Official Statistics - done Flashcards
what are official statistics
quantitative data gathered by the gov or other official bodeis - stats on things like birth or marriage, or even school-related stuff - use in policy making
gathered through registration and official surveys
practical issues
advantages - free source of huge amounts of data, comparisson between groups, can show trends and patterns over time
disadvantages - gov collects stats for own purpose rather than sociologists so data may be irrelevant to topic in study, defenitions may be different, since definitions change over time comparison may be difficult
represenativeness
since they are more reliable they are better to use for generalization and hypothesis -
birth, marriage, and death rates are all very reliable - gathered by compulsory registration
British crime survey is less reliable as they are based only on relevant population
reliability
reliable source as the people who gather are professionally trained and follow procedures so that the right things go into the right places.
however, census coders makers make errors or fill something in incorrectly
validity
- do they actually measure what they are supposed to
- hard statistics such as death and birth rates are very reliable soft statistics such as police crime statistics don’t show all crime
- according to the BCS only 38% of crime was reported to the police according to a victim survey
different perspectives of official statistics
positivism
interpritivism
positivism
positivists such as Durkheim use OS to test their hypothesis - durkheim used them to prove that protestants had a higher suicide rate than Catholics
interpretivism
Atkinson - claims that OS lacks validity - they merely present the labels some people give to the behavior of others - they are socially constructed - suicide rates merely show the rates in which coroners say that suicides have happened
marxism
