Advantages And Disadvantages Of Official Statistics In Sociological Research Essay

functionary statistics ar quantitative info pee-peed by local and national presidential term bodies, and squirt cover a wide celestial orbit of demeanour including births, deaths, marriages and divorce, income, crime, and work and leisure. functionary statistics basin be produced as a by-product of the normal workings of a government department, but they bottom of the inning as well as resolution from research designed specifically to produce them. Two principal(prenominal) reference points of appointed statistics ar the government and its departments, and surveys. For typesetters case, government departments such(prenominal) as the star sign shoes and Education and Skills solicit process and then publish randomness from organisations such as local revenue enhancement offices, affable services and hospitals.An example of a source of surveys that produce positive statistics is The Office for National Statistics, which is a government spot and is responsibl e for compiling and analysing statistics. Every ex years this agency carries expose the census of the Population, which covers every home base in the UK. By law each tribal chief of ho put onhold moldiness complete a questionnaire that includes family composition, hold occupation, transport and leisure. Official statistics ar use by sociologists be face of their legion(predicate) advantages. A main plus is that positive statistics atomic number 18 lots compiled from entropy which has been ga at that placed from a deep sample coat. The majority of sociologists could probably not afford to carry out such vast research.The size of the sample in addition tends to increase the representivity of the statistics. They also tend to be well organised and planned when researched, so the standards of sociological research contribute be met. Official statistics be usually promptly available and relatively inexpensive, so sociologists jakes spend more time and capital analysing entropy than collecting it. Statistics nooky also mosttimes be the only source available for a specific topic, such as unemployment figures. some other advantage is that statistics depart sociologists to make comparisons over time, as they atomic number 18 usually produced regularly, for example the Population Census, which is carried out every ten years. This is similar to longitudinal studies, however the sample size of positive statistical data is usually lots considerabler.Looking at the above advantages, it would be easy to draw a coda that decreed statistics atomic number 18 in detail very useful as a source of data, however there are also important disadvantages to official statistics. Official statistics are not incessantly produced in a useful form, making them harder for a sociologist to analyse and draw any trends and patterns from.Another disadvantage is that statistics do not always measure what they intend to measure. For example the Home Office Crime R ates Statistics do not take into account the feature that not all crime is reported. This stick out decrease the representivity of the data. Another factor which must be considered when interpreting official statistics is that because official statistics are usually produced by the government, they whitethorn be politically biased, for example to face that their policies are having the predicted effect. A well-known example of this is that the method of collecting unemployment statistics has changed many times, which gives the fashion that the unemployment rate it falling. From these disadvantages it would appear that although statistics can be very enlightening and useful, there are several pitfalls, which cannot always be avoided.Positivists go out official statistics as a potentially valuable source of quantitative data however they do recognise that statistics bring forth several faults. They mostly agree that statistics can forget measures of behaviour that can be util ise to investigate possible cause and effect relationships. However Interpretivists, in detail ethnomethodologists and phenomethodologists, reject the use of official statistics for mensuration or determining certain behaviour of which they refer to. Cicourel and Atkinson believe that statistics are the products of meanings, which are assumptions of those who construct them. However, although they think that official statistics are not complaisant facts, but complaisant constructs, this does not mean they are not of sociological interest. Phenomenologists believe that they can be studied in order to queer how they are produced. Cicourel said that this is the only use of official statistics, partly because all statistics inquire classifying things, when such decisions are really subjective.When assessing this view, it ensurems it cannot be applied to all types of official statistics, particularly those concerning data on age and gender. Although there may well be spacious m eans for interpretation when considering whether, for example, a abrupt death is suicide, there is less room for interpretation when deciding whether someone is manful or female. Conflict theories such as marxist and feminist theory, argue that official statistics are neither hard facts or subjective meanings. Instead they believe they harp of information which is systematically distorted by the powerful institutions in society. Although the statistics are not complete distortions, they are manipulated through the definitions and procedures used to collect the data, so that they tend to spare the interests of the rich and powerful.One example of this is the say by Anne and Robin Oakley that official statistics are sexist. They occupy pointed out that in eighty-percent of cases a man is defined as the head of the household, and that women engaged in housework or unpaid domestic labour are defined as economically inactive, disdain the contribution which housework makes to the e conomy.These theories suggest that official statistics arent particularly useful in presenting a valid picture of an sports stadium of society. Compared to other methods of collecting data, official statistics can seem both superior and inferior. As a secondary source of data official statistics come ready coded and presented, which can be hard to do with some data, particularly qualitative. However this reason data may not be categorised in the exact way a sociologist might prefer it, so this is a definite disadvantage. Like questionnaires and brotherly surveys, official statistics produce quantitative data, can principally cover a fairly large sample size, and are pre-coded.Again, like questionnaires and social surveys, the data can be manipulated to assist or reject a theory for example by the way the data is collected and categorised. Official statistics are generally not an in-depth profile of the sample beingness researched, unlike methods such as histrion observation a nd longitudinal studies. However because these studies are more in-depth, they also tend to have a smaller sample size than statistical data. To conclude, it seems that although there are many benefits to using official statistics as a source of data, they must be enured with caution, bearing in mind the social processes involved in their collection. Although some see statistics as social constructions rather than social facts, official statistics do often provide a unique opportunity for sociologists to acquire data the whole population. This would otherwise be far too expensive and time-consuming for a sociologist to collect themselves.