Examine the Usefulness of Official Statistics in Sociological Research (20 Marks)

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Examine the usefulness of official statistics in sociological research (20 marks) Official statistics are a secondary source of quantitative data gathered by the government or other official bodies e.g. Census, Birth registration and the General Household Survey. Official statistics can be very useful in sociological research for the following reasons: Firstly, the data is already available for the sociologist to use so therefore the sociologist does not have to use any time-consuming methods to obtain this data. Many sociologists will use official statistics because they do not want to spend too much time obtaining the information and really want to spend time on putting the data together. Secondly, the use official statistics is a very cheap method for a sociologist to use because it doesn’t cost them anything as the information is already gathered and there for most people to use and look at. The only time where official statistics may not be available is in a schools data network as pupil data is confidential so the sociologist may not be able to access this data. Thirdly, the sociologist can gather very large samples of data which can help their investigation be quite representative, as the higher the sample number the more it represents the population being studied. Patterns and trends can also be measured with a large sample size and can be put into graphs and categorised. They can also be used to test hypothesis via the use of triangulation. Meaning that the data can be compared with others and improve validity. Fourth strength of using official statistics in sociological research would be that the data gathered had a very high response rate due to the laws of everyone having to give in their information e.g. The Census has to be completed by every household via questionnaire. Since there is a high response rate this means that the information gathered

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