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Stage 3: Finding more data

dditional data can be useful to support your field investigation. It can be derived from

• earlier researchers (e.g. combined datasets of students from previous years held at FSC Field Centres)
• web sources (e.g. census, National Statistics, government bodies, university sources)
• written evidence (newspaper articles, blogs, academic papers)
• photographs and video

There is no point in just copying out chunks of data. Instead you must show evidence that you have manipulated the data in some way. Here are some examples

Source of data	Type	Ways you can manipulate the data
Data collected by students in previous years	Numbers	Compare your own data to the secondary data using mean and standard deviation
Census data	Numbers	Calculate percentages, rank census areas, plot a scattergraph of a census varaiable against a fieldwork variable
Newspaper articles and blogs - used to collect local reactions to a geographical issue (e.g. urban redevelopment)	Written	Count number of views 'for' and 'against', classify reasons given for opinions, calculate precentages
Photographs and video	Visual	Annotate photographs or video stills

Consider how representative your sample is. For more discussion on sampling see Stage 2. You might argue, for example, that census data is very representative, as it is derived from a very large sample of the population (i.e. everyone). Letters to newspapers, used to gauge local opinion, may be unrepresentative, as the number of people writing to the newspaper will only be a small percentage of the total number of local residents.

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