The Social Construction of Official Statistics: The Case of the UK "Measuring National Well-being' Programme

This article is interested in the process of official statistic-making which, it is argued, has previously only been lightly examined. It makes the case that role of statistics in public discourse makes them an important object of study but that while literatures exist around the topic of official statistics, they tend to present their subject as neutral factual claims rather than purposeful interpretations of phenomena. This article seeks to contribute to literatures around the nature of the official statistic by examining official statistic making as a social process, one in which agents act with and against both structures and each other to produce contingent readings of external phenomena. This is done through an examination of moments in the process of the making of the UK's Measuring National Well-being' programme. These moments show a statistical outcome which is shaped by agents acting to serve a multitude of ends. It is argued that considerations of official statistics from the standpoint of their production allow new ways of understanding the form and content of statistics, and with it the uses to which they are put.