OFFICIAL STATISTICS Flashcards
What are the key features of official statistics?
Produce quantitative data, cheap and easy to access, usually produced by government agencies.
What are the advantages of official statistics?
They are a free source of data that shows trends and patterns over time and are reliable as they are conducted by the government annually with set procedures.
What are the disadvantages of official statistics?
They may not be available for the topic you are researching and may not be representative as they may only look at a relevant sample.
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How do interpretivists view official statistics?
They view them as lacking validity and a ‘social construct’.
How do positivists view official statistics?
They view them as reliable and accurate.
What are the key features of documents?
They are a secondary source of data, can be written e.g letters or in other forms such as paintings, and include many types such as public documents, personal documents and historical documents.
What are the advantages of documents?
They are practical, cheap, and easy to find online, and there are unlikely to be ethical issues as no subjects are involved.
What are the disadvantages of documents?
There may be gatekeepers making it hard to access certain research/documents, and they are not produced with sociology in mind.
What are personal documents?
First-person accounts of an individual’s experiences and feelings.
What are the advantages of personal documents?
They provide valid, in-depth insights into an individual’s feelings and thoughts.
What are the disadvantages of personal documents?
Some groups may not be represented, or some may be over-represented, and personal bias may be present.
What are historical documents?
Personal or public documents created in the past.
What are the advantages of historical documents?
They allow for a comparison of trends and patterns over time.
What are the disadvantages of historical documents?
They may be unrepresentative as some documents may have been lost or destroyed, and there may be issues with misinterpretation and lack of historical context.
What types of issues do official statistics on education cover?
- Ethnicity, class, gender, educational achievement,
- school attendance, truancy,
- inclusion
- Gender and subject choice
What are the practical issues of official statistics?
Much data is published and available, saving sociologists time and money.
For example, the government collects statistics on over 30,000 primary and 4,000 secondary schools. In practice, it would be too costly and time-consuming for a sociologist to gather information on so many schools themselves.
How do educational statistics help sociologists?
They allow comparisons between the achievements of different social groups based on ethnicity, gender, and social class.
What is the representativeness of official statistics on education?
Some statistics are highly representative, such as school census data collected three times a year.
Why do positivists favor official statistics?
Their reliability allows testing and re-testing of hypotheses to discover cause-effect relationships.
**For example, statistics on exam results showing social class differences in educational achievement may correlate with statistics on parental income. From this, positivists may be able to conclude that poverty causes under-achievement. **
What is the validity concern regarding educational statistics?
Interpretivists argue that they are socially constructed and may not reflect true situations.
For example, they see truancy statistics as the outcome of a series of definitions and decisions made by a variety of social actors, such as parents, teachers and pupils.
Schools may manipulate their attendance figures by re-defining poor attenders as being on study leave or additional work experience.
How might schools manipulate attendance figures?
By redefining poor attenders as being on study leave or additional work experience.
What issues do documents cover in education?
- Ethnic, class, and gender differences in achievement,
- the curriculum
- racist incidents in schools.
What are the practical issues with public documents on education?
They are often easily accessible due to government policies emphasizing parental choice.
For example, Gillborn in his study of racism and schooling, was able to access a wide range of school documents, including school policy statements, local authority guidelines on anti-racism and the minutes of staff meetings and working parties.
What ethical issues arise with personal documents?
Informed consent may not always be obtained, as seen in Valerie Hey’s collection of notes.
What is the representativeness of documents?
Some are legally required, making it more likely to form a representative picture, though not all incidents may be documented. e.g racist incidents
What is the validity of documents in educational research?
They can provide important insights - Hey found that the notes offered valuable insights into the nature of girls’ friendships. This is because they were spontaneous expressions of the girls’ feelings and attitudes. However documents are open to different interpretations.
For example, we cannot be sure that Hey’s interpretation of the meaning of the notes was the same as that of the girls. Also because the girls sometimes handed Hey the notes after the class, it is possible that they were written with her in mind and may not have been spontaneous.
