official statistics Flashcards
important studies
police recorded crime
immigration data
census data
emile durkheim - suicide study
types of official statistics
official - quantitative data gathered by institutions eg government, trade unions - collected at regular intervals or legal requirement - used for social policy decisions
hard - collected from everyone by law eg birth and marriage records - little space for interpretation
soft - where method of collection and categorisation may change and doubts remain about their accuracy
practical strength of official statistics
cost
time
range - cover a great range of society - provide information on most topics
practical limitations of official statistics
full access - some stats only available in analysed form
personal skills - statistical skills
ethical strengths of official statistics
no real ethical issues
ethical limitations of official statistics
not appropriate for sensitive topics
theoretical strengths of official statistics
reliability - collected in same way, quantitative, easy for government to repeat the data collection process
representativeness - some have whole population as sample eg census, birth records
sample sizes
validity - most hard statistics measure what they claim to measure
cause and effect - can help produce correlations and reveal cause and effect relationships
social facts - positivists
theoretical limitations of official statistics
superficiality - do not tell us why
accuracy - dont always measure what they claim especially soft statistics - lowers validity
representativeness - do not always represent the target population
reliability - definitions of soft statistics do change over time eg crime
social constructs - interpretivists argue statistics are social constructs
positivist perspective of official statistics
reliable, objective and representative
accurate reflections of social world - social fact can be used to test hypotheses - find cause and effect relationships and identify generalised causal laws
interpretivist perspective of official statistics
do not use - they are social constructs and cannot provide a valid understanding of society
marxist perspective of official statistics
official statistics are merely representations of bourgeoisie ideology - run state so any statistics generated are done so in their interests
feminist perspective of official statistics
official statistics are representations of patriarchy as they are collected by men in areas of male interests
as many statistics are collected by questionnaires, some feminists feel they too are patriarchal and do not reflect true experiences of women
