Social Sciences
Official Statistics
Official statistics refer to data collected and published by government agencies or other authorized organizations. These statistics provide information on various aspects of society, such as demographics, economics, and social trends. They are used by researchers, policymakers, and the public to understand and analyze social phenomena and make informed decisions.
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10 Key excerpts on "Official Statistics"
eBook - ePub- Steve Chapman, Patrick McNeill, Patrick Mcneill(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Agencies other than the state produce statistics that may be useful for sociological research. Most large pressure groups run or commission surveys on their own special interests. Trade unions will usually have statistical data about the industries in which their members are working. Any commercial organization that is quoted on the Stock Exchange is supposed to publish a statement of its financial affairs annually, and these can provide a wealth of information for sociologists who are interested in economic affairs.How can sociologists use Official Statistics?
Many sociologists take these statistics at their face value, and use them as a ready-made source of data for their research. They are cheap, readily available, cover a long time-span and are comprehensive in their coverage of social life. They may be the only source of data on the topic in question. It may also be possible to do ‘before-and-after’ studies. For example, Official Statistics can be compared and contrasted before and after a specific piece of legislation, e.g. the Divorce Reform Act of 1971, to ascertain the ‘effects’ of such a change on marital breakdown. Official Statistics on education and health, in particular, have formed the basis of much comparative analysis.Many sociologists in the past have been attracted by the positivist characteristics of Official Statistics. It is assumed that they have been collected in a scientifically reliable and objective fashion, and consequently that they deal in ‘facts’. For example, official criminal statistics in both the UK and USA indicate that crime is a male and working-class phenomenon. An uncritical acceptance of these criminal statistics led to the emergence of several theories of criminality in the 1950s and 1960s which viewed working-class culture as pathological, i.e. as naturally inclined towards criminal practices.However, there may be problems. Since the statistics are collected for administrative purposes, the definitions used and the classifications made are often unsuitable for sociological research. It is not easy to make all the correlations that are needed. It is often not possible to check the accuracy of the figures. For example, it is assumed that registration of births, marriages, divorces and deaths is the most accurate of official data. However, while it is probable that the number of births recorded is as accurate as we are likely to need, the increasing numbers of people electing to live together rather than marry and the cultural and religious resistance to divorce in some quarters of our multicultural society undermines the validity of the picture of social life that the statistics purport to give us. Moreover, even death statistics do not escape this criticism.
eBook - PDF- John Goodwin(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Production In the title of this chapter (‘Official Statistics’), the adjective ‘official’ (which could be replaced by ‘public’) indicates that these data sets are gathered almost entirely by public agencies. Census-taking dates back to ancient times, and traces have been found even in primitive civilizations. Broadly speaking, we can say that the need to ‘count’ the population, the number of families and goods, arose with the earliest forms of state organization and became consolidated as the great centralized empires of the ancient world emerged. Archaeological finds have pointed to the existence of such forms of statistical recording in the ancient civilization of the Sumerians (IV–II millennium B.C.), then in the Box 1: Official Statistics in Social Research Empirical social research was born in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, on the basis of studies involving Official Statistics. Durkheim’s On Suicide (1897) is but one of many such examples. It is worth mentioning, among others, André Siegfried’s ( Tableau politique de la France de I’Ouest , 1913) and Herbert Tingsten’s ( Political Behaviour , 1937) research in the field of pol-itical sociology. In spite of the limited number of variables available to these scholars, both conducted admirable historical-social studies by analysing ter-ritorial and temporal variations. The survey did not emerge as a research tech-nique until the end of the 1930s with the development of social research in the US, which at that time did not keep Official Statistics. In the post-war period surveys became the dominant mode of social research, whereas official statis-tics assumed a secondary role. Corbetta Official Statistics 181 Assyrian and Babylonian empires, in ancient Egypt, in imperial China, and in ancient Greece and Rome (the term ‘census’ comes from Latin).
