Topic 6 - Official Statistics and MIC

Question 1

Official statistics

Answer 1

• Can be produced by the government of other official bodies
• Different types of sources used to creat OS: registration (births/deaths), official surveys (census), administrative records (hospitals/courts/schools)

Question 2

Practical issues

Answer 2

• Free source of huge amounts of data
• Reduces the problem of low response rates
• Allows comparisons
• Shows trends and patterns over time - can be used to identify correlations between variables and suggest possible cause and effect relationships
• Government creates stats for its own purposes: may not benefit sociologist in terms of topics they’re looking for

Question 3

Theoretical issues

Answer 3

• Favoured by positivists as they are objective facts
• Interpretivists see them as social constructs
• Marxists and feminists regard them as performing as an idealogical function

Question 4

Positivism and stats

Answer 4

• Major source of representative, quantitative data that allows sociologists to identify and measure behaviour patterns, test hypothesis and develop casual laws to explain patterns of behaviour that stats reveal

Question 5

Representativeness

Answer 5

• More representative sample than surveys conducted with limited budgetsavailable to the sociologists
• Large scale covering entire population (covered by compulsory registration)
• Stats from official surveys are likely to be less represenatative due to only being based on sample of relevent population
• Great care is taken with sampling procedures when conducting official stars = allows generalisations to be made

Question 6

Reliability

Answer 6

• Compiled by training staff who used standardised categories and collection techniques, following set procedures that can be easily replicated by others
• Registration data: compiling death rates for different social classes, use the occupation recorded on each persons death certificate to identify class
• Census coders may make errors or omit info when recording data or forms may be filled incoreectly = not completely reliable

Question 7

Interpretivism and statistics

Answer 7

• Reject positivist claim that official stats are real and objective social facts
• Stats are constructs that represent the labels officials attatch to people
• Should be treated as a topic in themseleves and how they are socially constructed

Question 8

Hard and soft statistics

Answer 8

Soft Statistics
- Give less valid pic of reality
- Often complied from administrative records created by state agencies
- They represent the records of decisions made by those agencies rather than a pic of the world

Hard Statistics
- Provide a more valid pic
- Include stats on births, deaths, marriages and divorces
- Little dispute as how to define the categories used to collect the data
- They are often created by registration data

Question 9

Marxism and statistics

Answer 9

• Reject positivist claim that official stats are real and objective social facts
• However, dont see them as merely the outcomr of the labels applied by the officials
• Regard official stats as serving the interests of capitalism
• The stats that state creates are part of Althussers idealogical state apparatus - a set of institutions that produce ruling class ideology

Question 10

Idealogical functions

Answer 10

• Politically sensitive data that would reveal the unequal ], exploitative nature of capitalism may be publicised
• Definitions used in creating the official stats also conceals the true reality of capitalism
• Conceals the existence of a ruling class whose position is based on ownership of cast wealth, not on occupation

Question 11

Feminism and statistics

Answer 11

• Criticise official stats
• Oakley and Graham: reject the use of quantitative survey methods because they regard them as a ‘masculine’ or patriarchal model of research
• Criticise stats they produce
• Official stats are made by the state which feminists regard as maintaining patricarchal oppression therefore they are a form of patriarchal ideology
• Official stats underestimate womens economic contribution and reflect patriarchal nature of the state, however, some stats can show clear evidence of gender inequality
• Official stats continue to give distorted pictures of gender and social class - feminists argue the stats should allocate women and men to a social class as an individual, not as households.

Question 12

Methods in Context

Answer 12

• Official stats hvae been used to investigate educational achievement, school performance and school attendance

Question 13

Practical issues

Answer 13

• Easy to analyse - positivists favour it as they can be easily analysed for changes over time
• Cheaper and quicker - easy to obtain as they’ve already been collected and it’s accessible to everyone

Question 14

Ethical issues

Answer 14

• Problem of interpretation - info on ethnic group or class on educational matters such as exam performance or truancy could be misinterpreted by the public: lead to stigmatisation

Question 15

Theoretical issues

Answer 15

• Reliable - government follows standardised procedures so can be easily replicated every year and allow comparisons
• Representativeness - large funds make it possible to collect info on every pupil in the country, schools must complete census 3x a year
• Validity - interpretivists are critical of educational stats because they’re created by people and so could be manipulated to create a positive light