what are official statistics ?
-Official statistics are quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies
-examples include statistics on death , birth , marriages and divorces , exam results , school exclusions , crime , suicide and unemployment etc
what are the 2 ways to collecting official statistics ?
-Registration- for example , the law requires parents to register births
-Official surveys - such as the census or general household survey
what are some of the practical advantages of official statistics ?
official statistics offer several practical advantages ;
-They are a free source of huge amounts of data , only the state can afford to conduct large scale surveys costing millions of pounds , such as the census covering every household in the uk, likewise only the government has the power to compel citizens to provide it with information , for example by requiring parents to register births
-statistics allow comparisons between groups . for example , we can compare statistics on educational achievement
-because official statistics are collected at regular intervals , they show trends and patterns over time , this means that sociologists can identify cause and effect relationships . for example m we can compare divorce statistics before and after a change in the divorce law to measure what effect the new legislation has had
what are some practical disadvantages of official statistics ?
Official statistics can have practical disadvantages ;
-The government collects statistics for its own purpose and not for the benefit of sociologists , so there may be none available on the topic we are interested in
-the definitions that the state uses in collecting the data may be different from those that sociologists would use . For example , they may define poverty or truancy differently which in turn may lead to different views on how large the problem is
-if definitions change over time , it may make comparisons difficult
Are official statistics considered to be representative , if so why and what does this lead us to be able to do ?
-official statistics are often seen as representative because official statistics cover very large numbers (sometimes the whole population) and because care is taken with sampling procedures , they often provide a more representative sample which therefore provides a better basis for making generalisations and testing hypotheses
Are official statistics seen as reliable , if so why ?
-official statistics are generally seen as a reliable source of data , this is because they are compiled in a standardised way by trained staff , following set procedures
-for example , government statisticians compile death rates for different social classes following a standard procedure that uses the occupation recorded on each person’s death certificate to identify their class
-official statistics are therefore reliable because , in principle any person properly trained will allocate a given case to the same category
what kind of official statistics are valid but which aren’t due to the “dark figure” ?
-a major problem with using official statistics is that of validity , do they actually measure the thing they claim they measure ?
-hard and soft statistics = some “hard” official statistics do succeed in doing this , for example , statistics on death , births marriages etc generally give a very accurate picture
-however , “soft” statistics give a much less valid picture , for example , police statistics , do not record all crimes , similarly , educational statistics don’t record all racist incidents occurring in schools .
Official statistics ; facts , constructs or ideology - positivists such as Durkheim ?
-Positivists such as Durkheim , see official statistics as a valuable resource for sociologists
-Positivists take for granted that official statistics are social facts , that is , true and objective measures of the real rate of crime , suicide etc
-positivists see sociology as a science and just like natural scientists , they develop hypotheses to discover the causes of the behaviour patterns that the statistics reveal
-positivists often use official statistics to test their hypotheses , for example Durkheim put forward the hypothesis that suicide is caused by lack of social integration , using a comparative method , he argued that protestant and catholic religions differ in how well they integrate individuals into society . using official statistics , he was able to show that Protestants had a higher suicide rate than Catholics , so he was able to argue that this statistical evidence proved his hypothesis correct
Official statistics ; facts , constructs or ideology - interpretivists such as Atkinson’s view ?
-interpretivists such as Atkinson regard official statistics as lacking validity
-they argue that statistics dont represent real things or social facts that exist out there in the world
-instead , statistics are socially constructed -they merely represent the labels some people give to the behaviour of others
-in this view , interpretivists believe suicide statistics don’t represent the “real rate” of suicides that have actually taken place , but merely the total number of decisions made by coroners to label some deaths as suicides , the statistics therefore tell us more about the way coroners label deaths than about the actual causes of these deaths
Official statistics ; facts , constructs and ideology - Marxists such as Irvine’s view ?
