IGCSE Sociology Practice Exam 2026 - Free Sociology Practice Questions and Study Guide

Gathering data directly from the field means collecting information firsthand through the researcher’s own interactions with people, places, or events. This is called primary data. In sociology, primary data is created specifically to answer the research question, using methods like surveys, interviews, participant observation, or experiments. Because you design the data collection yourself, you can tailor questions, choose contexts, and measure variables in ways that fit your study, which helps ensure the data are relevant and timely.

Secondary data, by contrast, are data someone else collected for a different purpose and then reused for another study. They can be useful for identifying trends or for comparisons, but they may not perfectly fit your exact question or context, and you have less control over how they were gathered. Official statistics are a common example of secondary data, usually produced by governments; non-official statistics are similarly secondary data sourced from other organizations.