OFFICIAL STATISTICS

• What type of data are official statistics?

  secondary data
• who produces official statistics?

  governments
• what are hard statistics?

  objective so politicians cant fiddle with them

  for example birth rate
• what are soft statistics?

  subjective so politicians can fiddle with them

  eg crime, poverty and unemployment. Government change the method to measure many times
• what are some examples of official statistics?

  UK census

  crime survey for England and Wales

  TV ratings from British Audience Research Bureau

  surveys from charities ect

  social trends
• Examples of soft statistics in education

  exclusion rates

  % of students who are LGBTQ+

  truancy rates
• Examples of hard statistics in education

  Progress and Attainment 8 scores

  rates of students who went to university

  students achieving 9-7 in maths
• Practical advantages

  Free and available online

  able to make historical comparisons
• ethical advantages

  confidential and gathered anonymous, doesn’t impact participants
• theoretical advantages

  favoured by positivists, allow to spot trends and correlations

  less biad

  representative

  reliable as data is collected in a standardised way
• practical disadvantages


  might not fit sociologists needs exactly

  definitions change over time, makes comparisons difficult

  time consuming
• ethical disadvantages

  some have harmful effects eg league tablese
• theoretical disadvantages

  lack validity eg unreported crimes

  interpretivists argue they are socially constructed

  marxists say they are manipulated by those in power