Understanding Administrative Acts and Secondary Statistical Sources
The sources of administrative acts are exhaustive, providing information on all the specific administrative acts made, not a sample or part of the total data. The National Institute of Statistics (INE) provides sources with records of deaths, causes of death, etc. However, as its aim is not to produce knowledge, little additional information is collected that could help explain the reported administrative act itself, making this analysis difficult. For example, registering a death is an administrative act that includes information about the cause of death, age, and sex, but not on social class, occupation, or other data.
Direct Production Data
Direct production data originates from operations specifically designed to produce them. They are used to study society and thus provide the basis for acting on it. Therefore, they have been called reflexive: it is as if society, through institutional intermediaries, were to examine itself.
An example is the population and housing census, which is done every 10 years. It is not a direct result of a demand from citizens but proceeds from a demand to know the institutions of the state in general. In particular, its purpose is to know the country’s population and its main features.
The information from these sources can be shaped both by events or behavior, such as attitudes, opinions, or beliefs. Their main difference from the previous font is that they can be made by sampling. They do not list all behaviors but a sample of them, except for the case of censuses.
Non-Official Statistical Sources
The position occupied by non-official statistical sources refers both to data published by private entities on a more or less regular basis, reflecting their activity and even the field of activity, performance, customers or affiliates, balance sheets, etc.
Some private entities edit data in a new way that is spread mostly on secondary and official sources. This data is delivered to users in a more affordable format. These are called annuals, for example, financial institutions that present data on income distribution, social services, quality of life, etc.
Secondary Sources: Institutional Messages
The second large secondary font includes messages that are, in turn, divided between institutional sources where messages are attributable to institutions. These messages have not been produced for analysis but may be used for it. The first great type of these sources is marked by documents, whether official or private.
- Official Documents: Documents generated by public institutions that belong to a field of state administration. The communicative media are in a public domain, which is what acts as a source. For example, the Official State Gazette (BOE) becomes a source of data that can be analyzed.
- Private Documents: In the second case, to be public, documents also require certain institutionalization, but their origin can be considered private, such as those produced by companies.
Unofficial sources can feed messages generated at the official level. The private entity is responsible for focusing, sorting, and providing the user or researcher with messages from a particular field emitted by official bodies, such as the compilation and editing of the various messages or legal documents.
A special type of document is produced by the media, which can be analyzed qualitatively (speech analysis) or quantitatively (content analysis).
Finally, the documents are in institutional or official speeches. The best example of this secondary qualitative data on the social level is QUALIDATA at the University of Essex.
Criteria for Assessment of Secondary Statistical Sources for Analysis
The ideal secondary source is very accessible, offers data reporting on the same social phenomenon and the same population as it tries to analyze, and, further, such data have occurred in the time interval intended to address methodological conditions. These are a set of difficult circumstances that are given to complete an investigation.