Sociology is the study of social facts whilst a highly reliable source (aka Wikipedia) says that
“Sociology is the study of society, human social behaviour, patterns of social and relationships, social interaction, and culture that surrounds everyday life.”
And the University of Bath describes it as the social processes and forces that shape our lives aka as opposed to just individual or psychological explanations. It’s a holistic view of society.
Sociology is often categorized under the umbrella of social sciences but you know people who study hard sciences like biology or physics will say that is not a science.
Choosing the Research Topic – Keep your focus on Sociological
Sociologists examine larger social problems:
- We focus on the institutional level of society
- We talk about specific demographic groups
- And we talk about power and inequality
Therefore, start with:
- A particular social problem. Simple equation that brings attention to the three most important sociological frames that UK university students should consider.
Institution + demographics + Power
- Select current societal issues in the UK (like immigration issues, gender inequality, and so on)
- Choose a topic that can be finished within the timeframe and the resources.
- So, you are talking about some kind of social institution. Hence just be very specific and identify it.
Social Institutions
Social institutions are things like the Government, Schools, Medical establishments, Military, Economy, Family, Religious places, Marriage, patriarchy, financial institutions, and so on. Those are the kinds of institutions that we’re looking at.
Demographics
Demographics are basically understanding the ways in which your society divides and categorizes people and so for example, think about the UK census, what are the categories on the census and how does it change over time.
The different Demographic categories we might look at include gender, race, sexual orientation, social class, status, nationality, religion, geographic location, education, primary language spoken, your employment, your employment status, your prestige of employment, your marital status and so on.
Power
Sociologists always also want to pay attention to issues of power and inequality in society. And how does power and inequality relate to your specific research topic?
The different Power categories and how it’s exercised. So, we want to understand the larger social structure of power and inequality, as it relates to our particular topic.
3 Main Assumptions
- Interaction
- Meaning
- Interpretation
These are the guiding principles for studying the phenomenon of social interactionism. These paths are not linear and they are not disparate. Rather, they are circuitous and are constantly negotiating definitions among themselves.
You should pick a topic that interests you, so you might start with your own personal background or your hobbies. Alternatively, you might pick a topic that you are an outsider of and so this will give you a different perspective as well. So, you have to figure out, are you going to study a topic that you’re an insider of or an outsider of?
Methodology
- Question – Research starts with a question. And the key to deciding on a question is defining the concepts that you’re studying, and making sure that both you and your audience agree on what those concepts mean. What if the way you are defining poverty isn’t how your audience imagines poverty? So, you have to define your concepts, which becomes even more important when you get to the next part of the research process.
- Hypothesis – a statement of a possible relationship between two variables. A variable is just something that can take on many different values – it varies. you have to define the exact variable you’re going to measure, and exactly how you will measure it. This changes when the independent variable changes.
- Correlation – Correlation is what happens when two variables move together. It can be easy to misinterpret a correlation to conclude that one thing causes the other when it doesn’t.
Collecting your data
- Experiments – Experiments in sociology work much as they do in the natural sciences, just with humans as subjects instead of mice or atoms of beryllium.
- Surveys – The second method that researchers use is a survey. Typically, researchers are interested in the responses of a specific group of people – what we call the population of interest.
- Participant Observation – Participant observation is when researchers observe people by joining them in their daily routines. The result of this type of research is called an ethnography.
- Existing Resources – Many sociologists analyse existing sources of data, collected by others. The most common of these sources are government agencies, which collect statistics on income, health, education, employment, marriage, and so on.
Thesis structure
UK Sociology thesis typically should follow a structure:
- Title Page
- Abstract
- Acknowledgements
- Table of contents
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Methodology
- Findings/Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendices
Conclusion
A lot of sociologists pick topics that are related to their demographics or their passions or hobbies. If you are picking a topic that you don’t know much about, keep your focus sociological.
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