Others (interactionists) focus down on smaller groups and individuals – they concentrate on the way people behave within society, how they interact with others and how people live their daily lives which, in turn, makes society what it is.

Takes place in early childhood

the main shaping influence is the family and home

Family is one of the most important agencies of socialisation

Advantages and disadvantages of cross sectional studies?

Advantages:

Not as time consuming as a longitudinal survey. Can be a cheap way of gathering a lot of information.

Disadvantages:

Cross- sectional A cross-sectional survey takes a cross section of the population and questions them on relevant issues only once. A questionnaire asking students about their attitudes towards sex only once Not as time consuming as a longitudinal survey. Can be a cheap way of gathering a lot of information. This only gives us a snapshot view. It only tells us about people at one particular point in time.

Longitudinal A study of the same group over time. A questionnaire is given to a group of students concerning their attitudes towards sex.

Disadvantages:

A questionnaire is given to them every year until they finish University. Allows us to examine social change over time. Can be time consuming and expensive.

Agreed reward for positive actions or penalty for negative actions

Agencies of informal are

Media families school

All exert pressure to make sure you stick to the laws rules and norms of society

Main agencies are

The police who make sure we conform to the laws created by legislature and investigate cases of law breaking

The judiciary who deal with those who break law

The prison who look after those who have been breaking laws

Education as well as they have formal rules and impose negative sanctions if someone breaks law

The government taking responsibility for the health and financial wellbeing of population

Which group does the government use to define which class your in and how many categories are within that?

Registrars general classification

6 categories within

Interviewer can explain with that questions mean

All the respondents answer the same questions so results are easy to convert to quantitative data

Reliable and easily repeated

They can generalise the results to a representative sample

Preset questions means you cant look further into an answer and ask why if it is not one of the questions.

interviewers have fewer opportunities to raise new issues

The Interviewer Effect- respondents may be pressured to give socially acceptable answers to look like they fit in

Where someone cant afford to do things like activities that would be considered normal in society and not being able to posses certain things that would be considered the norm in society

A group concerned about a single issue that applies pressure to bring about change

what have groups tried to do to bring about change to the government about poverty?

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) is the leading charity campaigning for the abolition of child poverty in the UK and for a better deal for low-income families and children.The End Child Poverty Coalition shows that 3.8 million children – one in three – are currently living in poverty in the UK.

On an international level such groups as Christian Aid, Action on Aid, Live Aid, and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) all keep the issue in the spotlight.

When media coverage of an issue leads to exaggerated public concern

Blowing things out of proportion by over reporting in the media i.e islamophobia

data is reliable if it can be repeated and consistently comes up with the same results.

data is valid if it gives a true image of what is being studied

a study on a small scale before main research is done

quick, easy, collect a lot of data, easily converted into quantitative data, produce reliable data

questions can be biased, closed questions so respondents may not answer truthfully, questions may be misunderstood, lack of validity

observations ( covert and overt), unstructured interviews, open questions in questionnaires, focus groups

As the researcher, you are actively involved in the group’s activities as well as making a record of what you see. A study of student behaviour in the classroom could be carried out in the lessons you attend; you would be participating as well as recording events.

You watch and record what is happening but are not involved in the group’s activities. If you were looking at the way teachers distribute their time between boys and girls in a primary school classroom, you might sit in a corner to observe and record from there.

journalists want to look for sensationalist stories, look for good stories by manipulating the truth to sell more copies of their magazine/ newspaper for money.

sociologists look at why things are happening and the corrolation/patterns etc they look at the truth regardless of how boring or interesting it is.