Method in Context- Official statistics

Question 1

Practical issues- strength

Answer 1

Easy to analyse- Positivists tend to favour the use of educational statistics because they can be easily analysed for changes over time and between groups
- Cheaper and quicker- official education statistics are easy to obtain as they have already been collected by the government website
- This means sociological researcher can use the information freely without having it spend on large amount of money or time, unlike many other research method such as observation or unstructured interviews

Question 2

theoretical issue- Reliability

Answer 2

officials tactics on education are generally reliable.
- This is because the government follow standardised procedures, definitions and categories when collecting educational statistical data

Question 3

Theoretical issues- representativeness

Answer 3

Educational statistics are funded and collected by government organisations. This means that large funds make it possible to collect information on every pupil in the country .
- for e.g all schools must complete a school census three times a year. It would be feasible for sociologist to collect such a large quantity of data let alone sift and analyse the information- this means that educational statistic highly representative and allow generalisation to be made.

Question 4

practical issues- limitations

Answer 4

• Official statistics have limited use - educational statistics have limited use in investigation certain educational issues
• Sociologists cannot use statistical data to find out about labelling, gender and classroom behaviour, pupil subcultures, and hidden curriculum.
• Collected for non- sociological reasons- educational statistics are collected for government purposes rather than sociological research. Even when an educational statistic may be of interest to the sociologist, the concept and definition applied by the government may be different to those applied by sociologist.

Question 5

Ethical issues- Limitations

Answer 5

• Problems of interpretation- there’s no ethical issues
• However, information on a particular ethnic group or class on educational matters such as exam performance or truancy could be misinterpreted by the public, which could lead to the group or class being negatively stigmatised.

Question 6

Theoretical issues limitations- validity

Answer 6

Interpretivists are critical of educational statistical data- this is because they are created by people, which mean that they can be deliberately manipulated in order to be presented in more positive light
- Cannot explain the ‘why’ question - Educational statistics are useful to show patterns, trends and comparison such as between gender and educational achievement.
- However they cannot explain why boys underachieve at GCSE level but only give a frequency or percentage of how many fall short of the 5 A*-C. Therefore the researcher cannot identify if home background or school life are among the reason for boys underachievement
- Official statistics have limited use- they have limited use of statistical data to find out about labelling, gender and classroom behaviour, pupil subculture, hidden curriculum. For such educational issue, observations and interviews are better research methods.

Question 7

Theoretical issue- limitations

Answer 7

Cannot explain the ‘why’ question - Educational statistics are useful to show patterns, trends and comparison such as between gender and educational achievement.
- However they cannot explain why boys underachieve at GCSE level but only give a frequency or percentage of how many fall short of the 5 A*-C. Therefore the researcher cannot identify if home background or school life are among the reason for boys underachievement
- Official statistics have limited use- they have limited use of statistical data to find out about labelling, gender and classroom behaviour, pupil subculture, hidden curriculum. For such educational issue, observations and interviews are better research methods.

Question 8

Official stats have been used to investigate educational issues such as:

Answer 8

• Educational achievement (class,gender,ethnicity)
  -School performance (league table)
  -School attendance (truancy and school exclusion)