The problem of ‘ideology’ and ‘politics’
influencing statistics
affects not only their reliability
and validity
but also their availability.
In some cases this problem was insurmountable,
and statistics on, for example,
the number of young asylum seekers,
were simply not available;
the discussion section deals with this.
However, rather than allow the availability
of statistics – a political issue –
to shape which variables
I chose to present
data on, I felt a moral
imperative to present the findings with ‘gaps’
since, in any case, the gaps
in these statistics spoke perhaps
more, than the statistics
which were available.
Excerpt from my 2009 dissertation. Submitted by Emma.
Verbatim Poetry 