Official statistics are quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies. Examples include statistics on births, deaths, marriages and divorces, crime, suicide, exam results, school exclusions, unemployment and health.
THEORY:
Official statistics are favoured by POSITIVISTS, as they provide large amounts of data from which findings can be generalised to the wider population (macro). Also, as they are collected by official agencies they are generated in a reliable and objective way, which positivists prefer as they argue society should be studied scientifically so as to establish ‘social facts’.
two main ways of collecting official statistics:
Registration - for example, the law requires parents to register births, or as a consequence of routine practice, such as school league tables
Official surveys, such as the Census or the General Household Survey.
