Abstract: based on an analysis of the works of L.V. Khodsky, the article presents theoretical and methodological approaches to statistical observation. The development of the theory of statistics, the increase in academic disciplines, contributed to a rethinking in scientific approaches and the formulation of a new interpretation of fundamentally important scientific categories, forming a methodological basis for their justification. The main tasks of statistics, as a science of the structure and life of society, according to L.V. Khodsky, included the study of collective elements in the sense of elucidating collective concepts and definitions, and studying the signs of social masses: by age, citizenship, and occupation. A statistical study, in its foundation, in the interpretation of Khodsky, should have a systematic mass observation, consisting of observations of a very large number of individuals. The essence of the latter was reduced to the division of the collective phenomenon into possibly simple constituent elements that could be counted or measured, and to the recording of individual features of these elements.
Accumulating the scientific judgments of his predecessors and relying on the practice of statistical accounting, Khodsky identified a number of conditions that affect the objectivity of the material being formed. Here he included the choice of the most suitable method of observation, a well-developed plan of observations, their concentration in appropriate institutions, the selection of appropriate monitoring bodies and the preparation of the population with a view to its reasonable attitude to statistical observations and indications.
Keywords: statistical science, history, accounting, statistics, grouping, L.V. Khodsky