official statistics Flashcards
studies
police recorded crime
immigration data
census data
emile durkheim - suicide study
official statistics
quantitative data gathered by government, social institutions, trade unions, charities and businesses
normally collected at regular intervals or is a legal requirement
they are often used by the government to inform social policy decisions
‘hard’ statistics
those statistics that are collected from everyone by law (such as birth, death and marriage records)
these are ‘hard’ as they are collected the same way every time and have no space for interpretation
‘soft’ statistics
statistics where the method of collection and categorisation may change and doubts remain about their accuracy (crime statistics, unemployment statistics)
registration
certain acts have to be officially registered by law eg birth and marriage
social surveys
some statistics are generated through quantitative questionnaire surveys such as those from the census
government agencies
certain statistics are generated by government agencies
social facts
positivists argue that official statistics are accurate representations of society, the provide true facts about the social world
social constructs
interpretivists believe that statistics merely represent the process by which they are collected
they cannot represent an accurate reflection of the social world
practical strengths
cost - normally cheap or free to obtain
time - freely available and often already analysed so quick to study
range - statistics cover a great range of society so can provide information on most topics
ethical strength
there are no real ethical issues with official statistics
theoretical strengths
representativeness - some official statistics after very representative because the whole population is required by law to provide statistical information
sample size - because official statistics are collected by governments large samples are normally used because governments have resources to carry out this type of sampling
validity - most hard statistics measure what they claim to measure - all births, deaths, marriages and divorces have to be recorded by law
practical limiations
full-access - some statistics are only available in their analysed form - you may not be able to get access to the raw unanalysed data for a number of years
personal characteristics - to use statistics effectively you may need some statistical skills
theoretical limitation
superficiality - statistics do not tell us anything about why someone does something ie we do not get any real depth information about people’s behaviour from statistical sources which lowers validity
representativeness - statistics do not always represent the target population, because the definitions or methods of collection may exclude some groups in the population as a whole
positivist views
official statistics are reliable, objective and representative
therefore they are accurate reflections of the social world
these social facts can be used to test hypotheses, find cause and effect relationship and identify generalised causal laws
