Karteikarten
Official Statistics
Karten in diesem Stapel (9)
- 1What are the types of statistics?Official statistics - quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies e.g. births, deaths, education, crime and health statistics
Non-official statistics - published by non-government organisations (NGOs) e.g. trade unions and churches - 2What are the two ways of collecting official statistics?1. Registration e.g. parents have to register births by law
2. Official surveys e.g. the Census and the General Household survey - 33 theoretical advantages of official statistics (Positivists) Data, predictions, comparisons1. Official statistics are based on masses of quantitative data. This allows sociologists to test hypotheses and establish cause and effect relationships (e.g. material deprivation and school performance)
2. Detail analysis of statistics makes it possible to make predictions of future events (e.g. Durkheim was able to make predictions that too much social control may lead to suicide)
3. It is possible to make comparisons between variables and map out trends over periods of time (e.g. comparing crime rates between social class, gender and ethnicity) - 42 other theoretical advantages of official statistics (Positivists) Reliable, size1. They are seen to reliable (especially birth and death statistics) because of their standardized categories and collection techniques i.e. they are complied and in a way standardised categories and collection techniques i.e. they are complied and in a standardised way by trained staff, following set procedures. E.g. government statistics are collected on death rates for different social classes, where social class is standardised using occupation. Meaning they can be easily replicated
2. Based on large sets of data and therefore provide representative and generalisable information e.g. government statistics gathered by compulsory registration such as births - 5Practical advantages of official statistics1. The collection is not influenced by the researcher, reducing bias
2. Statistics are useful to help shape social policy decision making e.g. statistics on births allow governments to plan the number of school place for the future
3. Statistics are readily available and cheap and quick to use e.g. Durkheim was able to access the suicide statistics of many European countries with ease and without much cost - 6Ethical advantage of official statisticsAs official statistics are in the public domain they require no consent to be used and they preserve anonymity as no individuals are identified personally.
- 72 theoretical disadvantages of official statistics (interpretivists) Social constructions, bias1. Official statistics are seen as social construction. This means that they are the product of a complex process of decision making by various people and not necessarily the truth e.g. police statistics do not record all crimes. Therefore validity has to be questioned. They use qualitative methods such as observation and interviews to discover how statistics are socially constructed
2. Statistics can be easily be biased at the time they were recorded, lowering validity e.g. census coders may omit information when recording data from census forms. - 82 other theoretical disadvantages of official statistics (interpretivists) representative, lacks ??1. Some statistics can be less representative than others. Statistics produced in the British Crime Survey may be less representative as they are based on a smaller sample of the target population than birth and death rates (although sizes are still high - around 50,000 people)
2. They lack insight into the meaning, feelings and motivations of the people being studied i.e. they do not explain WHY people behave the way they do. E.g. Durkheim's analysis of the relationship between suicide and society completely ignores any individual motives that people may have. - 9Practical disadvantages of official statistics (Interpretivists) (there are 3)1. Because the data is not gathered by the researcher it may not include the information required E.g. Durkheim found there were no statistics specifically on the religion of suicide victims, yet this was crucial to his hypothesis
2. Must accept the way concepts are defined and measured. E.g. different European countries may classified suicide in different ways, in addition, classification of suicide may change over time. This makes it difficult to make comparisons
3. Cannot be verified by the researcher and so cannot be double checked
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- Beschreibung
- A-level Sociology (Paper 1 and 3 - Research Methods and Theory) Karteikarten am Official Statistics , erstellt von Catherine Rayner am 02/12/2017.
- Erstellt von
- Catherine Rayner · Dez 2017
- Aktualisiert
- 2 Dez 2017
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