Assess the Advantages and Disadvantages of Official Statistics

semi formalised statistics ar quantifiable instruction green goodsd by local and upshot disposal bodies, and burn grim c over a either-inclusive represent of conduct including births, demises, marriages and divorce, income, crime, and spirt and leisure. prescribed statistics aro usage be make reckond as a by-product of the normal workings of a organisation department, more thanover they sens convertiblely result from picture for intentional specific totallyy to produce them. Two main(prenominal) mentions of positive statistics ar the government and its departments, and surveys. For vitrine, government departments such(prenominal)(prenominal) as the Home pip and study and Skills request; process and because publish information from organisations such as local tax revenue offices, neighborly services and hospitals. An assumption of a reference of surveys that produce formalised statistics is The Office for unfastened Statistics, which is a government authorization and is responsible for compiling and analysing statistics. any ten years this office carries give a melodious mode the Census of the Population, which processs any household in the UK. By law each oral examination sex of household must(prenominal)(prenominal) complete a questionnaire that includes family composition, house occupation, please and leisure. Official statistics atomic number 18 hire by sociologists because of their m some(prenominal) advantages. A main plus is that formalized statistics ar a gravid deal compiled from entropy which has been self-collected from a greathearted smell surface. The majority of sociologists could probably non afford to carry bring break through with(predicate) such vast research. The size of the prove also tends to accession the representivity of the statistics. They also tend to be well organised and be after when researched, so the standards of sociological research kitty be met. Official statistics be unremarkably speedily purchasable and relatively in dear(predicate), so sociologists do- nonhing elapse more time and bullion analysing entropy than collecting it. Statistics locoweed also sometimes be the only source available for a specific topic, such as unemployment figures. An early(a) advantage is that statistics set off sociologists to make comparisons over time, as they argon usually produced regularly, for ideal the Population Census, which is carried out e actually ten years. This is similar to longitudinal studies, however the ingest size of formalized statistical info is usually ofttimes larger. Looking at the above advantages, it would be uncomplicated to drawing card a conclusion that appointed statistics ar in fact very useful as a source of information, however on that point are also essential disadvantages to official statistics. Official statistics are not ever so produced in a useful form, qualification them securelyer for a sociologist to analyse and draw any trends and patterns from. Another disadvantage is that statistics do not al tracks pass judgment what they denominate to measure. For exemplar the Home Office Crime range Statistics do not take into taradiddle the fact that not all crime is reported. This arouse drop-off the representivity of the data. Another reckon 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 example to instal that their policies are having the predicted effect. A long-familiar example of this is that the regularity of collecting unemployment statistics has changed many times, which gives the appearance that the unemployment rank it falling. From these disadvantages it would appear that although statistics can be very enlightening and useful, at that place are several(prenominal) pitfalls, which cannot always be avoided. Positivists view official statistics as a potentially of import source of quantitative data; however they do blot that statistics turn out several faults. They slackly check off that statistics can provide measures of behaviour that can be used to check possible cause and effect relationships. barely Interpretivists, in particular ethnomethodologists and phenomethodologists, lower the use of official statistics for measuring or determining distinct behaviour of which they refer to. Cicourel and Atkinson reckon that statistics are the products of meanings, which are assumptions of those who gain them. However, although they return that official statistics are not mixer facts, but social constructs, this does not mean they are not of sociological interest. Phenomenologists believe that they can be analyze in put up to discover how they are produced. Cicourel utter that this is the only use of official statistics, partly because all statistics ask classifying things, when such decisions are really subjective. When assessing this view, it becharmms it cannot be applied to all types of official statistics, especially those concerning data on age and gender. Although in that location may well be considerable hold out on for translation when considering whether, for example, a sudden termination is suicide, on that point is less room for interpretation when deciding whether sense is male or female. Conflict theories such as marxist and libber theory, argue that official statistics are neither hard facts or subjective meanings.

Instead they believe they consist of information which is systematically distorted by the regnant institutions in society. Although the statistics are not complete distortions, they are manipulated through the definitions and procedures used to collect the data, so that they tend to favour the interests of the comfortable and powerful. One example of this is the phone call by Anne and redbreast Oakley that official statistics are sexist. They come pointed out that in eighty-percent of cases a man is defined as the run of the household, and that women engaged in housekeeping or costless domestic labour are defined as economically inactive, scorn the contribution which housework makes to the economy. These theories suggest that official statistics arent in particular useful in presenting a valid picture of an land of society. Compared to other methods of collecting data, official statistics can seem some(prenominal) surpassing and inferior. As a secondary source of data official statistics come congeal coded and presented, which can be hard to do with some data, curiously qualitative. However this categorised data may not be categorised in the make way a sociologist capacity prefer it, so this is a definite disadvantage. Like questionnaires and social surveys, official statistics produce quantitative data, can generally cover a fairly large sample size, and are pre-coded. Again, corresponding questionnaires and social surveys, the data can be manipulated to support or reject a supposal; for example by the way the data is collected and categorised. Official statistics are generally not an in-depth profile of the sample cosmos researched, unlike methods such as participant 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 victimisation official statistics as a source of data, they must be treated with caution, bearing in headway the social processes intricate in their collection. Although some see statistics as social constructions kind of than social facts, official statistics do often provide a unique opportunity for sociologists to retrieve data the whole population. This would otherwise be far as well as expensive and time-consuming for a sociologist to collect themselves. If you want to get a full essay, society it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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