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Books.ANDREW L. CREIGHTONDEMOGRAPHIC METHODS
Demographic methods are used to provide re-
searchers and policymakers with useful informa-
tion about the size and structure of human popula-
tions and the processes that govern population
changes. A population, of course, may range in
size from a small number of individuals surveyed
locally to a large national population enumerated
in periodic censuses to even larger aggregated
entities.We use demographic methods not only in
purely demographic applications, but also in a
variety of other fields, among them sociology,
economics, anthropology, public health, and busi-
ness. Demographers, like all researchers, must pay
careful attention to the quality of data that enter
into their analyses. Some circumstances under
which we use these methods are more trying than
others. In cases in which the data are viewed to be
accurate and complete, the methods we use to
analyze them are more straightforward than those
that are applied to data of imperfect quality.DESCRIPTION OF DATAFirst we must develop ways to describe our data in
a fashion that allows the most important facts to
leap out at us. As one example, let us examine a
population’s age structure or distribution. Simple
descriptive statistics are doubtless helpful in sum-
marizing aspects of population age structure, but
demographers often use age ‘‘pyramids’’ to con-
vey to an audience the youthfulness of a popula-
tion, for example, or even to convey a rough sense
of a nation’s history.