eBook - ePub- Lucio Picci(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Stanford Economics and Finance(Publisher)
To consider the implications of this innovation, we need to consider the role of Official Statistics and the institutional framework that allows their production. Today, the gathering and provision of statistics is mainly a responsibility of national governments through a set of dedicated agencies, especially the National Statistics Offices (NSOs), such as the Census Bureau in the United States. In democratic societies, NSOs are granted a degree of statutory autonomy as a way of minimizing the risk of political manipulation of the data that they produce. Trustworthy Official Statistics play a key role in democratic governance, since citizens need accurate information to form an opinion on policies and on politicians. Official Statistics are important in public discourse and provide an essential basis for the formation of the public consensus on which democratic rules depend.Statistical information is often gathered by means of surveys that are carried out on samples drawn from the population of interest. However, surveys have shortcomings, and errors of various types can arise. Moreover, the time needed to administer a survey and to process the data introduces an important time lag between the reference time of the statistical information and the date of its availability. This has obvious negative consequences, particularly in decision-making contexts, where the most recent information, almost invariably, is also the most valuable.The way information is organized and treated within reputation-based governance would cause a shift away from the current practices of statistics production for a potentially vast domain of statistics on public policies. All, or most, relevant information related to the public policies to which reputation-based governance applies would be digitally recorded, and statistics would simply be available as a view of the available data.2
eBook - ePubUK Statistics
A Guide for Business Users
- David Mort(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
2 UK Published Statistics – publishing organizations and general information sourcesPublished statistics in the UK have experienced significant changes in the 1980s and early 1990s. After a gradual period of expansion up to 1979, the resources allocated to official statistical activities were reduced along with the amount of data collected and published in traditional statistical publications. More questions were also asked about the reliability and accuracy of official data.In some areas, such as the service sector and the population census, government statistics have expanded but the greatest expansion has occurred in non-Official Statistics where many new titles and services have emerged. Advances in computer systems and software have helped this growth in non-official statistical services, particularly in the development of geo-demographic services and media and marketing databases. Some official series are also available on computer but too many remain unavailable in machine readable form. Specific developments and changes will be described in the subject chapters to follow.This chapter describes the framework of statistical publishing in the UK with sections on the general organization and development of Official Statistics and the range and nature of non-official statistical sources.Official StatisticsCentral government is the major collector and publisher of statistics in the United Kingdom and these statistics are usually referred to as Official Statistics. In a number of subject areas, Official Statistics have been collected, in one form or another, for centuries. For example, the earliest figures on the quantities and value of goods landed and discharged at ports, usually referred to as commodity import and export statistics, were collected in the thirteenth century. The first modern national population census was carried out in 1801 although William the Conqueror’s ‘Domesday Book’ was produced long before this date.
eBook - PDFA Career in Statistics
Beyond the Numbers
- Gerald J. Hahn, Necip Doganaksoy(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
THE IMPORTANCE OF Official Statistics Janet Norwood expressed the need for government statistics as follows (Norwood, 2006): "Those who make governmental decisions need to be informed of the facts: they require objective knowledge of what is actually happening, because only ihen can government act wisely. . .. Statistical measurement is an important pari of that knowledge. .. .You cannot have a democracy without a sound statistical system that is objective and relevant The statistical system in a democracy has a heavy responsibility. More and more government policy is run by the numbers. Voting districts depend on Census results. Social Security payments are increased as die CPI rises, and people's view of the success or failure of a government policy frequently depend on whether GDP or the unemployment rate goes up. Our view of what is happening in almost every aspect of everyday life is in some way affected by the numbers." Len Cook adds (in a persona! communication) that statisticians responsible for Official Statistics '"work in a unique context, as they operate with a strong statutory authority to gather information about the lives of citizens, and of the nature of business and other organizations, in order to report on the condition of the population, and the nature of commerce. ... Their work is always visible in some way." 4 It should be noted, however, that the main point of Norwood's article is to argue that the system, "while giving tremendous value, also shows signs of wear and tear" and many parts "need refurbishing and bolstering," requiring "sustained research and development to guide improvement and innovations." Reamer (2009) provides a number of specific examples of the system's alleged wear and tear. 3.3 EXAMPLES OF THE WORK 39 3.3 EXAMPLES OF THE WORK Statistics is a guide in the journey from evidence to policy.
eBook - ePubA Career in Statistics
Beyond the Numbers
- Gerald J. Hahn, Necip Doganaksoy(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
- The proper collection, analysis, and reporting of Official Statistics by government and other organizations is a vast, and critically important, challenge. Customers for the resulting information include government agencies, businesses, and the general public.
