Strength and Limitation P.E.T - Official statistics

Question 1

Strengths - Practical issues- secondary

Answer 1

• Cheap and time consuming- The use of official statistics is much cheaper and less time consuming than other research methods. This is because the researcher does not have to spend money or time collecting their own information. This allows the analysis and interpretation of the data to be carried out relatively quickly.
  -Strength- Collected at regular intervals shows trends and patterns over time. Can be used for ‘before and after’ studies to identify correlation between variables and suggest possible cause and effect relationships.

Question 2

Limitation- Practical

Answer 2

• Unavailable information- Depending on the aims and hypothesis of the sociological researcher, the required information may not be obtained from official statistics , which renders them useless as a research method
• Researchers may not be able to find the data they are looking for as the government does not collect data for research purposes.
• State may change the definition it uses over time and different states may define the same term differently. This makes comparisons over time or between countries difficult

Question 3

Strength ethical

Answer 3

Ethically sound- Official statistics pose few ethical issues because they are secondary data that have been collected and compiled by official government agencies. The sociologists therefore does not have to worry about dealing with issues such as causing psychological harm, obtaining consent, confidentiality and anonymity as the information is already in the public domain.
-Enable us to check up on the performance of public bodies such as schools.

Question 4

limitation- ethical

Answer 4

• problem of interpretation- published sociological research findings may reveal socially sensitive information. This could be misinterpreted by the public, which could lead to the group being negatively stigmatised
• Social harm- The introduction to school league tables has lead to more teaching the test

Question 5

Strengths- theoretical

Answer 5

• Positivist prefer them- positivist find official statics useful because they produce quantitative data. These are easier to analyse and interpret than qualitative data because they enable the sociologist to come to conclusions from information such as patterns, trends and causal relationships.
• Reliability- Positivists argue that official statistics are a generally reliable source of information. For example, crime statics provide reliable quantitative data on criminal activity and trends. This is because criminal statics are based on court convictions and crime recorded by police officers, who all follow a uniform standardise set procedure, with the same categorising or coding used every time a crime is committed .
• Representativeness: Official statistics are collected by research method such as standardised questionnaires and interviews. These are generally conducted on very large samples of the population, which makes the information more representative, allowing generalisation to be made upon the population under investigation.

Question 6

Limitations- theoretical

Answer 6

• Validity is an issue- Interpretivists argue that official statics are not valid source of information and do not give a true picture of human behaviour. statics are the product of human processed which are prone to errors, manipulation and mistakes which make them less valid than positivists claim. For examples, crime statics do not reflect a true picture of the level and nature of crimes in the uk
• Unreliability- Official statics can be unreliable as a source of data. For examples it will depend on the court law and the secretion of the police officer as to whether individuals accused of committing crimes are cautioned, arrested, charged and convicted, all which can affect the criminal statics recorded.
• Lack depth- Interpretivists argue that statics lack insight into human behaviour. they do not explain the ‘why questions’ - why people act they way they do. For example crime sastical patterns show that the most likely offenders are often young, working class and male with a high proportion being black and poorly- educated. However, they fail to explain why this group commits such crimes in the first place.