Official Statistics and Documents

Question 1

What are official statistics?

Answer 1

quantitative data created by the gov or other official bodies

Question 2

give an example of official statistics

Answer 2

the ten yearly census of the entire UK population

Question 3

give an example of how the government use statistics for policy making

Answer 3

statistics on the age structure of the population help the government to plan pension provision

Question 4

what are the 3 types of source for the information used to create official statistics

Answer 4

• registration - e.g. laws requires births to be registered
• official surveys
• administrative records of state agencies like hospitals, courts and schools

Question 5

non-state organisations create non-official statistics give an example

Answer 5

churches produce membership and attendance statistics

Question 6

what are the practical advantages of official statistics?

Answer 6

• free source of huge amounts of quantitative data, only the state has the resources to create surveys costing millions of pounds
• results usually published so are easily accessible
• only the state has the power to compel individuals to supply certain data e.g. heads of households must complete the census the refusal rate was only 5% for the last one
• allow comparisons between groups - census covers whole population and uses the same questions so easy to compare
• collected regularly to show patterns

Question 7

what are the practical disadvantages of official statistics?

Answer 7

• gov creates them for their own purposes which may be different from sociologists e.g. the french state don’t collect data on race or religion of citizens
• mismatches between statistics, different statistics may cover slightly different areas making comparisons difficult
• the state may change definitions over time and may define things differently so comparisons between times and countries difficult

Question 8

why do positivists like official statistics?

Answer 8

• objective facts about society so casual laws can be developed to explain the patterns of behaviour that statistics reveal
• large scale so representative
• reliable due to standardised categories and set procedures that can be easily replicated

Question 9

what do interpretivists like Cicourel say about official statistics?

Answer 9

they reject that they are real, objective social facts, but merely social constructs representing the labels that officials attach to people. rather than taking them at face value we should research how they are socially constructed.

Question 10

give an example of interpretivist deconstrunction of official statistics

Answer 10

mental illness statistics show those who have had many social interactions like pressure from family to see a doctor and consultations and psychiatrists so they are just recordings of decisions made by doctors to label people as mentally ill not the actual level of mental illness in society so more interested in studying social processes like labeling by which the statistics are constructed.

Question 11

interpretivists don’t believe official statistics are equally invalid what are soft statistics and hard statistics?

Answer 11

soft statistics - less valid picture compiled from administrative records created by state agencies they represent decisions made by agencies and neglect the unknown figure
hard statistics - much more valid - statistics on births, deaths marriages etc, only a small number os these go unrecorded, we can trust these statistics as there is little dispute as how to define the categories

Question 12

marxists believe official statistics serve capitalism as they are part of Althusser’s ideological state apparatus its function is to conceal or distort reality and maintain capitalist power, how do they do this?

Answer 12

• conceal politically sensitive data that would reveal the exploitive nature of capitalism e.g. since 1980s census doesn’t contain class differences in death rates
• definitions to conceal reality e.g. constantly changing the definition of unemployment

Question 13

how can the idea all statistics benefit capitalism be disproved?

Answer 13

some statistics on differences in health show class inequality

Question 14

how do Oakley and Graham see official statistics?

Answer 14

a form of patriarchal ideology legitimating/concealing gender equality, e.g. few statistics on women’s unpaid domestic labour and fulltime housewives are defined as economically inactive underestimating women’s contribution

Question 15

how may we argue against Oakley and Graham’s point that statistics legitimate patriarchy?

Answer 15

families used to be defined by occupation of the male head but changed in 2001 to the person who owns or rents the home or earns the most

Question 16

what are documents?

Answer 16

can be written texts like diaries, letters or other texts like drawings and tv

Question 17

what are public documents?

Answer 17

produced by organisations like government departments or schools that are published

Question 18

what are personal documents?

Answer 18

items such as letter or diaries, first person accounts of social events and personal experiences

Question 19

what are historical documents?

Answer 19

personal or public documents created in the past

Question 20

what are the practical issues of documents?

Answer 20

• may be only way to study the past
• free, cheap source with large amounts of data
• not always possible to access them
• individuals and organisations create them for their own purposes so may not answer sociologists questions

Question 21

what do interpretivists think about documents?

