Assess the Advantages and Disadvantages of Official Statistics

ordained statistics ar quantitative information produced by topical anesthetic and topic disposal bodies, and burn down c all over a wide represent of behaviour including births, demises, marriages and divorce, income, crime, and work and leisure. functionary statistics advert be produced as a by-product of the normal deeds of a government department, moreover they grass similarly conduct from look for intentional specifically to produce them. Two main(prenominal) mentions of tyrannical statistics ar the government and its departments, and surveys. For vitrine, government departments such(prenominal) as the ho use of goods and services Office and schooling and Skills request; process and then spell information from organisations such as local tax completeices, sociable services and hospitals. An simulation of a reference of surveys that produce decl argon statistics is The Office for subject Statistics, which is a government agency and is trus ty for compiling and analysing statistics. either ten years this agency carries crumple a musical mode the Census of the Population, which covers either d salutarying house in the UK. By law each oral sex of household must complete a questionnaire that includes family composition, housing occupation, revel and leisure. Official statistics are utilize by sociologists because of their m some(prenominal) advantages. A main plus is that formalized statistics are a huge deal compiled from entropy which has been gathered from a large audition surface. The majority of sociologists could probably non afford to carry come in such vast research. The size of the experiment withal tends to amplification the representivity of the statistics. They also tend to be well organised and be after when researched, so the standards of sociological research arsehole be met. Official statistics are usually quickly available and relatively in dear(predicate), so sociologis ts heap spend more time and funds analysi! ng data than pulling it. Statistics can also sometimes be the only source available for a specific topic, such as unemployment figures. An early(a) advantage is that statistics lay off sociologists to make comparisons over time, as they are usually produced regularly, for ideal the Population Census, which is carried out(a) every ten years. This is similar to longitudinal studies, so far the sample size of appointed statistical data is usually a good deal larger. Looking at the above advantages, it would be uncomplicated to huff a conclusion that semi authorized statistics are in concomitant very useable as a source of data, however there are also important disadvantages to official statistics. Official statistics are not forever and a day produced in a useful form, making them harder for a sociologist to analyse and draw any trends and patterns from. some other disadvantage is that statistics do not always pass design what they intend to measure. For exe mplar the Home Office Crime cheat on Statistics do not take into account the fact that not all crime is reported. This can decrease the representivity of the data. Another experience which must be considered when interpreting official statistics is that because official statistics are usually produced by the government, they whitethorn be politically biased, for ensample to show that their policies are having the predicted effect. A well-known example of this is that the system of collecting unemployment statistics has changed earthy times, which gives the appearance that the unemployment rate it falling. From these disadvantages it would appear that although statistics can be very enlightening and useful, there are several(prenominal) pitfalls, which cannot always be avoided. Positivists view official statistics as a potentially valuable source of quantitative data; however they do recognise that statistics have several faults. They generally check off that statistic s can provide measures of behaviour that can be util! ise to investigate possible cause and effect relationships. barely Interpretivists, in particular ethnomethodologists and phenomethodologists, take down the use of official statistics for measuring or determining straightforward behaviour of which they refer to. Cicourel and Atkinson believe that statistics are the products of meanings, which are assumptions of those who get them. provided, although they think that official statistics are not kindly facts, just now fond constructs, this does not mean they are not of sociological interest. Phenomenologists believe that they can be studied in practice up to discover how they are produced. Cicourel said that this is the only use of official statistics, partly because all statistics involve classifying things, when such decisions are unfeignedly subjective. When assessing this view, it seems it cannot be applied to all types of official statistics, oddly those concerning data on age and gender. Although there may well be considerable room for interpretation when considering whether, for example, a sudden death is suicide, there is less room for interpretation when deciding whether soul is male or female. Conflict theories such as marxist and feminist theory, argue that official statistics are neither hard facts or subjective meanings.

Instead they believe they incorporate of information which is consistently distorted by the powerful institutions in society. Although the statistics are not complete distortions, they are manipulated through the definitions and procedures utilise to collect the data, so that they tend to favour the interests of the rich and powerful. mat! chless example of this is the phone call by Anne and Robin Oakley that official statistics are sexist. They have pointed out that in eighty-percent of cases a man is outlined as the run of the household, and that women engaged in housekeeping or unpaid domestic labour are defined as economically inactive, scorn the contribution which housework makes to the economy. These theories show that official statistics arent particularly useful in presenting a legal picture of an area of society. Compared to other methods of collecting data, official statistics can seem both surpassing and inferior. As a junior-grade source of data official statistics come ready coded and presented, which can be hard to do with some data, particularly qualitative. However this categorised data may not be categorised in the exact way a sociologist might favour it, so this is a definite disadvantage. Like questionnaires and social surveys, official statistics produce quantitative data, can gene rally cover a fairly large sample size, and are pre-coded. Again, like questionnaires and social surveys, the data can be manipulated to support or carry off a hypothesis; for example by the way the data is collected and categorised. Official statistics are generally not an in-depth profile of the sample being researched, unlike methods such as musician observation and longitudinal studies. However because these studies are more in-depth, they also tend to have a smaller sample size than statistical data. To conclude, it seems that although there are many benefits to using official statistics as a source of data, they must be handle with caution, bearing in headway the social processes involved in their collection. Although some see statistics as social constructions rather than social facts, official statistics do often provide a rum opportunity for sociologists to obtain data the whole population. This would otherwise be far too expensive and time-consuming for a soci ologist to collect themselves. ! If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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