Secondary data refers to the data that are already exists. This might include historical documents, autobiographies, photos, novells, statistics.
Official statistics are one of the major types of secondary data and they are produced by local and national government, its agencies and organizations. Official data is widely used by positivists since they see all types of quantitative data as the main source of information. While intepretevists see statistics as not useful source of data because they do not help in answering why certain group of people committed to suicide, for example, and what made them to do so, but they just give a factual information about the situation.
When using Official Statistics, for sociologist it is important to know how was these statistics constructed. For example, statistics about the educational attainment might be different for different ethnic groups and social classes, however statistics may not provide with such information.
Also use of this source of secondary data may reflect somebody’s interests and as it is governments who is responsible for the statistics, it might try to show itself in favourable light and hide the real information about the current situation. Also another limitation of Official Statistics that sociologists can not affect the topic and sources of information that will be used for creating the statistics and governmental representatives and officials decide what is useful and what is not.
However, there are many advantages for using official statistics. They are available and cost usually nothing for researchers. Also they are often updated and so sociologists can compare change in the survey over time.
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