What is official statistics in sociology?
Official statistics are a major source of secondary data. The term refers to any set of data collected by the government or other official body, for example official crime statistics, unemployment figures, demographic statistics collected from the census, etc.
What is meant by official statistics?
Official statistics are statistics disseminated by the national statistical system, excepting those that are explicitly stated not to be official.
What is the role of official statistics?
Official statistics provide a picture of a country or different phenomena through data, and images such as graph and maps. Statistical information covers different subject areas (economic, demographic, social etc.). It provides basic information for decision making, evaluations and assessments at different levels.
Who uses official statistics sociology?
Official Statistics are numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy. This post considers some of strengths and limitations of using official statistics in social research, focusing on practical, theoretical and ethical factors.
What is the difference between official and unofficial statistics?
Unofficial data are data that either guide research surreptitiously, or do not guide research but should. By contrast, official data are those empirical findings reportable in scientific publications, susceptible to statistical analysis and believed to be replicable.
What are official statistics advantages and disadvantages?
Advantages of official statistics: cheap; wide coverage; reliable; available. Disadvantages of official statistics: rigid; definitions; selective; sampling. The social construction of official statistics.
What are the two types of official statistics?
The two types of statistics are: Descriptive and inferential.
What are examples of official statistics?
Official statistics are numerical data-sets, produced by official governmental agencies mainly for administrative purposes, including the Census, crime figures, health data, income and employment rates, as well as those based on government-sponsored social surveys.
What are the advantages of using official statistics?
Advantages
- Readily avaliable.
- Cover wide range of subjects.
- Genrally reliable.
- Similar results.
- Same conditions.
- Cover large populations.
- Prefered by positivists.
- Regular intervals to show trends and patterns.
What are some examples of social statistics?
Examples of Social Statistics
- birth rate.
- marriage records.
- mortality rate.
- suicide: Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) studied social statistics for Suicide (1897).
What are non official statistics sociology?
Non-official statistics refers to numerical data collected and published by a variety of public and private organisations (the Rowntree Foundation, for example, publishes statistics on poverty).
What are the sources of official statistics?
Sources of official statistics
Data for statistical purposes may be drawn from all types of sources, be they statistical surveys or administrative records. Statistical agencies are to choose the source with regard to quality, timeliness, costs and the burden on respondents.
What are some advantages of official statistics?
What are the pros and cons official statistics?
Advantages of official statistics: cheap; wide coverage; reliable; available. Disadvantages of official statistics: rigid; definitions; selective; sampling. The social construction of official statistics. Example: crime and criminal statistics.
Are official statistics reliable sociology?
Overall, positivists see official statistics as an advantage in sociological research. Positivists favour quantitative data as it is reliable and generalisable to the wider population; therefore, official statistics are a valuable source of quantitative and objective data.
What is the importance of statistics in social work?
Within the field of social work, statistics are used to understand and critique empirical research, evaluate practice, disseminate research findings, and promote clients’ interests (Capshew, 2005; Wells, 2006).
What are the roles of statistics in social science?
How is statistics used in the social sciences? Statistical methods can be applied to a variety of social situations. In today’s data-driven world, statistics is used to make policy decisions, study social and behavioral changes, and answer important cultural questions.
What are the advantages of official statistics?
What are the fundamental principle of official statistics?
Principle 1: Relevance, Impartiality, and Equal Access
Official statistics provide an indispensable element in the infor- mation system of a democratic society, serving the Government, the economy and the public with data about the economic, demo- graphic, social and environmental situation.
Are official statistics reliable?
Due to the preparation and care when being undertaken, the reliability of official statistics is fairly high as they can use the same questionnaire, survey or census for a large sample group. However, that does not mean that the results are accurate. The accuracy of the results depends entirely on the participants.
What are the uses of statistics in sociology?
Social statistics and quantitative data analysis are key tools for understanding society and social change. We can try to capture people’s attitudes and map patterns in behaviour and circumstances using numbers and also describe how people and populations change.
What is official statistics research?
What are the two ways of collecting official statistics?
There are two ways of collecting official stats; 1. Registration- birth. 2. Official survey- such as census or general household survey.