Why Don't Sociologists Make More Use of Official Statistics?

Abstract

This paper considers the advantages and disadvantages of using official statistics - from administrative sources, vital registration, population censuses and government social surveys - in sociological inquiry. In recent years influential critiques of such data by Cicourel, J. D. Douglas, Hindess and other have come to hold powerful sway in sociology. Yet their criticisms have been exaggerated, overdrawn and extended illegitimately far beyond fields such as suicide and crime in which they were originally developed. The advantages of such official data are here reasserted, by means of examples drawn from the study of health, wealth, occupation, social class and race and ethnicity. Significant and meaningful empirical regularities have been shown using such data. Facts do not speak for themselves, but neither does theory speak for itself. The conceptual difficulties are not so intractable as critics of the use of official data tend to suggest. Traditions of the use of official statistics in social science stemming from the works of Ernest Burgess, William F. Ogburn, S. R. Steinmetz and Oscar Morgenstern are discussed. The past achievements and future potential of research using such data are suggested.