When it comes to doing sociological research, it can be advantageous to the researcher to use official statistics within their research. Official statistics are fairly easy to access and by using them a lot of time is saved by not having to collect as much primary data, analysis of this data would be quick and the data itself would be fairly up-to-date. It is also cheaper to use official statistics as having to collect qualitative data could result in travel costs by moving to the area of the study. In some cases, official statistics may be the only way to collect a certain set of data needed for the research, for example, in 1897 Durkheim used official statistics taken from a coroners reports from different areas to research the suicide rates of those areas. Because he had done this he was able to argue that the social factors of those areas, such as overall wealth or religion, were infact major influences on the rates of suicide.

For some topics the only way to do the research is through the use of secondary data, if you are trying to research something that happened many years ago then there is no way that you would be able to collect primary data for it in the present, forcing the need for secondary data to be used.

Even though using official statistics is reliable it also has quite a few weaknesses. One major weakness is the definitions of the words used, you can't always be sure that the person who wrote the statistics definitions of words like “Crime” or “Class” could be the same as