Assess the Advantages and Disadvantages of Official Statistics

Official statistics are quantitative data produced by local and national government bodies, and can cover a wide range of behaviour including births, deaths, marriages and divorce, income, crime, and work and leisure. Official statistics can be produced as a by-product of the normal workings of a government department, but they can also result from research designed specifically to produce them. Two main sources of official statistics are the government and its departments, and surveys. For …

…it seems that although there are many benefits to using official statistics as a source of data, they must be treated with caution, bearing in mind the social processes involved in their collection. Although some see statistics as social constructions rather than social facts, official statistics do often provide a unique opportunity for sociologists to obtain data the whole population. This would otherwise be far too expensive and time-consuming for a sociologist to collect themselves.