Tag: social facts
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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…
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Scientific Quantitative Methodology in Sociology
Positivists prefer to the limit themselves the study of objective ‘social facts’ and use statistical data and the comparative method to find correlations, and multivariate analysis to uncover statistically significant ‘causal’ relationships between variables and thus derive the laws of human behaviour. This post explores the Positivist approach to social research, defining and explaining all of the above…
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What are ‘Social Facts’ ?
Social Facts are one of Emile Durkheim’s most significant contributions to sociology. Social facts are things such as institutions, norms and values which exist external to the individual and constrain the individual. The University of Colorado lists as examples of social facts: institutions, statuses, roles, laws, beliefs, population distribution, urbanization, etc. Social facts include social…
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Positivism, Sociology and Social Research
Born out of the Enlightenment Positivists believe sociology is scientific and that it can be a force for social progress.
