Sociology - Official Statistics + Crime & Deviance
- Created by: Iqra
- Created on: 21-12-12 21:11
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- Official Statistics {Crime & Deviance}
- Practical Issues
- Due to the government providing the information, the researcher saves time and money
- The information can be used to make comparisons between offending rates for different classes, ethnic groups or genders.
- Can also be used to examine trends over time .
- Governments are interested in the same crime and deviance issues so stats produced by the government are likely to be very useful for researchers.
- However official definitions of key concepts may differ from those that sociologists use like social class.
- Representativeness
- Some OS are highly representative due to police forces being required to keep records
- However for interpretivists, there is a large 'dark' figure due to social processes being changed. This dark figure are all crimes that unreported and unrecorded, and that this decreases its representativeness.
- Reliablity
- Government uses standard defs and cats in collection of crime stats.
- The same collection is replicated each year, this allows direct comparisons.
- However governments could change their defs, cats or rules about recording offences. Like for instance where similar offences have occurred, only the most serious one may be counted
- Validity
- Interpretivists challenge the validity as they see them as being socially constructed.
- Crime stats are the outcome of interactions between police, suspects and others based on labels and typification etc
- Self report studies may provide more valid stats compared to those based on crimes known by the police.
- Interpretivists challenge the validity as they see them as being socially constructed.
- Practical Issues
- Can also be used to examine trends over time .
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