Who is the father of social statistics?

Spencer suggested that society will correct its own defects through the natural process of “survival of the fittest.” The societal “organism” naturally leans toward homeostasis, or balance and stability. Social problems work themselves out when the government leaves society alone. The “fittest”—the rich, powerful, and successful—enjoy their status because nature has “selected” them to do so. In contrast, nature has doomed the “unfit”—the poor, weak, and unsuccessful—to failure. They must fend for themselves without social assistance if society is to remain healthy and even progress to higher levels. Governmental interference in the “natural” order of society weakens society by wasting the efforts of its leadership in trying to defy the laws of nature.

Karl Marx

Not everyone has shared Spencer's vision of societal harmony and stability. Chief among those who disagreed was the German political philosopher and economist Karl Marx (1818–1883), who observed society's exploitation of the poor by the rich and powerful. Marx argued that Spencer's healthy societal “organism” was a falsehood. Rather than interdependence and stability, Marx claimed that social conflict, especially class conflict, and competition mark all societies.

The class of capitalists that Marx called the bourgeoisie particularly enraged him. Members of the bourgeoisie own the means of production and exploit the class of laborers, called the proletariat, who do not own the means of production. Marx believed that the very natures of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat inescapably lock the two classes in conflict. But he then took his ideas of class conflict one step further: He predicted that the laborers are not selectively “unfit,” but are destined to overthrow the capitalists. Such a class revolution would establish a “class‐free” society in which all people work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.

Unlike Spencer, Marx believed that economics, not natural selection, determines the differences between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He further claimed that a society's economic system decides peoples' norms, values, mores, and religious beliefs, as well as the nature of the society's political, governmental, and educational systems. Also unlike Spencer, Marx urged people to take an active role in changing society rather than simply trusting it to evolve positively on its own.

Emile Durkheim

Despite their differences, Marx, Spencer, and Comte all acknowledged the importance of using science to study society, although none actually used scientific methods. Not until Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) did a person systematically apply scientific methods to sociology as a discipline. A French philosopher and sociologist, Durkheim stressed the importance of studying social facts, or patterns of behavior characteristic of a particular group. The phenomenon of suicide especially interested Durkheim. But he did not limit his ideas on the topic to mere speculation. Durkheim formulated his conclusions about the causes of suicide based on the analysis of large amounts of statistical data collected from various European countries.

Durkheim certainly advocated the use of systematic observation to study sociological events, but he also recommended that sociologists avoid considering people's attitudes when explaining society. Sociologists should only consider as objective “evidence” what they themselves can directly observe. In other words, they must not concern themselves with people's subjective experiences.

Social statistics is the use of statistics to study human behaviour and social environments. Social statistics data is information or knowledge on an individual, object or event.

Understanding society

Social statistics are a means of investigating and testing research questions and policy impacts across different areas of people’s lives. These observations can help our understanding of society. Social Statisticians are concerned with such questions as:

• How are populations growing?
• Are wealthy people happier?
• Is society becoming more tolerant of diversity?
• How do people cope with financial hardship?
• Do people with higher qualifications earn more?
• Does volunteering increase your sense of wellbeing?

Statistics are numbers, summaries of patterns and can also be probabilities.

Statistical analysis can include the design and collection of data, its interpretation and presentation.

Social statistics and quantitative data analysis are key tools for understanding society and social change. We can try to capture people’s attitudes and map patterns in behaviour and circumstances using numbers and also describe how people and populations change.

Data can be numerical values or text, sounds or images, memories or perceptions.

Often the concept of data suggests information that has been through some kind of processing and having a structure. However, many examples of new types of data have very different and often unstructured formats; for example, millions of tweets or thousands of PDFs of public documents.

Huge quantities of data on people, organisations and social groups are collected each day, across the world. As social statisticians, it is our role to analyse and make sense of the huge volumes and sources of data using hypothesis-driven social research.

Social statistics in practice

Social statistics are used by The United Nations Social Statistics Division to analyse differences among social groups and countries, covering such issues as housing, health, education, conditions of work and employment.

The Division pay special attention to the study of conditions of special population groups, including children, the elderly, the unemployed, and people with disabilities.

Compare the facts

Social statistics are also used to compare data from before and after a policy intervention.

For example, we need statistics to measure poverty in the first place and we then may want to assess the impact and costs of a policy providing financial support to families living in poverty.

Patterns and relations

Statistical analysis techniques can be used to explore patterns and underlying relationships in data sets, such as:

• in relation to people’s responses to multiple questions in a survey;
• to take account of aspects of people's circumstances such as the unemployment rates of where they live;
• the educational standards of the class and/or school they are studying in;
• to measure change through longitudinal surveys where people are interviewed at different points during their lives.

My master's degree provides a good foundation of statistical and research methods and I have really enjoyed the course units on more advanced statistical methods.

Emily Buehler / MSc Social Research Methods and Statistics student

Statistical testing and modelling techniques can be used to generalise from small samples to larger populations, for example:

• predicting the outcome of an election;
• tracking attitudes towards the economy in a country.

Probability tests can be used to identify the key factor(s) associated with a particular outcome or behaviour. For example, are older people more likely to be worried about being a victim of crime than younger people once you have taken account of their family status, education, job and the type of area they live in?

If you want to learn more about studying Social Statistics at The University of Manchester please visit our Courses page to explore our undergraduate courses, master's degrees and PhD programme, or find out what's been happening in the Social Statistics department on our News page.

• The Guardian: Data blog
• Radical Statistics Group - Using statistics to support progressive social change 
• Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science

• Gapminder
• Royal Statistical Society
• Office for National Statistics
• UK Statistics Authority
• EUROSTAT
• United Nations Statistics Commission
• World Health Organisation

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