Topic 7 - Secondary Sources - Methods in Context Flashcards
(13 cards)
Practical issues of using official statistics to investigate education ?
-government collects the official statistics for their own purposes eg to see if their polices are working and therefore these may be of no use to sociologists
-even where the state collects educational statistics of sociological interest , the definitions of key concepts may differ from that the sociologists use
-the state may not collect statistics on pupils’ social class as such , but on pupils who are entitled to free school meals
Practical advantages of using official statistics to investigate education ?
-much of this data is published and thus available to the sociologist , saving them both time and money . for example , the government collects statistics of over 30,000 primary and 4,000 secondary schools . in practice , it would be too costly and time consuming for a sociologist to gather information on so many schools themselves
-educational statistics allow sociologists to make comparisons between the achievements of different social groups based on ethnicity , gender and social class
-also , because educational statistics are collected at regular intervals , sociologists can make comparisons over time
-the government gather statistics to monitor the effectiveness of their educational policies such as reducing inequality of achievement , these may be of great use to sociologists
why are official statistics on education thought to be highly representative ?
-some official statistics on education are highly representative . for example , all state schools have to complete a school census 3 times a year . this collects information on pupils’ attendance , ethnicity and gender , the numbers receiving free school meals and so on
-because these statistics cover virtually every pupil in the country they are highly representative
why do positivists favour official statistics ?
-positivists favour official statistics because their reliability means that they can be used to test and re test hypotheses and thus discover cause and effect relationships
why are official statistics in education thought of being highly reliable ?
-official statistics on education are generally very reliable ,this is because the government imposes standard definitions and categories for their collection , which all schools must use . this enables the process to be replicated from year to year , allowing direct comparison to be made eg on school performance over time
why may official statistics sometimes not be seen as highly reliable in education ?
-governments may change the definitions and categories
why do interpretivists question the validity of educational statistics ?
-interpretivists question the validity of educational statistics , they argue that official statistics are socially constructed
-for example , they see truancy statistics as the outcome of a series of definitions and decisions made by a variety of social actors , such as parents , teachers and pupils
-schools also may manipulate their attendance figures by re-defining poor attenders as being on study leave or additional work experience, this helps the school present themselves in the most positive light
-however , this deliberate distorting of attendance figures undermines the validity of educational statistics
what did Hey find were the practical issues of accessing personal documents ?
-personal documents can be more difficult to access , Hey made use of the notes girls passed to each other in class to understand their friendship patterns , however , the notes were not always easy to obtain , as the girls were experts at hiding them from teachers
what are some practical issues of investigating some educational documents ?
-some educational documents are confidential , such as teachers’ personal files and pupils’ disciplinary records ; so sociologists may be unable to gain access to them
what are the ethical issues with using public documents produced by schools ?
-There are few ethical concerns with using public documents produced by schools . having been placed in the public domain by the organisation that produced them , permission for their use isn’t required
-However , there are more ethical problems with personal documents . for example , Hey , collected girls notes where some girls were unaware such as in one case the teacher got a not out of the bin and gave it to Hey . thus in some cases , informed consent for their use had not been obtained
are official documents in schools seen to be representative , if so why ?
-some official statistics are legally required of all schools and colleges , such as records of racist incidents
-this makes it more likely that we can form a representative picture of racism in schools across the whole country
-however , not all racist incidents are documented which reduces the ability to be able to make generalisations
-personal documents are often less representative. For example , Hey collected around 70 notes , but the unsystematic way in which she came by them makes it likely that her sample was unrepresentative
are public documents in education seen as being reliable , if so why ?
many public documents , for example attendance registers are produced in a systematic format , this enables researchers to make direct comparisons of the absence rates of pupils in different schools
-however , deliberate falsification or accidental mistakes made when filling in registers reduces their reliability because teachers are not applying the measure of attendance consistently
why are documents when investigating education seen as having high validity , include Hey’s study ?
-documents can provide important insight into the meanings held by teachers and pupils and can therefore be high in validity
-for example , Hey initially examined girls’ friendships in school through observation and interviews , however realised she was ignoring a useful source of insight into the girls feelings and actions - the notes they passed to each other in class
-Hey found these notes to be useful because they were spontaneous expressions of the girls feelings and attitudes
