Flashcards on Secondary Sources (3.7)

Question	Answer
Who collects official statistics?	Governments or other official bodies.
Are official statistics qualitative or quantitative?	They are quantitative.
The Census is an example of a major source of official statistics. How frequently is the Consensus conducted?	Every ten years.
What does the government use official statistics for?	Policy-making.
There are two ways of collecting official statistics. What are they?	1. Registration (the registration of, for example, births). 2. Official surveys (e.g. the Consensus).
In addition to the government, what other bodies might produce official statistics?	Organisations and groups such as trade unions, charities, businesses and churches.
Both the advantages and the disadvantages of official statistics largely stem from what?	The fact that they are secondary data.
Official statistics offer several practical advantages. Give examples:	1. They're a free source of huge amounts of data, from which comparisons can be made. 2. Because they're collected at regular intervals, official statistics show trends and patterns over time.
However, official statistics can also have practical disadvantages. Give examples:	1. The government collects statistics for its own purpose, so the data produced might not specifically relate to a sociologist's study. 2. The definitions that the state use when collecting data might be different to those used by sociologists. 3. Definitions change over time, so comparisons may be difficult.
Another advantage of official statistics is their representativeness. Why are they so representative?	Because they often cover very large numbers and care is taken with sampling procedures.
However, some statistics less representative than others. Give an example:	Statistics gathered by compulsory registrations, such as birth and death statistics, are likely to cover all cases and thus are highly representative, while statistics produced from official surveys may be less representative because they're only based on a sample of the relevant population.
Official statistics can also be regarded as reliable. Why?	They're compiled in a standardised way by trained staff, following set procedures.
However, official statistics are not always wholly reliable. Give an example:	Coders may make errors or omit information when recording data, or members of the public may fill in the form incorrectly.
A major problem with using official statistics is that of validity. It can be asked whether they actually measure the thing that they claim to measure. In answering this, sociologists distinguish between two types of statistics. What are they?	Hard statistics (e.g. statistics on births, deaths, etc) and soft statistics (e.g. police statistics).
What do positivists think about official statistics?	They believe they're a valuable resource for sociologists because they're 'social facts'.
Positivists often use official statistics to test their hypotheses. This is what Durkheim used when studying what?	Suicide.
What do interpretivists think about official statistics?	They argue that official statistics lack validity because they are socially constructed. They argue that rather than take them at face value, we should investigate how they are socially constructed.
What do marxists think about official statistics?	They don't regard official statistics as merely the outcome of the labels applied by officials, but as serving the interests of capitalists.
What does the term 'documents' refer to?	Any written text, such as personal diaries, government reports, medical records, novels, newspapers, letters, emails, etc.
What are the two types of documents?	Public and personal.
Who produces public documents?	Organisations such as government departments, schools, welfare agencies and charities.
Public documents include the official reports of public enquiries. Give an example:	The Black Report.
Give examples of personal documents:	Letters, diaries, photo albums and autobiographies.
Give a famous early example of a study using personal documents:	William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's 'The Polish Peasant in Europe and America'.
In addition to public and personal documents, sociologists also identify historical documents. What are these?	Public or personal documents created in the past.
Why are historical documents usually the only source of information available when studying the past?	Because the people being studied are often dead.
Which sociologist used historical documents in the form of paintings when studying the middle ages?	Philippe Ariès.
Which sociologist argues that when it comes to assessing documentary sources, the general principles are the same as those for any other type of sociological evidence?	John Scott.
Scott put forwards four criteria for evaluating documents. What are they?	1. Authenticity. 2. Credibility. 3. Representativeness. 4. Meaning.
What is meant by authenticity?	When evaluating documents, it should be asked whether the document is what it claims to be, if any pages are missing, whether it is free from errors, and who wrote the document.
What is meant by credibility?	When evaluating documents, it should be asked whether the document is believable and whether the author was sincere.
What is meant by representativeness?	When evaluating documents, it should be asked whether the evidence in the document is typical. If not, it cannot be used to make generalisations.
What is meant by meaning?	The researcher must interpret the meaning of the document. However, different researchers may interpret the same document differently.
Although documents must be assessed carefully before being used, they do have many advantages. Give examples:	- Personal documents enable the researcher to get close to the social actor's reality, thus getting insight. - Sometimes documents are the only source of information available. - When used in conjunction with other sources, documents can act as an 'extra check'. - They're cheap.
What is content analysis?	A method for dealing systematically with the contents of documents.
What is content analysis best known for?	Its use in analysing documents produced by the mass media.
Documents produced by the mass media are usually qualitative. However, what does content analysis allow?	It allows the sociologist to produce quantitative data from these sources.
Which sociologist describes how content analysis works?	Ros Gill.
Which sociologist used content analysis to analyse gender roles in children's reading schemes?	Glenys Lobban.
Content analysis has several advantages. Give examples:	- It's cheap. - It's usually easy to find sources of material in the form of newspapers, TV, etc.
Which perspective is fond of content analysis and why?	Positivists. They see it as a useful source of objective, quantitative, scientific data.
What do interpretivists think of content analysis?	They argue that simply counting up the number of times something appears in documents doesn't tell us anything about its meaning.

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Flashcards on Secondary Sources (3.7)

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	Created by Em Maskrey over 6 years ago