Are official statistics valid sociology?
Official statistics are sets of numerical data collected by the UK government and its agencies. They are a form of secondary quantitative data and therefore used as a data source in sociology.
What are official statistics in research?
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 is statistical method in sociology?
Statistics and statistical methods are used in sociology to describe and draw inferences about populations. Statistical analysis can give researchers various types of information. It can help to support or refute a hypothesis, summarize information, and show probabilities.
What are the 5 sociological research methods?
Reliability is the extent to which research produces consistent or dependable results. In conducting research, sociologists choose between six research methods: (1) survey, (2) participant observation, (3), secondary analysis, (4) documents, (5) unobtrusive measures, and (6) experiments.
What are the uses of official statistics?
Official statistics are often used as a data source for secondary statistical analysis, employing a quantitative approach. They are also used in health needs assessments, health status or profiles and health impact assessments.
What do you mean by official statistics?
Official statistics are the data collected by government departments in the course of their work (i.e. routine statistics) or collected specifically for statistical purposes. ‘Unofficial’ statistics are from independent organisations.
What is statistics in social research?
Statistics are numbers, summaries of patterns and can also be probabilities. Statistical analysis can include the design and collection of data, its interpretation and presentation. Social statistics and quantitative data analysis are key tools for understanding society and social change.
What is the purpose 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.
What are official stats?
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 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.
Why are official statistics useful?
Official Statistics are a quick and cheap means of accessing data relevant to an entire population in a country. They are cheap for researchers to use because they are collected by governments, who often make them available online for free—for example, the UK Census.
What are the types of social statistics?
The two types of statistics are: Descriptive and inferential.
Why the social researcher uses statistics?
Social scientists use social statistics for many purposes, including: the evaluation of the quality of services available to a group or organization, analyzing behaviors of groups of people in their environment and special situations, determining the wants of people through statistical sampling.
What is official statistics in Social Research?
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.
Why do sociologists use official statistics?
Because official statistics are gathered and collated by external parties (e.g. the Office of National Statistics) it can be very time saving for sociologists wishing to carry out observations as the information is all collected for them and requires very little time from the conductor of the research.
What are official statistics for a-level sociology?
Official statistics are a type of secondary quantitative data and are one of the main methods you need to know about for the research methods component of A-level sociology. Official Statistics make it very easy to get an overview of social life in Britain by, for example, clicking on the ‘UK snapshot’ or ‘focus on’ links on the ONS homepage.
Can statistics be used to examine social issues?
However, the use of statistics to examine social issues has its detractors and some work on the principle that there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’. Therefore the use of statistics in sociological research has to be done carefully and sensitively.