Discuss official statistics with regard to how useful Essay

Depending on whether the sociologist is a positivist or an interpretivist, official statistics may be worthless. Positivists see official statistics as semiprecious sources of quantitative information that can be social functiond to investigate lay down and effect relationships, like Durkheim did when investigating suicide. According to positivists, official statistics atomic number 18 hard, kindly facts that be separate from an individual, even so affect their behaviour. Most positivists accept the inclemency and reliability of official statistics.An interpretivist does not take the same view as a positivist. They believe that they argon not touchstonements of facts, and are rather accessible constructions created by the meanings heap attach to behaviour. Police may attach meanings to mop up or burglaries and it is the job of a sociologist to understand how those meanings are constructed. Marxists take yet another view. They believe that official statistics are tools cre ated by the bourgeoisie to follow out their ideology onto the proletariat. These tools can be used to mask the true inequalities of partnership and capitalism.They will take note of Conservative g everyplacenments switching the methods use to measure unemployment over 30 times, in most cases resulting in a walk out in unemployment. Using official statistics is good for the sociologist as they cost actually little to use whilst cosmos readily available. Samples are also rattling large and the census involves the entire population whilst normally samples this large wouild be outside a sociologists bud blend, statistics can be used to get a large sample without costing the sociologist much.If many official statistics are collected over time, they can be used to establish relationships and trends over time. Effects of legislation and bills can also be measured through these large scale surveys. As statistics much(prenominal) as the census are required to be taken in every EU fr agment state, international comparisons can be made. More often than not, these statistics are the all selective information available. However, these statistics are often collected for administrative and beaurocratic reasons, not sociological reasons and for this reason, classifications made by governments may not be suitable for sociological reasons.As these are produced by the state, they may be biased to privilege a certain government to reflect success of policies. Some data may be avoided and focus on the bad rather than the good, such as public lecture about social scroungezs instead of talking about the number of non-domiciles. As said before, interpretivists argue that official statistics are not facts, plainly rather social constructions The police create hatred is a view taken by some as it is ultimately up to them to term of enlistment people and make the statistics.If a nice, respectable nerve center class person is stopped for speeding, the police may not arres t the person and let them off with a warning. If an incident is too itty-bitty or trivial, it is not worth the effot of arresting someone. Rape cases also go un- describe as women may find it difficult to admit to the shame and discomposure of owning to it to a policeperson. If crime benefits both parties, for example, blackmail or drugs trade, this is unlikely to reported by either party.Official statistics are useful for those who have no objection to their use and sociologists whose budgets maybe limited. They have benefits such as being made readily available, and being cheap and in the public domain, but they can be subject to bias (how to categorise unemployed people changed three times in the eighties, with the number falling each time) and classifications for use with governments may have been objectionalised differently to how a sociologist would do so.