Official Statistics

Question 1

What are official statistics?

Answer 1

Quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies. They are collected for policy making. Ofsted use stats to monitor the effectiveness of schools and colleges.

Question 2

Two ways of collecting Official Statistics

Answer 2

Registered- law requires parents to register births

Official Surveys- census or the general household survey

Question 3

Practical Advantage of Official Statistics

Answer 3

A free source with huge amounts of data, allow comparisons between groups, compare achievement with age and gender. They are collected at regular intervals and show patterns and trends over time.

Question 4

Practical Disadvantage of Official Statistics

Answer 4

Government stats may not cater for sociologists interests. Definitions that the state uses in collecting the data may be different from what that sociologist would use and the definitions change over time making it hard to compare findings.

Question 5

Representativeness of Official Statistics (adv + disadv)

Answer 5

Official statistics cover very large numbers, so can provide a better basis for making generalisations.
However some are less
representative than others because some are compulsory.

Question 6

Reliability of Official Statistics (Adv+Disadv)

Answer 6

They are compiled in a standardised way by train staff.
They could compile death rate with different social class. any person properly trained will allocate given case to the same category.

However coders may make errors, and surveys may be filled out wrong.

Question 7

Validity of OS (hard and soft)

Answer 7

A major problem with using OS is that of validity, so they actually measure the thing they claim to measure?

Hard statistics do succeed in doing this e.g demographic data and give a very valid picture

Soft statistics do not e.g police statistics do not record all crimes or schools do not record all racist incidents

Question 8

(Theoretical) Positivists (Dürkheim)

Answer 8

-They see stats as a valuable source of data; true and objective

-Eg Durkheim tested hypothesis that suicide is causes by lack of integration. (Using comparative method)

Question 9

(Theoretical) Interpretivists (Atkinson’s)

Answer 9

Argue that statistics do not represent real things or social facts, and are socially constructed.
Atkinson uses qualitative methods to discover how coroners reached their decision to label deaths as suicides rather than how many were labelled as suicide.

Question 10

(Theoretical) Marxists

Answer 10

They see OS as serving the interests of Capitalism e.g unemployment stats underestimate the numbers unemployed and it’s damaging effect on the working class. Marxists argue that official police stats systematically underestimate the number of people taking part in demonstrations against government policies