Category: Statistics

  • A-Level Sociology Official Statistics Starter (Answers)

    One of the supposed advantages of official statistics is that they are quick and easy to use to find out basic information. To test this out, I use the following as a starter for my ‘official statistics’ lesson with my A-level sociology students: I print the above off as a one paged hand-out and give…

  • The state of the nation

    Is life in the UK getting better or worse? In this post I evaluate this question by looking at a few official statistics.

  • What the public thinks of Boris Johnson

    YouGov recently published a post outlining ‘Everything they know about what the public think of Boris Johnson‘ – these are basically the results of various opinion polls carried out in recent months and are a great example of secondary quantitative data. The polls clearly show that most people think Boris will be a strong leader,…

  • Have one in five Britons really considered going vegan?

    Have one in five Britons really considered going vegan?

    According to a recent poll (1) of 1000 people, one in five Britons have considered going vegan, which is 20% of the population. But how many of these people have a genuine intention of going vegan? Possibly not that many….. Firstly, if someone’s asking you questions about veganism, there is going to be a degree…

  • Outline and explain two practical advantages of using official statistics

    Official Statistics are a quick and cheap means of accessing data relevant to an entire population in a country. They are cheap for researchers to use because they are collected by governments, who often make them available online for free—for example, the UK Census. Marxists might point out that the fact they are free enables…

  • Britain in Statistics (2017)

    Just a look back at what some of the official statistics and opinion polls told us about life in Britain in 2017…selected so they’re relevant to families and households, education and crime and deviance… The proportion of women aged 18 who started university in 2017 was nearly 1/3rd greater than men – 37.1% compared to…

  • The most popular A Levels of 2017

    Maths wins, with 88, 000 entries, followed by English (74, 000 entries) and just to prove we truly live in an uncritical, individualised society, Psychology comes in at 3rd with 57,000 entries. Here’s a tree map I knocked up showing this – the interactive version is at this link Click here for another interactive version…

  • Explaining the Increase in Sex Crime Prosecutions

    A fifth of Crown Prosecution cases are alleged sex crimes or domestic abuse. In fact, the proportion compared to all prosecutions has nearly trebled in the last decade. Alleged sex crimes and domestic abuse offences now account for nearly 20% of cases pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service compared to just under 8% a decade…

  • Education in the UK – Key Facts and Stats

    Official Statistics on schools, teachers and educational achievement provided by the United Kingdom government provide an overview of the education system. They are useful for providing an ‘introduction to the state of education in the U.K’, before embarking on the core content of any sociology of education course and providing a basis for comparing the U.K. education system…

  • Evaluating the Usefulness of Official Statistics

    Official Statistics are numerical data collected by governments and their agencies. This post examines a ranges of official statistics collected by the United Kingdom government and evaluates their usefulness. The aim of this post is to demonstrate one of the main strengths of official statistics – they give us a ‘snap shot’ of life in the U.K. and they…