secondary data

Examples of secondary data in the following topics:

• Use of Existing Sources

  • The study of sources collected by someone other than the researcher, also known as archival research or secondary data research, is an essential part of sociology .
  • In archival research or secondary research, the focus is not on collecting new data but on studying existing texts.
  • Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, organizational records, field notes, semi-structured and structured interviews, and other forms of data collected through quantitative methods or qualitative research.
  • The primary reason is that secondary data analysis saves time that would otherwise be spent collecting data.
  • In the case of quantitative data, secondary analysis provides larger and higher-quality databases that would be unfeasible for any individual researcher to collect on his own.

• Determining the Research Design

  • The design of a study defines the study type, research question and hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, and data collection methods .
  • While quantitative methods involve experiments, surveys, secondary data analysis, and statistical analysis, qualitatively oriented sociologists tend to employ different methods of data collection and hypothesis testing, including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, content analysis, and historical comparison .

• Quantitative and Qualitative

  • Quantitative sociologists tend to use specific methods of data collection and hypothesis testing, including: experimental designs, surveys, secondary data analysis, and statistical analysis.
  • Further, quantitative sociologists typically believe in the possibility of scientifically demonstrating causation, and typically utilize analytic deduction (e.g., explore existing findings and deduce potential hypotheses that may be tested in new data).
  • Qualitatively oriented sociologists tend to employ different methods of data collection and analysis, including: participant observation, interviews, focus groups, content analysis, visual sociology, and historical comparison.

• Objective vs. Critical vs. Subjective

  • The selection of data (this selection reveals data the author believes is reliable whether or not it is)
  • If the researcher decides to collect their own data, then they must:
  • Decide how to analyze the data collected (if mathematically, which protocols will be used and which software program, and if qualitatively which themes will be looked for and / or what software program)
  • Decide how to measure or categorize the data (if mathematically, what set of parameters counts as a good measure, and if qualitatively what must a category contain)
  • If the researcher decides to use secondary data, this becomes even more complicated.

• Secondary Groups

  • Some secondary groups may last for many years, though most are short term.
  • Secondary relationships involve weak emotional ties and little personal knowledge of one another.
  • The distinction between primary and secondary groups was originally proposed by Charles Cooley.
  • A secondary group is one you have chosen to be a part of.
  • Primary groups can form within secondary groups as relationships become more personal and close.

• Primary and Secondary Groups

  • Secondary groups are large groups whose relationships are impersonal and goal-oriented.
  • Some secondary groups may last for many years, though most are short term.
  • People in a secondary group interact on a less personal level than in a primary group.
  • Since secondary groups are established to perform functions, people's roles are more interchangeable.
  • Examples of secondary groups include: classmates in a college course, athletic teams, and co-workers.

• Documents

  • The material used can be categorized as primary sources, which are original materials that are not created after the fact with the benefit of hindsight, and secondary sources that cite, comment, or build upon primary sources.
  • Typically, sociological research on documents falls under the cross-disciplinary purview of media studies, which encompasses all research dealing with television, books, magazines, pamphlets, or any other human-recorded data.

• Child Socialization

  • Primary and secondary socialization are two forms of socialization that are particularly important for children.
  • These two types are known as primary and secondary socialization.
  • Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is the appropriate behavior as a member of a smaller group within the larger society.
  • Secondary socialization takes place outside the home.
  • Justify the importance of socialization for children, in terms of both primary and secondary socialization

• Eigenvector of geodesic distances

  • A limitation of the routine is that it does not calculate values for asymmetric data.
  • If this amount is not large (say over 70%), great caution should be exercised in interpreting the further results, because the dominant pattern is not doing a very complete job of describing the data.
  • This means that the dominant pattern is, in a sense, 5.6 times as "important" as the secondary pattern.
  • Compared to the pure "star" network, the degree of inequality or concentration of the Knoke data is only 20.9% of the maximum possible.

• Analyzing Data and Drawing Conclusions

  • In statistical applications, some people divide data analysis into descriptive statistics, exploratory data analysis (EDA), and confirmatory data analysis (CDA).
  • In an exploratory analysis, no clear hypothesis is stated before analyzing the data, and the data is searched for models that describe the data well.
  • Coding is the process of categorizing qualitative data so that the data becomes quantifiable and thus measurable.
  • How data is coded depends entirely on what the researcher hopes to discover in the data; the same qualitative data can be coded in many different ways, calling attention to different aspects of the data.
  • Coded data is quantifiable.