Statistics Flashcards
Official statistics definition…
> “Official Statistics are numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy.” – Thompson 2015
Practical factors regarding official statistics…
> Available - This is a distinct advantage over ‘privately collected data’ which is collected by companies – Facebook and Amazon, for example, have a lot of data on individuals, but they are not going to share it for free.
> Official Statistics are more likely to be shared with the public because they are paid for by taxes.
> They are generally easy to access and to navigate – by using the Office of National Statics (ONS) web site for example.
> Although they maybe cheap for us the are far from cheap to collect. The ONS employs 4000 people merely to collate this data. On top of this, think of the time it takes other government officials to collect data. The Census in 2011 cost hundreds of million pounds to produce.
> Official Statistics are collected for administrative purposes rather than for research purposes. Thus the data which exists and the categories and indicators used might not fit a researcher’s specific research purposes.
Ethical factors regarding official statistics…
> Official Statistics 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.
> Official Statistics enable us to check up on the performance of public bodies such as the police and schools, making sure tax payers’ money is spent efficiently.
> The collection of some statistics can have harmful effects.
> The introduction of school league tables and the requirement that schools publish there results has led to more teaching the test, a decline in creativity in education, and education generally being much more stressful for both pupils and teachers.
> The collection of statistics might really be about surveillance and control – The collection of data on school performance for example enables control of teachers while the collection of data on pupils allows ‘problem pupils’ to be identified and managed by social services from a young age.
Theoretical factors regarding official statistics…
> Validity - Crime statistics are a good example of this – certain crimes are notorious for being under-reported to the police – such as Rape and Domestic Violence for example. Or because the government often changes how things are recorded for example unemployment.
> Structural Sociologists - official statistics serve the interests of elite groups – Data is only collected on things which do not harm those in power. Marxists argue that Corporate Crime and Financial Crimes of elites are not focused on by the government, while Feminists argue that domestic violence is not taken seriously by the state.
Positivists…
As using official statistic gives a detached and generalisable understanding of the world positivist believe this is the most useful methodology. As you know positivist believe we should study the world through social facts. These can only be determined through objectively observing the social world as we do the natural world. Such as Durkheim’s study of suicide.