- Official Statistics involves all areas of society. Some typical examples, in addition to the all-important national censuses, are measuring inflation, tracking crimes, improving tax collection, and assessing gender equality.
- In the United States, 14 major federal statistical agencies are heavily engaged in statistics; much additional work is conducted by various other federal, state, and local agencies.
- Similar work is conducted by governments worldwide, using structures and methods built around each nation’s culture—as well as by international agencies, such as the United Nations.
- Statisticians are frequently engaged in the development, implementation, and updating of systems, or surveys, for gathering, storing, processing, and making accessible needed data.
- Many of the surveys government statisticians work on are ongoing; others are one-time. Systems development time can range from a few months to decades.
- Systems need to be monitored and modified over time to ensure that they remain relevant in the face of changing needs and accurate and efficient despite advances in technology and changes in society.
- Some statisticians, especially outside the 14 statistically focused agencies, work principally as data intermediaries.
- Statisticians involved in Official Statistics are engaged, to varying degrees, in conducting research to conceive new programs and improve existing ones and in developing and evaluating new technologies.
- Federal government job classifications differentiate between statisticians and mathematical statisticians. Most statisticians working in the major U.S. federal statistical agencies are hired as mathematical statisticians. They are expected to perform a much broader array of statistical work than statisticians.
eBook - ePub- R. K. Mishra, Jayasree Raveendran, K. N. Jehangir(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge India(Publisher)
Public administrators can do certain things on their own but do involve/engage professionals/scholars to do much of the job that uses statistical inputs. The government appoints commissions and committees, advisory groups and working groups, task forces and expert panels on a continuing basis as well as ad hoc basis. Social scientists, scientists and other scholars are invited to be part of these groups, forces and panels. Studies to evaluate schemes and quantify outcomes, general and specific, are commissioned to academia and think tanks. They aid public administration often using sound statistical analysis to help the State in making better decisions, devising better policies, and finding ways to influence public opinion.In India, as in other countries, we have special statistical and economic services within administration and also general statistical offices carrying out surveys and/or compiling statistical data and computing indices as well as statistical cells in each of the Departments/Ministries at the Union and State level as well as at district level within the state. Statistical activities alongside traditional administrative activities are also organized. They may be in the form of compiling census of the human population or livestock, crop cutting experiments or collection of price intelligence, to name a few.Statistics and Public AdministrationStatistics has been very successful in making its mark from astronomy to administration, business to biology, housing to health, engineering to environment, commerce to community, manufacturing to ministry, marketing to management, industry to infrastructure, politics to policy, tourism to trade union and sports to strategy. Modern decision-making, be it for an individual or a business or any government or an international agency, is increasingly using statistical methods to improve the quality of information.Role of StatisticsCollection of facts/data has to be done through an appropriate method, which is understandable and well-appreciated. But certain decisions, associated to administration, have to be taken, such as the following:
- Ger Snijkers, Mojca Bavdaz, Stefan Bender, Jacqui Jones, Steve MacFeely, Joseph W. Sakshaug, Katherine J. Thompson, Arnout van Delden, Mojca Bavdaz, Stefan Bender, Jacqui Jones, Ger Snijkers, Steve MacFeely, Joseph W. Sakshaug, Katherine J. Thompson, Arnout van Delden, Mojca Bavdaz, Stefan Bender, Jacqui Jones, Ger Snijkers, Steve MacFeely, Joseph W. Sakshaug, Katherine J. Thompson, Arnout van Delden(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
2021 , p. 1). This included improved coordination and collaboration between group. All these improvements would very much help and support NSIs in producing official economic statistics.8.4.2 Statistical Principles to Produce and Disseminate Official Statistics
There are international statistical principles and standards for producing and disseminating Official Statistics. For example:- The UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UNSC 2014 ), which broadly outlines professional standards for Official Statistics; and
- The IMF Special Dissemination Data Standard s (SDDS s), which commits countries to the dissemination of a minimum set of economic and financial statistics.2
