- They area free source of huge amounts of quantitative data. Only the state can afford to conduct large-scale surveys costing millions of pounds, such as the ten-yearly Census covering every house within the UK.
- Sociologists can make use of this data, saving them both time and money.
- Statistics allow comparisons between groups. For example, we can compare statistics on educational achievement, crime rates, or life expectancy between class, gender or ethnic groups.
- Because official statistics are collected at regular intervals, they show trends and patterns over time. This means the sociologist can use them for “before and after” studies to show cause-and-effect relationships. For example we can compare divorce statistics before and after law change in divorce to measure what effect the new legislation had.
As official statistics cover large numbers, (the entire population) and because care is taken with sampling procedures, they often provide a more representative sample than surveys conducted with limited resources available to the sociologist.
Sociologists may use official statistics because they are seen as a reliable source of data. They are complied in a standardised way by trained staff, following set procedures. For example, the Government statisticians compile death rates for different social classes following a standard procedure that uses the occupation recorded on each person’s death certificate to identity their social class. Official statistics are therefore reliable because any person properly trained will allocate a given case to the same category.
A major problem with using official statistics is that of validity. Some ‘hard’ official statistics do succeed in doing this. For example, statistics on the number of births, deaths, marriages and divorces usually give a very accurate picture. However, other ‘soft’ statistics give a much less valid image. For example police statistics do not record all crimes. Similarly, educational statistics do not record all racist incidents occurring in schools.
Many sociologists feel that as long as they are using the ‘hard’ statistics they can trust the official statistics.
Whether we see official statistics as useful or not also depends in part on which theoretical perspective we adopt.
Positivists, such as Emile Durkheim (1987) see statistics as a valuable resource for sociologists. They take for granted that official statistics are ‘social facts’; that is, true and objective measures of the real rate of crime, suicide etc. they see sociology as a science and develop hypothesis to discover the causes of the patterns of behaviour that the official statistics reveal.
Positivists often use official statistics to test their hypothesis. For example, Durkheim put forward the hypothesis that suicide is cause by lack of social integration. Using the comparative method, he argued that Protestant and Catholic religions differ in how well they integrate individuals into society. Using official suicide statistics, he was able to show that Protestants had a higher rate of suicide then Catholics, and so was able to argue that this statistical evidence proved his hypothesis correct.
By contrast, interpretivists such as Maxwell Atkinson (1971) regard official statistics as lacking validity. They argue that statistics are not real tings or ‘social facts’ that exist within the world. Instead, statistics are socially constructed – they merely represent the labels some people give to the behaviour of others.
In this view, suicide statistics do not represent the ‘real rate’ of suicides that have actually taken place, but merely the total number of decisions made by coroners to label some deaths as suicides. The statistics therefore tell us more about the way coroners label deaths than about the actual causes of death.
Rather than taking statistics at face value, thus, interpretivists argue that we should investigate how they are socially constructed. For example, Atkinson uses qualitative methods such as observing the proceedings of coroners courts to discover how coroners reach their decisions to label some deaths as suicides, accidents and so on.
Marxists such as John Irvine (1987) take a different view. Unlike interpretivists, they don’t regard official statistics as merely the outcome of labels applied by officials such as coroners. Instead they see official statistics as serving the interests of capitalism.
Marxists see capitalist society as made up of two social classes in conflict with each other, the capitalist ruling class and the working class. In this conflict, the state is not neutral, but serves the interests of the capitalist class. The statistics that the state produces are part of the ruling class ideology – part of the ideas and values that helps to maintain the capitalist class in power.
In conclusion, sociologists may use official statistics as part of their research because it saves the sociologist time and money. Surveys can cost millions of pounds and the sociologist would be saving that money by using official statistics. Official statistics would also be used because they are reliable, and valid. Official statistics are used as parts of research as they compare patterns and trends over many years. No other method can compare these patterns and trends from the past 100 years.
