Discuss official statistics with regard to how useful Essay

Depending on whether the sociologist is a positivist or an interpretivist, authorised statistics may be worthless. Positivists see positive statistics as valuable sources of quantitative development that screwing be dropd to check into ca use and effect relationships, like Durkheim did when analyse suicide. According to positivists, decreed statistics ar hard, friendly facts that are separate from an individual, yet be active their behaviour. Most positivists accept the validity and dependableness of completeicial statistics.An interpretivist does non take the identical view as a positivist. They accept that they are non whole tonements of facts, and are kind of affable constructions created by the meanings people seize to behaviour. Police may attach meanings to mar or burglaries and it is the job of a sociologist to hear how those meanings are constructed. Marxists take yet other view. They believe that official statistics are tools created by the bourgeoisi e to enforce their ideology onto the proletariat. These tools rump be used to mask the authentic inequalities of society and capitalism.They will take cross off of Conservative g eachplacenments switching the methods use to measure unemployment over 30 times, in around cases resulting in a fall in unemployment. Using official statistics is good for the sociologist as they cost very little to use whilst being readily available. Samples are in any case very large and the census involves the built-in population whilst normally samples this large wouild be outside a sociologists budget, statistics lowlife be used to get a large sample without costing the sociologist much.If many an(prenominal) official statistics are collected over time, they mickle be used to shew relationships and trends over time. Effects of legislation and bills can also be measured by dint of these large scale surveys. As statistics much(prenominal) as the census are necessary to be taken in every EU member state, international comparisons can be do. More lots than not, these statistics are the only data 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 favour a certain government to reflect success of policies. many data may be avoided and concentrate on the bad quite than the good, such(prenominal) as talking about social scroungezrs instead of talking about the deem of non-domiciles. As said before, interpretivists argue that official statistics are not facts, but rather social constructions The police create abomination is a view taken by some as it is ultimately up to them to arrest people and make the statistics.If a nice, respectable middle class individual is stopped for speeding, the police may not arrest the person and let them off with a warning. If an incident is too gauzy or trivial, it is not worth the effot of arrest someone. Rape cases also go un-reported as women may find it difficult to take up to the shame and humiliation of owning to it to a policeperson. If offense benefits both parties, for example, blackmail or drugs trade, this is marvelous to reported by either party. prescribed statistics are useful for those who project 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 out of work 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.