Develop a 3-5 page outline of concepts you would like to apply to your own life and identify relevant scholarly sources that will help you with your application of concepts.

As you may have noticed as you have worked through earlier assessments, Sociology is applicable to our everyday lives. We can oftentimes take a sociological concept and use it to explain something that occurs in our own lives. For example, you have learned about norms and how we tend to follow the norms of a society. You can use that to explain how people behave when they are in an elevator. Most people face forward, look up at the numbers, and don’t talk.

Many of your experiences can be analyzed using sociological concepts. For your final assessment, Assessment 6, you will complete a Sociology of Me and apply many of the concepts you have learned about in this course to your own life. For Assessment 5, begin to think about which concepts you would like to apply to your own experience, develop an outline, and identify appropriate resources. In order to complete this assessment, you will need to show your understanding of some additional concepts related to social structure, education, and technology/media.

We have learned how a society’s culture can influence people. There are other elements in society, however, that also affect our decisions and behavior. Sociological research has found that in addition to culture, social structure and groups also significantly impact many of our individual choices. Our position in the social structure affects our behaviors, attitudes, and ideas. For example, an important element of social structure are groups. We belong to a variety of different groups. Decades of research have documented the impact of group conformity on the individual. Although people tend to often believe that they act as individuals and aren’t impacted by others, research has found this is usually not the case. The Milgram experiment in your Resources is a great example. Milgram (1963) examined conformity and obedience and found that people are highly influenced by authority and the demands of conformity, even to the point that we will inflict pain on another person to obey authority.

Sociologists also study education and how it is impacted by a society’s culture and structure. The purpose of education is to provide knowledge (facts, skills, cultural norms) to members of a society. In the United States, education teaches us not just skills, but also how to be effective citizens. Education transmits the dominant culture, ensuring that children understand cultural norms and values. Educational attainment impacts life outcomes—it affects our occupation, earnings, work conditions, and health. Thus, education is related to social inequality. We have a tendency to assume that education is an equalizer in the United States, but this is something that is debated by sociologists. Is education equally available to everyone? Studies suggest it is not. Social class can impact the quality of school children attend, what they study, and how many years they attend school. Many students graduate from college with significant student loan debt. How might someone’s experience after college graduation be different if they graduated from college debt-free because their parents could afford to pay for it?

We regularly see new products and services as a result of increasing technology. We often take the influence of technology and media for granted, but it has a substantial impact on how we understand our culture and society as a whole. Many new products and services are a response to society’s changing needs. But technology can also serve to shape the values held by a society. Think about how our interaction has changed in the past ten years as a result of technology. Has that impacted our values? A small number of corporations deliver Internet platforms and a small number of corporations produce most of our media. What impact does that have on our access to technology and information?

Reference

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378.

Demonstration of Proficiency

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

• Competency 1: Examine how theory and sociological concepts apply to everyday life.
  • Identify sociological concepts that affect one’s own field of study.
• Competency 2: Explain the basic tools of sociological inquiry.
  • Identify resources to support analysis from a sociological perspective.
• Competency 4: Analyze the influence of culture on both the individual and society.
  • Explain the relevance of concepts to sociological topics.
• Competency 6: Compose text that articulates meaning relevant to its purpose and audience.
  • Develop text using organization, structure, and transitions that demonstrate understanding of cohesion between main and subtopics. 

In this assessment, you will create an outline for Assessment 6, The Sociology of Me. The outline should identify concepts you will be using to analyze your own experiences and provide a brief summary of why each concept may be relevant. Your sociological analysis of yourself should be supported by credible, scholarly sources, such as those from academic journals. As such, you will also identify scholarly sources that you intend to use.

Deliverable

Write an essay in which you complete all of the following:

Part 1: Section Outline

• Identify the sociological concepts you plan to discuss in each section.
• Briefly explain the relevance of each concept.

Sections need to include:

• Culture and Socialization.
  • Examine the impact culture and socialization has had on your life.
  • Examples of concepts to include: Socialization, agents of socialization, culture, values, language, norms, subculture, counterculture, ethnocentrism, and cultural relativism.
• Social Structure and Groups.
  • Analyze the impact of social structure and groups on your life.
  • Examples of concepts to include: Social structure, hierarchy, power, bureaucracy, role, status, primary groups, secondary groups, and group think.
• Education.
  • Explain your educational experience from a sociological perspective.
  • Examples of concepts to include: Hidden curriculum, tracking, social stratification, and stereotypes.
• Professional field.
  • Explain sociological issues that affect your field of study.
  • All concepts from other sections are relevant.
• Technology and Media.
  • Analyze the role of technology and media in your everyday life. Examples of concepts: Media, digital divide, framing, and social change.

Part 2: Identify Preliminary Supporting Resources

• Identify resources to support an analysis from a sociological perspective.
  • At least one scholarly source should be identified for each section above.
  • Provide a brief summary of each identified source.

Additional Requirements

• Written communication: Develop text using organization, structure, and transitions that demonstrate understanding of cohesion between main and subtopics. Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• Sources: Cite at least five scholarly sources.
• Length: 3–5 pages, not including title and reference pages.
• Format: Include a title page and reference page. Use in text citations to cite your sources. [Example: Writing becomes better as the child matures (Britton, Thomas, & Miller, 1996).]
• Font and size: Times New Roman, 12-point.