Official Statistics is a brand that represents specific professional principles. In 1994, the UNSC endorsed the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, which were subsequently amended and adopted in 2014 (UNSC 2014 ).The Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (FPOS) are a pillar of the Global Statistical System. By enshrining our profound conviction and commitment that Official Statistics have to adhere to well‐defined professional and scientific standards, they define us as a professional community, reaching across political, economic and cultural borders.(United Nations 2015 , p. 3).In the European Statistical System (ESS ), for Latin America and the Caribbean, and in some countries, e.g. United Kingdom, specific codes of practice (CoP ) for Official Statistics have been developed, broadly aligned to the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. The European Statistics Code of Practice (Eurostat 2017a , b ) contains the high‐level principles listed in Table 8.4 . Compliance with the CoP is periodically assessed via peer reviews with strict follow‐up for countries not fully compliant. The third round of peer reviews commenced in 2021 using a combination of self‐assessment and peer review visits (Eurostat 2020
- Cosmo Wyndham Howard(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Beyond this, they should also deliver data that aids the work and decision-making of legislative and judicial branches, academia, the news media, private and third sectors and the general public. This Professional Credibility 41 imperative for policy and social usefulness is clearly encapsulated in the UN’s Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics: Principle 1 states that Official Statistics must ‘meet the test of practical utility’ (United Nations Statistical Commission, 2014). One of the reasons statistics must create the impression of delivering value to publics and governments is that statistical production is a resource-intensive activity. There are always many calls on government funding, including claims by different groups of government experts that they need more resources in order to carry out their socially important work. As scholars of public administration and public policy have noted, pressure on state budgets has increased since the 1970s as a result of the slowing of economic growth after the end of the long boom, growing resistance to taxation and global trade competition (Peters, 2010). In this context, professional experts are likely to face a heightened pressure to demonstrate that the work they do delivers value – and indeed greater value than the other uses to which scarce resources could be put. Another element potentially creating a greater imperative on value demonstration is the rise of competition for the supply of expertise in government. A major development in public administration of the last four decades has been the effort by governments to reform systems of administration to introduce competition. Spurred by the view that professionals had captured state agencies and budgets, and were unac- countable for their performance, governments introduced new techni- ques and strategies to alter the balance of power away from professionals, under the rubric of the ‘new public management’ (Clarke and Newman, 1997).
eBook - ePubPositivism and Sociology (RLE Social Theory)
Explaining Social Life
- Peter Halfpenny(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The work of the political arithmeticians did not take the name ‘statistics’ until late in the eighteenth century. ‘Stateistics’ was initially used to describe the activity, that began in mid-seventeenth-century Germany, of cataloguing features of the many states, principalities and free cities that made up that country. Statistics was widely taught in German universities as an aid to statecraft. Complicated sets of categories were devised. Initially the detail that went into the classificatory schema consisted of verbal descriptions of such matters as the land, constitution and administration of each state, or of references to sources of information on these matters. By the end of the eighteenth century, to facilitate comparisons, tables were being produced with the states along one edge and the categories down another, and the verbal entries replaced by numbers, a development derogated as vulgar ‘table statistics’ by the teachers of the earlier statecraft.Nevertheless, it was the table statisticians and political arithmeticians who usurped the name ‘statistics’, and the socioeconomic changes accompanying the advent of industrial capitalism brought renewed interest in their type of systematic collection and analysis of economic and vital statistics in early nineteenth-century Britain and France and late nineteenth-century Germany and America. Again the purpose was to aid policy formation. Social reformers among the new bourgeoisie, concerned about the fate of the urbanised industrial working class and about their own position in society, formed statistical societies, organised large-scale systematic social surveys and published journals, all to support their demands for the reforms they believed would stabilise society (Oberschall, 1972a; Shaw and Miles, 1979). Numerical information on a wider and wider range of topics was collected, and the Parisian lawyer André Michel Guerry coined the term ‘moral statistics’ as the analogue of vital statistics to describe quantified measures of the depravity of the masses – crime, imprisonment, intemperence, sexual conduct, public health, schooling, and so on (P. Abrams, 1968). In England the centralised state agencies that Petty had earlier campaigned for were finally established: the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade for economic statistics in 1832 and the General Register Office for civil registration of vital statistics in 1836. Other European countries followed suit during the nineteenth century, and national decennial censuses were instituted over the same period.
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