quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies. collected by government for policy making
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two ways of collecting official statistics
registration - e.g. laws require parents to register births. Official surveys - e.g. census or general household survey
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official statistics practical advantages
free with lots of data, saves time, allow comparisons between groups, collected over regular intervals allowing us to see trends and patterns showing cause and effect relationships.
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official statistics practical disadvantages
not be specific to sociologists study, not cover topic if specific study - Durkheim no stats on religion of suicide victims. definition may be different than sociologists. defenitions change so comparisons hard-unemployment changed 30 times in 11 yrs
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official statistics representativeness and reliability
large sample so representative- make generalisations, however some are less representative than others. British crime survey v general household survey. reliable as standardised. however still human error on both sides (ender data and filling survey)
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official statistics validity
Hard stats are valid e.g. birth, marriage. soft stats aren't e.g. police dont recall all crimes or not all reported. 2011 british crime survey - 38% crimes revealed by survey weren't recorded by police
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official statistics - theoretical MARXISM
positivist durkheim(1897)-social facts. interpretivist Atkinson(1971)-socially constructed labelled behaviour not valid as dont show cause. marxist ivrine(1987)-made by/ serves interest of ruling class state is not neutral-unemployement 0 hr contract
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what are documents
qualitative data that refers to any written text, personal or public documents
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public documents
produced by organisations e.g. government, schools, businesses and charities. available/ published data for researchers to use e.g. ofsted. Black report (1980) was a major source of info into inequalities
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personal documents
first person account of social event and personal experiences e.g. letters, diaries. Thomas and Znanieckis (1919) studied migration and social change used 764 letters
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historical documents
personal or public documents created in the past. study patterns. Anderson studied child labour through 1851 Census.
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4 ways of assessing documents
John Scott (1990): authenticity, credibility, representativeness and meaning
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assessing documents authenticity and credibility
authenticity: s it free from errors, is it what it claims to be or is it a fake. credibility: is the auther sincere, not biased. stein 2003 - documents on internet arent checked before publication
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assessing documents representativeness
representativeness: illiterate people/ people with little leisure time dont make documents. better educated class are over-represented.some are lost or unavailable after 30 yrs.
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assessing documents meaning
meaning: words change meaning overtime, needs skills to understand if foreign language, interpret documents differently
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MIC official statistics practical
saves time and money. make comparisons between groups. however, because of the stigma and peer pressure some pupils don't claim FSM even if they are entitled to them. Cant tell interactions
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MIC official statistics representativeness
highly representative- school complete a census 3 times a year
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MIC official statistics reliability
highly reliable as systematic however chance for human error. also due to gov change in definition they may not be reliable.
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MIC official statistics validity
schools may redefine poor attenders as being on study leave or work experience manipulating stats
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MIC documents practical
easily accessible (publicly not privately) Hey (1997) - girls passing notes helped understand friendship patterns but they were hard to obtain. some school documents are confidential
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MIC documents ethical
public documents dont require consent. personal documents require informed consent but can be gotten without the consent e.g. hey looked in bins to find the girls notes.
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MIC documents representativeness
not fully representative as not some aspects are recorded e.g. not all racist comments are documented. personal documents are unrepresentative e.g. hey collected 70 notes but in an unsystematic way
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MIC documents reliability
public documents are reliable however still human error. can create comparative data between schools e.g. Lobban examined 179 stories for six reading schemes in schools to examine gender stereotyping.
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MIC documents validity
valid as offer insights into meanings. however, can be interpreted differently.
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Other cards in this set
Card 2
Front
registration - e.g. laws require parents to register births. Official surveys - e.g. census or general household survey
Back
two ways of collecting official statistics
Card 3
Front
free with lots of data, saves time, allow comparisons between groups, collected over regular intervals allowing us to see trends and patterns showing cause and effect relationships.
Back
Card 4
Front
not be specific to sociologists study, not cover topic if specific study - Durkheim no stats on religion of suicide victims. definition may be different than sociologists. defenitions change so comparisons hard-unemployment changed 30 times in 11 yrs
Back
Card 5
Front
large sample so representative- make generalisations, however some are less representative than others. British crime survey v general household survey. reliable as standardised. however still human error on both sides (ender data and filling survey)
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