ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to redress the imbalance by putting forward some arguments in favour of the use of official statistics. Official statistics are available, more pertinent to some sociological problems and less flawed than is commonly supposed. It would be widely agreed that official statistics as sociological data are difficult, intractable and to be treated with even more suspicion than any other quantitative datum in social science. The chapter briefly demonstrates the essential importance of the interplay between general categories and empirical observations of reality by looking at three familiar sociological concepts which also appear in official statistics. Though 'ethnography' is increasingly used to refer generally to qualitative field research using observational methods, its original meaning denoted the descriptive activities and results of social anthropological research. 'Sociography' denoted the descriptive activities of sociological research. The history of the aspect of Chicago sociology shows the fruitful uses which can be made of official data.
