Advantages of official statistics as a research source
There are several major benefits that official statistics hold for social researchers:
• There is a great wealth of information available on a wide range of social, political, and economic issues.
• Much of the information that a researcher might want is readily available.
• Many of the government’s official statistics are available to the researcher without cost through university or public libraries, or on the Internet.
• The government’s official statistics are collected by technical ‘experts’ at the ONS (and elsewhere) who are highly skilled in their jobs, thus suggesting a high degree of proficiency.
• Official statistics data sets are often very large, enabling detailed analysis of sample subsets. Hence it is possible to get representative samples of numerically
small populations that in normal circumstances you may have difficulty in obtaining a sampling frame. Such groups may, for instance, include cohabitees, one-parent families, the elderly disabled, and so on.
• Sometimes official statistics may be the only source of information that is available for particular topics. This would be the case, for example, with the retail price index.
• Because official statistics are collected systematically over time, and usually across the whole country, they permit comparative analysis in terms of:
time – enabling the measurement of change, such as fluctuations in crime levels, or changing patterns of share ownership;
‘before and after’ studies that monitor the impact of particular policy changes, such as the introduction of CCTV in specified areas, or curfews for young people;
different socio-demographic groupings based on gender, age, occupation, and so on, such as hours of training at work, or variations in levels of pay;
geographic areas, for example by examining the allocation of the National Lottery’s Board grants to different regions of Britain.
Disadvantages of official statistics as a research source
However, while official statistics provide the social science researcher with a wealth of readily available data, caution needs to be exercised in relation to a number of points:
1. Official statistics are collected for administrative purposes to suit the needs of politicians and bureaucrats, not for social researchers. They may therefore be limited or shaped in particular ways not always suitable for particular research studies to be undertaken by social scientists.
2. Official definitions are often non-sociological. Thus crime figures are based on reportedcases of law breaking; social scientists might be interested in broader definitions, including crimes not always reported to the police, such as racial abuse or domestic violence.
3. Official statistics often do not cover areas of interest to social science researchers, or are presented in ways that are unsuitable for research purposes.
For example, official statistics on health and illness may be available on a regional basis only. They may not, therefore, be appropriate for social researchers who are interested in making comparisons between different socio-economic groups.
4. Comparison across different official statistics sources is often difficult, because they are often collected on a different methodological basis. Therefore, where, for example, different sampling methods have been used, comparison between these samples would not be methodologically sound. It is also not uncommon
to find key analytical concepts measured in different ways across studies. Thus social class may be defined using the Registrar General’s social class schema in a study of crime, but by socio-economic group in research on housing issues, resulting in incompatible data sets.
5. In practice, official statistics rarely provide completecoverage of the population, and under-enumeration occurs. Though this may be small in terms of percentages, the effect can be a significant one and can have adverse consequences for the use of the data (e.g. in the allocation of public monies to localities).
6. There is a tendency for official statistics to become outdated quickly, given the extent of the usual time lag between collection and publication of results.
7. A substantial amount of official data is quantitative, with virtually no figures on public opinion or attitudes. Instead, statistics are usually of a ‘factual’ nature.
This is not necessarily a problem, but it may be an issue for the researcher.
8. There is a strong reliance on the survey method, which entails difficulties in terms of sampling error, the limitations of structured questionnaire formats, and standardised pre-coded questions, and possible interviewer bias. (These, and other issues connected to survey research, are explored in detail in Chapter 6.)
Theoretical criticisms of official statistics as a research source
There are then a number of practical problems involved with employing official statistics in research, but there are also a number of more general theoretical problems associated with them that have been highlighted by critics.
According to critics, much of the problem with official statistics arises precisely because they are official. This reflects the fact that only the state has the capacity (the economic resources and political authority) to collect large quantities of information on a national scale. Because official statistics are generated by the state, it is relatively easy to slip into the view that they are somehow an authoritative and neutral source of information, a view summed up in the phrase ‘stats are facts’ – that they are a clear representation of the external social world. Hence, if one wishes to know the British ‘crime rate’, then official crime statistics will reveal the full extent of this.
This view is fairly widespread within the social science community, but is one that some critics see as highly problematic. Irvine et al. (1979), in their collection of articles ‘Demystifying Social Statistics’, have presented a critical analysis of the collection and construction of official statistics from a radical perspective. They claim that official statistics are not just neutrally gathered, authoritative summaries of the social, economic, and political world. Rather, official statistics are socially constructed in various ways, and reflect the assumptions and interests of particular dominant groups in ways that combine to reinforce the status quo within society.
They describe official statistics as ‘social products’, which perform an ideological role within society:
Statistics do not, in some mysterious way, emanate directly from the social conditions they appear to describe, but that between the two lie the assumptions, conceptions and priorities of the state and the social order. (Government Statisticians’ Collective 1993, p.163)
Two major criticisms have been levelled at central-government-generated official statistics. These are firstly that:
The nature of the modern capitalist state and the significance of official data for its operation determine the range, volume and orientation of the official data produced. (Irvine et al. 1979, p.6)
Thus, for instance, the British government changed the definition of unemployment on over 30 occasions between 1979 and 1991, and its critics argued that this was done in order to create the impression of falling unemployment. It did this by excluding from the statistics married women, school-leavers, part-time workers, and so on. The result of these changes was to reduce the actual level of reported unemployment for Britain in all but one case (Macdonald and Tipton 1993, p.189).
Irvine et al. are, however, at pains to point out that deliberate political falsification is rare. More common is non-publication, delay of publication, misleading commentaries on figures, and so on. They claim, for example, that only the most presentable figures will be highlighted.
At a second level, critics claim that the statistics that are published often have certain assumptions built into them that reflect the views and interests of dominant groups within society – a power elite that is usually white, male, and middle class.
Thus Oakley and Oakley (1979, p.173) maintain that:
Sexism may enter into the production of official statistics at (various) level(s).
Including the topics chosen for analysis, the concepts used to present the statistics, the data collection process, the processing and analysis of figures, the presentation of figures, and the classification of women’s social class.