... methods. On the other hand sociologists such as Maxwell-Atkinson, Cicourel influenced by the institutionalist school of thought would argue that statistics are a product of the meanings and taken for granted assumptions of those who construct them. In order to fully assess the usefulness of statistics it is also necessary to take into consideration the practical advantages/ disadvantages and the theoretical advantages and disadvantages. Thus it is this debate I shall now turn to. In order to answer the overall question it is necessary to firstly take into account the practical arguments in favour of using official statistics in research. Arguments in favour include that official statistics are widely available in large quantities. This allows the researcher to generalise to the whole of the population. Due to statistics being readily available and free this in turn saves the researcher time and money and therefore they can turn their attention to more ...

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