-Marxists such as Irvine take a different view , unlike interpretivists , they don’t regard official statistics as the outcome of labels applied by officials such as coroners but instead they see official statistics as serving the interests of capitalism
-in the conflict between the capitalist ruling class and the working class , the state isn’t neutral , but serves the interests of the capitalist class
-the statistics that the state produce are part of the ruling class ideology - that is , part of the ideas and values that help to maintain the capitalist class in power
-unemployment statistics are a good example of this process , the state has regularly changed the definition of unemployment over the years . this has almost always reduced the number officially defined as unemployed , thus disguising the true level of unemployment and its damaging effects on the working class
what are the 3 types of documents that we can distinguish between ?
-Public documents
-Personal documents
-Historical documents
What are public documents ?
-Public documents are produced by organisations such as government departments , schools , welfare agencies , businesses and charities
-it includes documents such as OFSTED reports of school inspections etc
What are Personal documents ?
-Personal documents include items such as letters , diaries , photo albums and autobiographies
-these are first person accounts of social events and personal experiences , and they generally include the writer’s feelings and attitudes
personal documents - Thomas and Znaniecki’s study - what did they study ?
-Thomas and Znaniecki were interactionists who were interested in migration and social change , due to being interactionists they were particularly interested in people’s personal experiences of these events
-they used personal documents to reveal the meanings that individuals gave to their experience of migration e.g. letters
-they also used public documents such as newspaper articles and court and social records . with these documents they were able to explore the experiences of social change of some of the thousands of people who migrated from Poland to USA early 20th century
What are historical documents ?
-Historical documents are a personal or public document which was created in the past. if we want to study the past , historical documents are usually the only source of information
Example of historical documents used by Aries in his study of families and households ?
-Aries used child rearing manuals and paintings of children in his study of the rise of the modern notion of childhood
Assessing documents - what are the 4 general principles that Scott puts forward when it comes to assessing documentary sources ?
1.authenticity
2.credibility
3.representativeness
4.meaning
Scott - principles when assessing documents - authenticity ?
-authenticity - is the document what it claims to be ? are there any missing pages , and if its a copy , is it free from errors ? who actually wrote the document ? for example , the so called Hitler diaries were later proven to be fakes
Scott - Principles when assessing documents -credibility ?
-Credibility - is the document believable ? was the author sincere ? is the document accurate ?
Thomas and Znaniecki’s polish immigrants may have lied in their letters home about how good life in the USA was , to justify their decision to emigrate
Scott -Principles when assessing documents - representativeness ?
-representativeness -is the evidence in the document typical ? if we cannot answer this question , we cannot know whether it’s safe to generalise from it ;
-not all documents survive - are the surviving documents typical of the ones that get destroyed or lost ?
-not all surviving documents are available for researchers to use , the 30 year rule prevents access to some official documents , private documents such as diaries may never become available or only after the death of the author
-certain groups may be unrepresented - the illiterate , and those with limited leisure time ,are unlikely to keep diaries . the better educated classes are thus likely to be over represented
Scott -Principles when assessing documents - meaning ?
-meaning - the researcher may need special skills to understand a document , it may have to be translated from a foreign language and words may change their meaning over time
-we also have to interpret what the document actually means to the writer and the intended audience
-different sociologists may interpret the same document differently
-Thomas later admitted that the interpretations he and Znaniecki had offered in their book were not always based on the data from the documents
what are some advantages of documents ?
-personal documents such as diaries and letters enable the researcher to get close to the social actors reality , giving insight through their richly detailed qualitative data , interpretivists favour them for this reason
-sometimes documents are the only source of information , for example in studying in the past
-by providing another source of data , documents offer an extra check on the results obtained by primary methods
-they are a cheap source of data , because someone else has already gathered the information , this also saves sociologists time
how does Gill describe how content analysis works ?
-Gill describes how content analysis works as follows
-imagine we want to measure particular aspects of a media message , for example , how many female characters are portrayed as being in paid employment
-firstly , we decide what categories we are going to use such as employee , full time housewife etc
-next , we study the source (e.g. television broadcast) and place the characters in it into the categories we have decided upon
-then , we count up the number in each category , for example , to compare how often women are portrayed as full time housewives rather than employees
what did Lobban use content analysis for and what did this show ?
-Lobban used content analysis to analyse gender roles in children’s reading schemes
-Lobban found that females were portrayed in a range of roles that were both limited and stereotyped
-for example , Lobban found that female characters were generally portrayed as playing a domestic role
