Social Surveys are written in advance by the researcher and tend to to be pre-coded and have a limited number of closed-questions and they tend to focus on relatively simple topics. Social Surveys – are typically structured questionnaires designed to collect information from large numbers of people in standardised form. The main methods sociologists use to generate primary data include social surveys (normally using questionnaire), interviews, experiments and observations. If a sociologist is conducting her own unique sociological research, she will normally have specific research questions she wants answered and thus tailor her research methods to get the data she wants.
Primary data is data collected first hand by the researcher herself. Quantitative sources of secondary data include official government statistics and qualitative sources are very numerous including government reports, newspapers, personal documents such as diaries as well as the staggering amount of audio-visual content available online. Secondary data is data that has been collected by previous researchers or organisations such as the government. (It is possible to analyse qualitative data and display features of it numerically!) Qualitative data refers to information that appears in written, visual or audio form, such as transcripts of interviews, newspapers and web sites. Quantitative data refers to information that appears in numerical form, or in the form of statistics. In social research, it is usual to distinguish between primary and secondary data and qualitative and quantitative data NB – While most Sociologists believe that we should strive to make our data collection as objective as possible, there are some Sociologists (known as Phenomenologists) who argue that it is not actually possible to collect data which is purely objective – The researcher’s opinions always get in the way of what data is collected and filtered for publication.
Objective knowledge – is knowledge which is free of the biases, opinions and values of the researcher, it reflects what is really ‘out there’ in the social world. Subjective knowledge – is knowledge based purely on the opinions of the individual, reflecting their values and biases, their point of view
The careful, systematic and rigorous use of research methods is what makes sociological knowledge ‘objective’ rather than ‘subjective’. Research in Sociology is usually carefully planned, and conducted using well established procedures to ensure that knowledge is objective – where the information gathered reflects what is really ‘out there’ in the social, world rather than ‘subjective’ – where it only reflects the narrow opinions of the researchers. Subjective and Objective Knowledge in Social Research Sociologists typically limit themselves to a specific research topic and conduct research in order to achieve a research aim or sometimes to answer a specific question. However, most research has the aim of going beyond mere description. Without research, you simply do not know with any degree of certainty, what is going on in the world.
So the most basic reason for doing social research is to describe the social world around us: To find out what people think and feel about social issues and how these thoughts and feelings vary across social groups and regions. Without some kind of systematic research, we cannot know the answer to even basic questions such as how many people live in the United Kingdom, let alone the answers to more complex questions about why working class children get worse results at school or why the crime rate has been falling every year since 1995. The simple answer is that without it, our knowledge of the social world is limited to our immediate and limited life-experiences.