Where a certain percentage of fluctuation is possible, like your body temperature, to much variance and then entire organism is going to show evidence of stress. Naturally, the conflict theorist will look at the same social indicators that the structural functionalist uses, but will interpret the results in respect to perceived levels of power. Change often brings conflict with it.
Social indicators are statistical statements describing social facts.
Divorce statistics can be used as a indicator of system pathology. Declaring such statistics as evidence of pathology can be the first step toward proposing social policy. Every time that the United States faced a new wave of migration, crime when up. Urbanization and industrialization brought with it higher levels of divorce, rape, theft, suicide, etc. When these conditions were of a small scale, social pathology was adequate to explain it.