Official Statistics

• What is the purpose of official statistics?

  Purpose for sociologists: to identify patterns and trends in behaviours so that their causes can be researched.

  Purpose for the government: to monitor and manage the populations needs.
• Hard statistics:

  • More valid and accurate
  • Examples - Birth, death, divorce, marriage (usually registered)
• Soft statistics:

  • Less valid
  • Only present in some of the whole picture (there is a dark figure)
  • Examples: crime, murder and suicide.
• Examples of official statistics:

  • Crime, life expectancy, health, birth, poverty, marriage, divorce, education.
• Examples of organisational statistics:

  • Charities, churches, businesses, schools and colleges.
• Crime statistics:


  How are they useful? They can identify patterns and trends in particular crimes over time and across police forces.

  How are they problematic? They don't reflect reality of crime but police activity. Not all crimes are reported and recorded.

  Stats evidence? Worst year for crime was 2003 & the highest number of recorded crime offences in England and Wales in 2022-23 was 6,000,000+.
• Homicide statistics:


  How are they useful? They can identify patterns and trends over time, and can see differences between social groups (murderers & victims).

  How are they problematic? They don't reflect the murder rate year upon year, only recorded when found. Not all murders are recorded as homicides.

  Stats evidence? In 2022-23, England & Wales had the highest homicide rate; 15.9 million per million people.
• Suicide statistics:


  How are they useful? They can identify patterns and trends over time, regions, differences in social groups (gender and occupation).

  How are they problematic? They only reflect the coroner's decision rather than actual numbers of suicides.

  Stats evidence? In 2001, suicide rate was 10.7 and 10 years later in 2021, it was 10.7 also.
• PET Advantages of official statistics:

  • Practical: free source of a huge amount of data, easily accessible.
  • Ethical: They are ethically sound as they are secondary data.
  • Theoretical: They are complied using a standardised procedure so it is reliable, shows patterns and trends overtime, it is large scale which makes it representative, can make comparisons between groups such as life expectancy.
• PET Disadvantages of official statistics:

  • Practical: They are not always available in the format suitable for the sociologist.
  • Ethical: Ethically sound.
  • Theoretical: They lack validity as soft statistics are socially constructed and don't reflect reality, they don't tell us meaning so there is no verstehen.