R M Documents And Statistics Flashcards
Who prefers official statistics?
Positivists
What are official statistics?
Quantitative data gathered by government or other official bodies and by organisations such as charities-collected on births death marriages divorces exam results crime suicide unemployment health etc
Also measure trends eg/who is underachieving and policies to fix this
Census is a major source of OS and government use statistics for policy making eg/statistics on birth used to plan number of school places required
2 ways of collecting it: 1 - Registration -eg/ parents required by law to register births 2 - Official surveys -eg/census
Form of secondary data
What are 3 practical advantages and 3 practical disadvantages of official statistics?
+ free source of huge amounts of data - only state can afford to conduct large scale social surveys such as census and only they have power to compel citizens to provide info
+ allow comparisons between groups
+ collected at regular intervals so show patterns and trends overtime-sociologists can use them for “before and after” studies to show cause and effect
- government collects statistics for its own use, not for benefit of sociologists so may be no statistics available on particular topics
- definitions state uses in collecting data may be different to sociologists eg/poverty
- definitions change over time making comparisons difficult
What are 2 representative advantages and 1 disadvantage of official statistics?
+ OS often cover large numbers
+ Care taken with sampling procedures so often provide a more representative sample than sociological research would therefore making better basis for generalisations and testing hypotheses
- some are more representative than others - those that are compulsory like births are highly representative
What are the reliability advantages of official statistics?
Generally a reliable source of data
Compiled in a standardised way by trained staff following set procedures however trained personnel can still make errors when recording data
What are the validity advantages and disadvantges of HARD and SOFT statistics?
+ HARD statistics succeed in measuring what intended to-valid
eg/ data collected from census give very valid picture
- SOFT statistics do not
eg/school racism (no evidence not every case is reported) or poverty statistics (government may measure it differently)
Whether they are views as useful or not heavily depends on the theoretical perspective adopted by the sociologist, how would interpretivist and positivist view official statistics? What is Marxists view of OS?
INTERPRETIVISTS
- lacking validity (don’t represent real things or social factors but are socially constructed)
- Atkinsons view suicide statistics do not represent real rates of suicide but merely number of deaths coroners labelled as suicides - OS tell us more about role of coroners rather than actual cases
POSITIVISTS
+ valuable source of data - OS are social facts: true and objective
+ often used to test their hypotheses
MARXISTS
- do not regard OS as merely outcome of labels applied by officials but as serving interests of capitalism
- believe state isn’t neutral in capitalist society
- argue official police statistics systematically underestimate number of people taking part in demonstrations against government policies-gives public the impression there is less opposition to capitalism
What is a document?
Any written texts (eg/personal diaries, government reports, newspapers, letters, medical records)
“Texts” include paintings photographs drawings, sounds, images and media output
3 TYPES 1 PUBLIC (produced by organisations like government departments-including official reports of public enquiries-schools, businesses and charities -some output available for sociological use eg/Ofsted) 2 PERSONAL (insight into personal experiences-1st person accounts of social events-eg/feelings and attitudes-include letters, photoalbums) 3 HISTORICAL (personal/public-usually only source of info to study past-eg/ Aries - used paintings of children and child rearing manuals in his study of childhood)
What is the 4 criteria for evaluating documents given by Scott?
1 - AUTHENTICITY
Is it what it claims to be?
Are there any missing pages is it free from error?
Who produced it?
2 - CREDIBILITY
Is it believable?
Is it accurate? - may not be checked before publication online
3 - REPRESENTATIVENESS
Is evidence typical? - safe to generalise from?
Not all documents survive and are available for researchers to use
30 year rule prevents access to some official documents for 30 years and if classified as official secrets may not be available at all
Certain groups who don’t keep diaries or write letters unrepresented
4 - MEANING
Researcher needs special skills to interpret and understand meaning of a document and what it meant to the writer and intended audience
Different sociologists may interpret same document differently
What are the advantages of documents?
+ personal documents allow sociologist to get up close to social actors reality providing rich detailed source of qualitative data - INTERPRETIVISTS LIKE
+ sometimes only source of information eg/studying in the past
+ by providing another source of data they offer an extra check on results obtained by primary methods
+ cheap source of data
- may be seen as subjective
- time consuming
- unethical-may not have been made for research purpose so need informed consent
What is content analysis? What are 3 advantages and 1 disadvantage?
(Documents)
A method (strategy) for dealing systematically with contents of documents-commonly used in analysing media documents such as news or advertisements - -Generates quantitative and qualitative data
+ cheap
+ easy to find sources of material
+ POSITIVISTS see it as useful source of objective, quantitative, scientific data
- INTERPRETIVISTS argue counting number of times something appears in a document tells us nothing about its meanings
What is triangulation?
Process involving two or more sources of methods to obtain a more rounded picture by studying same thing from a plurality of viewpoints-enables one method to overcome the weaknesses of another (complement)
Combining them provides reliable representative quantitative data covering large numbers of cases (macro) favoured by positivists and valid qualitative data looking at a smaller number in depth (micro) as preferred by interpretivists
Eg/begin with a limited number or in depth unstructured interview to gain insights which can be used to develop questions for a questionnaire given to a larger sample
