Quantitative Secondary Data

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  • Created by: ash8642
  • Created on: 24-10-18 14:57

Quantitative Secondary Data

Advantages

  • Readily available
  • Cost little to nothing to use
  • Large representative samples
  • Comparisons/trends can be identified

Disadvantages

  • Some statistics are neither valid nor reliable
  • Definitions on which statistics are based can change
  • Only measures what Government decides is important

Evaluation

The positive of using quantitative secondary data is that is readily available for sociologists to use, so they do not need to source the data like they would if they were using primary data. Comparisons and trends can easily be identified, allowing the sociologist to draw conclusions and make generalisations based off of the data. On the other hand, quantitative secondary data obtained from the Government (e.g. ONS) only portrays what the Government decides is important for the public to be shown, therefore can be biased towards a particular view. In addition to this, definitions of which statistics are based can change, so may not fully fit in with a sociologist's current research.

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