An unprecedented Iceberg

Being introduced to Stretford a town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England where our projects will be based this year brought the question of how our data will be gathered. With the stress of questioning the status quo, traditional research methods came into the debate like official statistics and news reports through our pedagogy.

Official Statistics - are numerical information collected and used by the government and its agencies to make decisions about society and the economy

So shall we disregard official statistics

It became very apparent that this was not a n

Many sociologists use official statistics in their research. There are many reasons why using official statistics can be useful: they are cheap, readily available, and provide detailed quantitative data which is reliable and often representative. Official statistics also provide data for the whole country. Given the scarcity of resources and the expense of funding research, sociologists would be unwise to disregard a cheap and easily available source of data. However, some sociologists, such as Barry Hindess, have argued that official statistics on crime, do have serious deficiencies.

As a result of these criticisms, sociologists and social historians have talked of the ‘dark figure’ of crime, whilst others have used the metaphor of the iceberg to explain crime statistics. Measured levels of crime, are only levels of reported crime – there is always a ‘dark figure’ of unreported crime. As with icebergs, a small proportion of crime is visible, but the bulk remains hidden from our view.