Research Design

While sociologists often engage in original research studies, they also contribute knowledge to the discipline through secondary data. Within qualitative inquiry, secondary data is frequently in the form of archival materials which may be formally stored in an archive or exist in the files and records of public and private organizations as well as private persons.  Secondary data do not result from firsthand research collected from primary sources, but are drawn from the already-completed work of other researchers, scholars and writers (e.g., the texts of historians, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, teachers, journalists), records produced as a result of the everyday activities within various organizational contexts (e.g., government offices, non-profit organizations, private businesses and corporations), and personal memoirs (e.g., correspondence, diaries, photographs). In the contemporary context of digital technologies and communications, the internet is a rich and expanding resource of various types of text (e.g., written and image based) for the purpose of sociological analysis (e.g., website pages, facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) alongside more traditional sources such as  periodicals, newspapers, or magazines from any period in history. Using available information not only saves time and money, but it can add depth to a study. Sociologists often interpret findings in a new way, a way that was not part of an author's original purpose or intention. To study how women were encouraged to act and behave in the 1960s, for example, a researcher might watch movies, televisions shows, and situation comedies from that period. Or to research changes in behaviour and attitudes due to the emergence of television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a sociologist would rely on new interpretations of secondary data. Decades from now, researchers will most likely conduct similar studies on the advent of mobile phones, the internet, or Facebook. Within sociological inquiry the potential sources of secondary data are limited only by the imagination of individual researchers. A particularly rich and longitudinal source of data for the study of everyday social reality is provided in the Mass Observation Project located in the UK.

One methodology that sociologists employ with secondary data is content analysis. Content analysis is a quantitative approach to textual research that selects an item of textual content (i.e., a variable) that can be reliably and consistently observed and coded, and surveys the prevalence of that item in a sample of textual output. For example, Gilens wanted to find out why survey research shows that the American public substantially exaggerates the percentage of African Americans among the poor. He examined whether media representations influence public perceptions and did a content analysis of photographs of poor people in American news magazines. He coded and then systematically recorded incidences of three variables: (1) race: white, black, indeterminate; (2) employed: working, not working; and (3) age. Gilens discovered that not only were African Americans markedly overrepresented in news magazine photographs of poverty, but that the photos also tended to under represent "sympathetic" subgroups of the poor-the elderly and working poor-while over representing less sympathetic groups-unemployed, working age adults. Gilens concluded that by providing a distorted representation of poverty, U.S. news magazines "reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks as mired in poverty and contribute to the belief that poverty is primarily a ‘black problem'".

Textual analysis is a qualitative methodology use to examine the structure, style, content, purpose and symbolic meaning of various written, oral and visual texts.  The roots of textual analysis extend into the humanities and draw on the theory and methodologies of hermeneutic interpretation and linguistics (the science of language).  Within the broader domain of textual analysis, narrative analysis draws on the strategies and techniques of literary scholars to analyze the stories people create and use to express meaning and experience within the context of everyday lived reality.  Discourse analysis, another form of textual analysis,  finds its roots in linguistics and is an interpretive approach to texts that focuses on the contextual meanings and social uses of larger chunks of communication.   In addition to there being multiple sources of secondary data for the purpose of sociological analysis, there are a variety of analytical tools and techniques that can be drawn on from the domains of science and the humanities to enhance our capacity as sociologists to understand meaning and motivation within the context of everyday social reality.

Linguistics and Discourse Analysis

Social scientists also learn by analyzing the research of a variety of agencies. Governmental departments, public interest research groups, and global organizations like Statistics Canada, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, or the World Health Organization publish studies with findings that are useful to sociologists. A public statistic that measures inequality of incomes might be useful for studying who benefited and who lost as a result of the 2008 recession; a demographic profile of different immigrant groups might be compared with data on unemployment to examine the reasons why immigration settlement programs are more effective for some communities than for others. One of the advantages of secondary data is that it is nonreactive (or unobtrusive) research, meaning that it does not include direct contact with subjects and will not alter or influence people's behaviours. Unlike studies requiring direct contact with people, using previously published data does not require entering a population and the investment and risks inherent in that research process.

Using available data does have its challenges. Public records are not always easy to access. A researcher needs to do some legwork to track them down and gain access to records. In some cases there is no way to verify the accuracy of existing data. It is easy, for example, to count how many drunk drivers are pulled over by the police. But how many are not? While it's possible to discover the percentage of teenage students who drop out of high school, it might be more challenging to determine the number who return to school or get their high school diplomas later. Another problem arises when data are unavailable in the exact form needed or do not include the precise angle the researcher seeks. For example, the salaries paid to professors at universities are often published, but the separate figures do not necessarily reveal how long it took each professor to reach the salary range, what their educational backgrounds are, or how long they have been teaching.

In his research, sociologist Richard Sennett uses secondary data to shed light on current trends. In The Craftsman (2008), he studied the human desire to perform quality work, from carpentry to computer programming. He studied the line between craftsmanship and skilled manual labour. He also studied changes in attitudes toward craftsmanship that occurred not only during and after the Industrial Revolution, but also in ancient times. Obviously, he could not have firsthand knowledge of periods of ancient history, so he had to rely on secondary data for part of his study.

When conducting secondary data or textual analysis, it is important to consider the date of publication of an existing source and to take into account attitudes and common cultural ideals that may have influenced the research. For example, Robert and Helen Lynd gathered research for their book Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture in the 1920s. Attitudes and cultural norms were vastly different then than they are now. Beliefs about gender roles, race, education, and work have changed significantly since then. At the time, the study's purpose was to reveal the truth about small American communities. Today, it is an illustration of 1920s attitudes and values. An important principle for sociological researchers to be mindful of is to exercise caution when presuming to impose today's values and attitudes on the practices and circumstances of the past.