What is official statistics in sociology?

What is official statistics in sociology?

Official Statistics are numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy.

Why do sociologists use official statistics?

Many sociologists use official statistics in their research. There are many reasons why using official statistics can be useful: they are cheap, readily available, and provide detailed quantitative data which is reliable and often representative. Official statistics also provide data for the whole country.

What is official statistics 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. Example: crime and criminal statistics.

What is the difference between official and non 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 are non official statistics?

Non official statistics is intended as data which are produced by non-public national sources including private sector, NGOs, academic research or data that are originally constructed by IOs using different methods (imputation, estimation, construction of new indicators).

Where do official statistics come from?

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 benefits 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.

How are official statistics used?

Official statistics are used to collate facts and figures which can be used to keep records of a person or persons. They are used in businesses to analyse the market (i.e. to see what is, and isn’t selling) and they can be used by Governments as a means of keeping a record on their citizens.

What are documents sociology?

Personal documents are first-hand accounts of social events and personal-experiences, and they generally include the writer’s feelings and attitudes. They include such things as letters, diaries, photo albums and autobiographies.

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 fundamental principles 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.

What are the advantages of official statistics?

Advantages of official statistics are that they are likely to involve a much larger sample than a sociologist could ever achieve (often referring to the entire target population rather than a sample of it) and it is free and accessible, so therefore practical.

What are official statistics in sociology?

Official Statistics in Sociology Definition: Official Statistics are numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy.

What are the disadvantages of Statistics in sociology?

Theoretical Disadvantages Some Official Statistics lack validity. Crime statistics are a good example of this – certain crimes are notorious for being under-reported to the police – such as Rape and Domestic Violence for example.

What does sociology study at the societal level?

At the societal level, sociology examines and explains matters like crime and law, poverty and wealth, prejudice and discrimination, schools and education, business firms, urban community, and social movements. At the global level, sociology studies such phenomena as population growth and migration, war and peace, and economic development.

What is the subject matter of Sociology?

Sociology’s subject matter is diverse, ranging from crime to religion, from the family to the state, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared beliefs of a common culture, and from social stability to radical change in whole societies.