Exploring Society By The NumbersModules
Students will empirically examine the issues underlying school performance using data that captures some of their own experiences.
This module teaches students to think about contemporary race and ethnic diversity in families, to use census data in the sociology of the family, to use computer software to access and analyze census data and to produce and interpret simple statistics.
In this exercise, we'll examine contemporary and historical data on financial resources.
Students will trace changes in family behavior from 1950 to 1990 and assess their magnitude, considering the pace and timing of these changes. Marital status, number of children and household type will be examined by both race/ethnicity and class.
Students will trace changes in family behavior from 1950 to 1990 and assess their magnitude, considering the pace and timing of these changes. Marital status, number of children and household type will be examined by both race/ethnicity and class. Additional team questions will be introduced that focus on marriage and intimate relationships; fertility and childrearing; divorce; and families and poverty. Students will present answers and supporting data to these questions via class presentations.
Income differences can be measured narrowly or broadly. A narrow definition might include only work for which pay is received, what economists call earnings, which can range from an hour to a year to a lifetime. A less narrow definition of income could add to earnings "unearned" income, which includes sources such as transfer payments, interest and dividends, or capital gains. An even broader definition of income would include wealth, which uses assets and liabilities. Regardless of how one measures income and their differences, the fundamental issues are the same: Why are there income differences within and among countries and what are their patterns? For example, there is a raging public debate about the growing income inequality and decline of the middle class in the United States?
Focusing on education, we will examine the changes from 1950 to 1990 in the numbers, race, gender, and occupations of high school and college graduates. Turning our attention to cohorts and population structure, we will trace birth trends over the past four decades, namely the Baby Boom, and discuss possible causes and effects.
There is no question that life in America has changed drastically in the past fifty years. Given the importance of examining historical change inherent in the life course perspective, it is important to determine how changes in the social structure over time impact individuals. Therefore, the goals of this data analysis exercise are to examine changes in marriage and employment over the last fifty years. The purposes are to identify the changes that have taken place, and to hypothesize how these changes may affect the process of desistance from crime today.
Students will interpret CensusScope data regarding segregation exposure and the dissimilarity index from a sociological perspective.
In this three-part module, students develop a practical understanding of the sociological imagination through data analysis.
Students will investigate how social events between 1950 and 1990 led to changes in occupation.
Students will investigate how social events between 1950 and 1990 led to changes in occupation.
This activity provides an introduction to U.S. Census data using American Factfinder.
Students will look at correlation and causation by exploring the relationship between high school dropout rates and violent crime, poverty, teenage pregnancy rates, and teenage death rates.
The purpose of this module is to familiarize students in an Introduction to Sociology and Anthropology course to social science data. Students will explore inequality in the United States by examining census data.
In this module you will explore some of the impacts of this immigration by examining the characteristics of the foreign-born population, comparing these characteristics to those of the native born population. You will get a chance to explore where immigrants come from, how the composition of the immigrant population has changed, where immigrants settle, and what they do once they get here.
As students investigate Appalachian poverty and its social policy implications, they will explore the difference between correlation and causation, learn about poverty indicators, and practice creating and interpreting graphs.
Occupational sex segregation will be studied by focusing on traditionally gender-oriented occupations and analyzing which have an increasing proportion of males or females, and which are still mainly gender-specific jobs. These analyses will be done by age group to study trends at different stages of people's careers.
This module teaches students to think about household and family dynamics over time, and to use computer software to access and analyze census data and to produce and interpret simple statistics.
Overall, we see that even when controlling for occupation, gender continues to affect earnings: women make less than men. In this exercises, students will examine the influence of education on earnings. Do higher levels of education lead to higher earnings?
This module is designed to illustrate differences in family and household composition patterns for different groups based on race/ethnicity and social class. It also serves as a review of key methodological concepts introduced in the first part of the course.
We have spent the last few weeks discussing race, class, and gender inequalities and how sociologists conceptualize these inequalities on the structural, rather than the individual, level. In this second research report, you will have the opportunity to apply this structural perspective. You will use U.S. Census data from 1950 to 1990 to analyze shifts in occupational structures in your home state and how these shifts vary by race, sex, or education. This analysis is macro (state) level, so keep this in mind as you are thinking about and writing about your research.
People are at the root of community profiling: they create the need for planning functions, and they experience the effects - for better or worse - of planning efforts. ""Community Profiling"" is often essential for effective planning. ""Planning"" are synonymous terms; they mean the same. But unless planners know who ""their people"" are and how their characteristics affect - and are affected by - various professional functions, planners cannot fully meet the needs of the population they are profiling. Thus, although it is not a core planning focus, such as land use or transportation, demographic analysis occupies a position of overarching importance in community profiling.
This module introduces students to using census data through three distinct scenarios. First, students must decide where two grocery store chains should go, each with a different target income class. Second, students are responsible for developing an anti-poverty program for each state in the United States. In the third assignment, students will be asked to advise a bookstore called "REALLY BIG BOOKS" about whether it would make sense to locate in Ohio and in Cleveland. REALLY BIG BOOKS is a bookstore specializing in books for collectors, academics, and sophisticated readers.
This module allows students to examine the health consequences social inequality may have.