Define secondary analysis and discuss the strengths and weaknesses identified with it
What will be an ideal response?
Secondary analysis occurs when researchers use existing material and
analyze data that were originally collected by others. Existing data
sources include public records, official reports of organizations and
government agencies, and surveys conducted by researchers.
Secondary analysis may involve obtaining raw data collected by other
researchers and undertaking a statistical analysis of the data, or it may
involve the use of other researchers' existing statistical analyses.
Strengths include the following: (1) data are readily available and
inexpensive, (2) since the researcher often does not collect the data
personally, the chances of bias may be reduced, and (3) the use of
existing sources makes it possible to analyze longitudinal data to provide
a historical context within which to locate original research. Weaknesses
include the following: (1) the data may be incomplete, unauthentic, or
inaccurate, (2) the various data from which content analysis is done may
not be strictly comparable with one another, and (3) coding this data—
sorting, categorizing, and organizing them into conceptual categories—
may be difficult.
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The sociological perspective on socialization traces its roots to ________________
a. Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim b. Max Weber and Georg Simmel c. Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead d. Sigmund Freud and Jerome Kagan
What is the perspective called that is based on the premise that society is made up of groups with conflicting self-interests?
a. The conflict perspective b. The order perspective c. The functionalist perspective d. The sociological perspective
Answer the following statements true (T) or false (F)
1. There are only two types of instruments: questionnaires and observations. 2. Avoid using questions from previously published studies. 3. Questionnaires should measure covariates but do not need to measure intervening variables (mediators and moderators). 4. The term “items” refers to the number of questions as part of a questionnaire in an experiment. 5. Fear is best measured in an experiment with a single-item indicator question.
__________ refers to the degree to which a variable measures what we think it is measuring
a. Validity b. Reliability c. Conceptualization d. Operationalization