RQ - official statistics

Question 1

why are official statistics argued to be reliable

Answer 1

• they are collected by the government agency for the office for national statistics
• they are collected in the “national interest” and so avoid the biases of private research, which would only collect data which would be of interest to the particular researcher, or data which is profitable.
• the office for national statistics can be scrutinised and held accountable for the data it collects

Question 2

why are offifical statistics argued to be unreliable

Answer 2

• they may lack validity because they are collected by the state and massaged to make things look better than they actually are.