tagtag.com/sociologydegree
1 ? 10: Fail
A weak or no attempt to answer the questions.
Unreferenced or inappropriate referencing.
Rote learned, tangental answers.
One-sided answers
10 ? 11: Pass barrier
To pass the student must have:
Attempted to answer directly
Displayed knowledge of the subject area
Indicated that they had read and understood the subject guide and basic texts
Statements should be referenced.
In the exam you must read the stimulus paragraph or look at and try to understand the stimulus material.
No matter what concepts you are asked to discuss or explain it is always important that you mention the notion that these concepts are debated over, that no two sociologists agree on the definition.
So if the question reads as follows; what do sociologists mean by modernity? It isn?t enough to give one definition. You must mention the idea that no one agrees on this definition.
What is it that gives social life a sense of order and stability? This question is central to sociology and is answered in various ways.
Marx ? division of labour causing false consciousness
Durkheim ? social solidarity, caused by the division of labour
Giddens ? social practices, trust in specialists. Humans have a basic need for ?ontological security?.
Systematic, objective and non-
selective. A journalist is trying to grab your attention, a sociologists is trying to cover all the angles on the social problem, including ideas that do not agree with the hypothesis drawn up by the sociologist.
Systematic ? planned course of action. A plan has been drawn up in order to get a representative sample of views and opinions.
Objective ? An attempt at remaining impartial and putting emotions to one-side. Whether this is achievable is debatable.
A sociological problem, is an attempt to get at the causes of a social problem. In most societies the people respond to criminals in much the same way, lock them up. However crime still continues to be a social problem, which leads us to the idea that a new solution is required,
and in order to find this new solution we must understand the causes of crime, not just the effect.
Descriptive sociology, usually quantitative, supplies the data that is involved in a particular social problem.
Explanatory sociology then tries to uncover the causal mechanism that produces the outcome that is observed, (the social problem).
Use of Analogy in Sociology:
I often use analogies when trying to explain something without using jargon. (The goldfish bowl) But in your exam paper, DO NOT use these silly little descriptions, Please.
Durkheim has produced the most well known analogy, that of the biological or organic analogy. Marx also used one, the base/superstructure analogy. When writing in the exam DO NOT draw diagrams, triangles or goldfish bowls. You most explain the analogy in words.
The problem with any analogy is ?
I don?t know what it looks like.
I will use an analogy to say that it looks like something else?
However, I still don?t know what it looks like, but it looks like this?
A concept is an idea,
something that you can?t touch or see. Status is an idea, a concept. Because these ideas are subjective, we need to know that we?re talking about the same thing, so I will define my concept carefully.
I will use physical, quantifiable things to describe my concept. I cannot measure an idea, but I can measure physical things.
When I decide on the indicators I am said to be operationalising the concept.
My ontology and epistemology will determine the indicators that I decide on.
Comparative Method
Weber and the rise of capitalism. Why was it particular to the West? Why didn?t China, India also have the expansion of capitalism too?
He compared data from different social contexts and identified similarities and differences.
Three Important Concepts
Reliability ? (P., McNeill, 1989)
Participant observation, because it is a lone researcher in a situation that cannot be repeated is always in danger of being thought unreliable.
Validity ? Any survey style research, most realise that what they are collecting are peoples answers to questions, which may not be a true picture of their activities. Not simply lies.
Representativeness ? Is the group you are studying typical of others? Careful sampling is required in order to assume that our small picture can be generalized to the larger group.
Where will the terms Reliability and Validity go in the diagram below? Descriptive, Explanatory Sociology?
Quantitative Data
Survey
Structured Interview
Questionnaires
Official Statistics
---------------------
---------------------
---------------------
-----------------
Methods continued...
Home Site Map my.TagTag
Terms of Use
TagTag.com