Sociology : theory and methods - official statistics
Official statistics
- quantitative data collected by government bodies e.g crime, birth rate, death, unemplyment, marriage, divorce.
- collected by broad range of departments published by ons and gov.uk websites....
Advanatages of official statistics - practical
1)cheap, readily available and can cover wide range of topics...
2)collected at regular intervals = trends/patterns over time....
2/3)comparisons between groups - compare statistics on educational achievement, life expectancy
More advantages of official statistics
1)representative - official statistics cover large groups of people...
2)highly reliable - standardised categories and collection techniques = easy to replicate
Disadvantages of official statistics - practical
1)time - level of statistical data can take time to interpret and analyse....
2)government statistics are collected for its own purpose not the sociologist....
Disadvantages of official statistics - theortical
1)lack of validity - particularly amongst soft statistics...
1/2)atkinson - regards off stats as lacking validity - argues stats dont represent real things that exist in the world...
3) marxists - dont regard off stats as mereley the outcome of labels applied by officials, instead see them as serving capitalism and suiting states' needs...