Statistics (quantitative data)

• Official - unlikely that a researcher would create it more likely the government.
• Advantages - Can identify patterns and trends.
• Official advantages - Relatively cheap and are available, they are able to cover lots of different aspects of social life. They might be the only source of data on a certain topic such as suicide rates from 100 years ago. Sociologists can identify and investigate trends in things like divorce rates over time. There is a wide range of study trends that they can look at by looking at the official statistics.
• Official advantages - They can be used to combine primary and secondary sources. Secondary quantitative data could come from exam results, subject choices and gender. Qualitative primary data could be found through a participant observation in the environment at schools or unstructured interviews with the interviewees being students or teachers. 
• Official disadvantages - They are collected by officials (government) so the definitions that they use and the results that they get may not be acceptable for sociologists to use. Statistics on things like divorce rates don’t tell the researcher anything important about the strength of marriage in society, this is because statistics can exclude things like ‘empty shell’ marriages and separations that happen informally. Sociologists are unable to check the validity of the official statistics.
• Official disadvantages - Statistics like birth rates are likely to give validity whereas statistics on crime might be invalid as not everything might be measured in the data. Official statistics don’t tell the researcher anything about what it means to the individuals who are involved in things like being divorced. They can be socially constructed.
• Official disadvantages - Crime statistics most of the time are published as statements of fact, but they are the outcome of decisions that have been made by people like victims and police officers. Crime rates can be under-reported by the police or a victim of assault might choose not to report it to the police. The data may not actually measure what they are meant to measure.
• PET: It is partially ethical as everyone knows what they are doing and why they are doing it but they are not able to withdraw from doing it when they want, especially when the government is creating the research for the researcher.