Secondary Sources Official Statistics Sources of Official Statistics

Secondary Sources Official Statistics

Sources of Official Statistics • Numerical data produced by national and local • • • government bodies Provide quantitative data Cover a wide range of behaviour including births, marriage, deaths, divorce crime sentencing Can be from either a piece of research designed to produce them, or from the workings of a government department

Main sources • Government departments, e. g Education and • Skills and The Home Office regularly request information from organisations such as local tax office, social services, hospitals, police stations Surveys, The Office for National Statistics is a government agency responsible for compiling and analysing many of the U. K’s economic, social, and population statistics

Using Official Statistics • Cannot accept official statistics at face value and sociologists must bear the following points in mind when using them: • How are they constructed? • Who decides what statistics are collected and published? • Are they politically biased?

A Valid Measure? • Do official statistics really measure what they claim to measure? • Think about the annual crime statistics produced by the Home Office. Are they accurate? • Have a look at your handout to help you answer this question

Perspectives • An interpretivist view is that official statistics are not ‘facts’, and they do not represent the objective reality in the real world. • Marxists believe that official statistics are an aspect of the ruling class ideology as they are generated by government departments and agencies