Answer 21

• they give a valid picture of actors meanings - rich qualitative data gives insight into their world view
• not written with the sociologist in mind so more likely to be authentic statements of actors views
• contents may not be credibe e.g. politicians may right autobiographies for publication producing a self serving account
• danger of misinterpretation
• words may have changed meaning since written or have to convert into to different language

Question 22

what do positivists think about documents?

Answer 22

• unreliable because not standardised so hard to compile and compare even if record same events

Question 23

who argues that some groups may not be represented in documents and which groups?

Answer 23

Scott

e.g. the illiterate and those without the time to keep diaries

Question 24

explain problems of availability with documents

Answer 24

not all survive or are available and the 30-year-rule prevents access to many official documents

Question 25

what is formal content analysis? and how does Gill describe how it works?

Answer 25

allows quantitative data to be produced - if we want to measure how many female characters in the media are presented as being in paid work in magazine stories we select a representative sample of women's magazine stories and decide on categories e.g. housewife, employee etc then study stories a place characters into categories, we can then quantify how women are categorised in the stories by counting up a number of times a category appears

Question 26

what do positivists think about content analysis?

Answer 26

- they like it as it produces objective, representative, quantitative data from which generalisations can be made - reliable - can identify trends over time

Question 27

give an example of feminsts using content analysis?

Answer 27

Best analysed gender roles in children's reading schemes and found women were presented in a range of different stereotypical roles

Question 28

why don't interpretivists like content analysis?

Answer 28

- lack validity - counting up how many time something appears tells us nothing of its meaning - not objective since drawing up categories and deciding where to place a case involves subjective value judgements of the sociologist

Question 29

what is Thematic analysis?

Answer 29

qualitative analysis of the content of media texts. usually involves selecting a small number of cases for in depth analysis, aim is to reveal underlying meanings that have been encoded in documents as a way of uncovering author's ideological bias.

Question 30

give an example of the use of thematic analysis

Answer 30

Soothill and Walby on the way newspapers reported rape cases

Question 31

thematic analysis can be criticised for...

Answer 31

- not being representative or generalisable to a wide range of documents - the tendency there is to select evidence that supports sociologists hypothesis

Question 32

what are the practical issues of content/thematic analysis?

Answer 32

- cheap and easy to find sources | - analysing data can be very time consuming

Question 33

what are the ethical issues of secondary data?

Answer 33

- few problems of confidentiality and privacy, - use of an organisations unpublished statistics may be unethical e.g. could affect a schools ability to attract pupils so in such cases consent and anonymity of organisation is important - before using any document containing information about a living individual the sociologist should obtai informed consent and ensure data doesn't allow them to be identified

Question 34

how can government statistics help study crime?

Answer 34

annual publications for england and wales of crime, judicial and prison statistics e.g. British Crime survey

Question 35

there can be differences between official and sociological views of crime, what does Tombs point out?

Answer 35

that employer breaches of safety law are largely missed off official categories of violent crime

Question 36

counting offences can be problematic give an example of this

Answer 36

if a man assaults his wife multiple times how many crimes have been committed?

Question 37

British crime survey estimates police only record 60% of crimes reported to them why do the not report all?

Answer 37

- too trivial | - didn't believe victim

Question 38

once a crime is recorded it is categorised as cleared up why might this not be seen as cleared up for some people?

Answer 38

it includes crimes where the offender is below the age of criminal responsibility or the victim is unable to give evidence

Question 39

explain the practical issues of documents in relation to crime

Answer 39

- criminal justice system creates huge quantity of official documents relating to crime - limited info on crimes of the powerful - some confidential - some crimes like suicide leave documentary evidence - documentary trail from fraud however extremely complex

Question 40

how did Vankatesh use documents?

Answer 40

was given access to gang accounts

Question 41

explain how Robb used documents to examine white collar crime

Answer 41

used reports of parliamentary committees, company records etc and found a huge range of accessible, relevant official documents

Question 42

explain the ethical issues concerning documents in relation to crime

Answer 42

- may be subject to dispute as to whom an individuals criminal record belongs to - documentary evidence not standardised so not reliable - official documents may tilt study towards the perspective of law enforcement agencies

Question 43

how did Braithwaite study corporate crime with triangulation?

Answer 43

he used documents including reports from government investigations and conducted interviews with some of those involved in particular events