ABSTRACT
When social researchers want a general overview of some social phenomenon (say, how many people in Britain are unemployed, or how many people are patients in psychiatric hospitals, or how many women are raped each year), they often begin by consulting the government’s official statistics. The Oxford Dictionary defines statistics as ‘numerical facts systematically collected on the subject’, and social statistics have been compiled in Western European countries for several hundred years. In nineteenth-century Britain, the state’s growing involvement in industrial, economic and social affairs triggered the rapid expansion of the state’s statistical services. From the 1880s onwards, the state monitored and measured more and more aspects of social life more and more closely, and in 1941 the Government Statistical Service (GSS) was set up as a distinct section of the Civil Service. It expanded steadily until the 1970s, after which growth levelled off ( Government Statisticians’ Collective 1993: 147). Today, governments in all economically developed countries produce official statistics which describe population trends, employment patterns, mortality rates, trends in crime and sentencing, levels of economic activity, and much, much more, and these statistics are a source of information which can be used by social researchers. The way in which such statistics are produced has been summarised as follows:
The most crucial documents in the whole process of producing statistics are the forms, or returns, sent out by the government department (not necessarily by the statisticians) to the organizations from which information is needed: for example, to the offices of business firms, local tax offices, police stations, employment exchanges and local authority social services departments. The unfortunate people given the job of filling in these forms collect (or sometimes invent) and record the requisite information with varying degrees of accuracy and comprehensibility…. The completed forms are typically posted, or ferried by van, to a data processing and computer centre in a provincial town. … It is the statisticians’ job to order, analyse and interpret computer output so as to meet the requirements of the departmental administrators for information, and to compile statistical volumes and reports.
( Government Statisticians’ Collective 1993: 149)