Ofiicial statiscs Flashcards
(15 cards)
What are Official statistics?
Quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies.
What are 2 Practical advantages of OS?
1) Cheap and less time consuming as they are already available so can show patterns
2) Can prompt research (triangulation)
What are 2 disadvantage of OS?
1) Definitions that the government use in collecting data may be different from what sociologists might use ( meaning comparisons are difficult.
2) Political bias ( only data available that is similar to policies)
What is a Ethical advantage of OS?
They are public, and information is kept anonymous.
What is a Ethical disadvantage of OS?
The collection of statistics might really be about surveillance and control – e.g the collection of data on pupils allows ‘problem pupils’ to be identified and managed by social services from a young age.
What is a Reliable advantage of OS?
Same categories and mode of collection, so replicated easily.
What is a Reliable disadvantage of OS?
Not reliable, there could be errors made by government analysts.
What is a Validity advantage of OS?
Positivists would say it is valid as it is a true representation.
What are 2 Validity disadvantages of OS?
1) Don’t tell us the reasons why numbers exist
2) Dark figure - soft figures do not measure exactly what we seek to measure (unreported or undiscovered crime)
What is a Representative advantage of OS?
It is usually based on a large sample, so they are often highly representative.
What is a Represenative Disadvantage of OS?
Hard statistics more representative than soft
Also what is another 2 validity disadvantage of OS?
1) Male bias, feminists argue that OS are biased against women e.g. definitions of work used in the census exclude paid work.
2) Political bias ( definitions changing like unemployment to present the government in a more positive light)
What group favours OS?
Positivists as it allows them to spot trends, find correlations and make generalizations.
Why don’t interpretivists like OS?
They don’t reveal any meaning behind them.
What are Hard and soft statistics?
Hard statistics include birth, death. These are registered when they occur by law, so these statistics are entirely objective.
Soft - easily manipulated e.g. crime statistics.
