Official Statistics Flashcards
Official Statistics Evaluation
•P - Free source of huge amounts of data (saves time + money), regularly collected so trends can be mapped, but data is not collected for Sociologists, so may not be available for the specific area we want to study (lack of data on crime and social class).
•E - No real ethical issues as the data is collected by someone else. Did the participants know that this is how it would be used (consent)?
•R - Often cover very large numbers of people, so are often more representative.
•V - Some statistics are invalid (e.g. police statistics when people don’t report crime for one reason or another).
•E - Quantitative Data: Easy to analyse but less Verstehen.
•R - Generally reliable, collected in a standardised way by professionals.
•T - Positivists favour them for being quantitative, objective, factual and representative .
Interpretivists are cautious of them as they: Distort the truth for political bias (statistics are socially-constructed), and only show a general picture of social life without much Verstehen.
