Flashcards
Secondary data
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- 1Sociologists can compare stats on achievement over time=cause+effect (positivists)Gov can monitor effects of edu policies which produces data that sociologists can then use However the gov definition of social class may vary All schools have to collect certain data which produces large amounts of representative data that is also reliable as it is collected in the same way with standardised definitions Schools may manipulate their attendance figures=invalid dataPublic documents on edu are easily accessible (marketisation) Gewirtz found brochures+prospectuses were a useful free source of info about how schools presented themselves Personal document are harder to access Eg Hey; girls notes in class Ethical issues; less with public document-more with personal Not all racist incidents documented= unrepres Many are produced in a systematic format though there may be mistakes however the way sociologist analyse the content can be replicated=reliable They can provide insights but they can be interpreted differently
- 2Public documents; made by organisations like the gov, schools It includes things like Ofsted Personal documents; 1st person accounts Historical documents; a document created in the past Eg Aries used child rearing manuals+ paintings to study the rise of modern childhoodAssessing documents Scott 4 criteria; authenticity(is it what it claims to be? are there pages missing?), credibility (is it believable), representativeness and meaning(words may have changed in meaning)
- 31 Free source of huge amounts of quantitative data=saves time+ money, allows comparisons, shows cause+effect However it is collected for the organisations own purpose= may be none available for sociologist +definitions may vary 2 large sample =repres though some more than others 3 standardised=reliable 4 hard stats give an accurate picture but soft stats are less valid Eg racist incidents in schools=self report surveys5 positivism; favour them as they id cause+effect they are social facts Interpretivism; hate them=they lack validity they are socially constructed Eg suicide stats show the number of decisions made by coroners to label deaths as suicides Marxism; They serve the needs of capitalism eg unemployment stats-the definition changes to disguise the true level of unemployment
- 4Advans of documents; They give insight (rich qualitative data)=interpretivists favour them Some documents are the only sources of info (historical documents) They offer an extra check on results gained by primary sources They are cheap + they save timeContent analysis deals with the content of documents+enables the sociologist to produce quantitative data It involves deciding on categories, studying the source, then putting the characters into the categories, then finally count up the no in each category Results can then be compared This method is cheap and positivists see it as a useful source of objective, quantitative data
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- finished sociology (Sociological Methods) Flashcards on Secondary data, created by *Ellie* on 20/05/2013.
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