Official Statistics and Suicide

Identify and briefly explain two problems of using official statistics in the study of suicide. (8 marks)

Two marks for each of two appropriate problems identified, such as:•
they may lack detail about the deceased that the sociologist considers important;•
not all instances of suicide may have been recorded;•
incorrect categorisation of cases;•
suicide statistics are a social construct;•
the official definition of suicide may differ from that of the sociologist;• some states may not have collected suicide statistics.

Two further marks for each of these satisfactorily explained, such as:
• they may lack detail about the deceased that the sociologist considers important: eg Durkheim found that some French suicide statistics did not record the religion of the deceased, which was of importance to his hypothesis about the causes of suicide;•

not all instances of suicide may have been recorded: eg an attempted suicide may not come to the attention of officials because the individual survives without official intervention. Other suicides may never be discovered because the body is not found;

• incorrect categorisation of cases: eg a coroner may categorise a suicide as misadventure to spare the feelings of relatives;

• suicide statistics are a social construct: they do not represent objective reality or the real rate of suicide, but merely the number of deaths labelled as such by social actors

Professor Sarbene