Quant- Official Statistics Flashcards
What are official statistics?
A wide range of data collected by government departments and agencies
What are statistics?
A secondary quantitative method particularly valued by positivists
What are non-official statistics?
Data collected by agencies other than government departments
e.g. pressure groups, charities, trade unions
What are hard statistics?
More factual
Simply a collection of legally required data e.g. births, deaths
What are soft statistics?
More open to interpretation and manipulation
e.g. crime, unemployment
5 Examples of official statistics
1- Suicide, Durkheim
2- Health, MH
3- Crime, domestic violence
4- The census, 10yrs
5- Education, attendance or exam results
What are some issues with the 5 examples
X census is outdated
X domestic violence, fem say statistics from charities may be more true
X not all crimes are reported ‘dark figure of crime’
X Hall n Gilroy, black groups overrepresented in crime
Why do critical race theorists claim crime statistics are socially constructed?
- police target certain groups, stats will look higher for that particular group
- police beh- focus on particular groups in crim, ethnic minorities
- social constructions because they are created by how the people measure the data
What are some advantages of using official statistics?
- large scale data collection, more representative
- readily available, free ,accurate
- demonstrate trends over time (collect annually)
- cover a wide range of social areas, patterns between groups- SC, age , gender, ethnicity
- objective and reflect social facts of society
X How can official statistics be manipulated?
Conservative government changed employment statistics 30X by measuring it differently, lacks validity
- avoid criticism of high unemployment rates
X Why do interpretivists believe official statistics are not valid or objective?
X don’t trust them , not verstehen, social construct
- all data requires classification and interpretation
- product of the categorisation procedures used to produce them
ATKINSON
- suicide statistics are a product of the coroners assumption about the sort of people who commit suicide
- use ‘common sense’ to come to a conclusion
X Why doe radical theories such as Marxism, feminism, critical race theory criticise statistics?
X government statistics are systematically distorted by the powerful
X hide negative effects of capitalism
X domestic violence not taken seriously
X big corporation target/exaggerate crimes of minority groups
Evaluation of official statistics
Practical
Easily available for sociologists
No direct involvement with Ps needed by R
Evaluation of official statistics
Ethical
No direct involvement with Ps
X using statistics when they have been knowingly manipulated and taking it as a fact is unethical
Evaluation of official statistics
Reliability
Easy to identify patterns and trends
Evaluation of official statistics
Validity
X not as valid as most other methods, however because they are produced by the government, people may be less likely to lie
Evaluation of official statistics
Representativeness
Very representative, very large samples, used typically beyond most researchers ability
Evaluation of official statistics
Theoretical issues
X Marxists, radical feminists, interpretivists
> positivists
Durkheim
Study of suicide
Social situations influencing suicide
- multivariate analysis
Egoistic- selfishness
Altruistic- insufficient motivation
Anomic- rapid social change
Fatalistic- lose the will to live
Atkinsons’s criticisms of Durkheim’s study
X reflect the coroners assumptions rather than any underlying ‘reality’
X should look for suicide notes, mode of death, life history, MH
X these don’t overlook individual meaning and only consider social influences
