This Virtual Exploration is designed to introduce you some of the different types of sociological resources that are available on the world wide web. It is also designed to develop your skills in navigating websites to locate specific information and to make critical evaluation of websites an intrinsic part of the way you use the internet.
The internet is an extraordinary resource for locating sociological information. Some of this information may be found in libraries, but the internet makes this information available 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, information on the internet may be more up-to-date, and some would never be found in a library. The internet is not a replacement for libraries, but it is an extremely valuable supplement. Let's explore several websites where reliable sociological information can be found.
For up-to-date statistical information on the United States, the U.S. Census Bureau website [http://www.census.gov/] is often the place to start. Once there, you can get the latest population estimates for the U.S. and the world. Enter them below:
1. U.S. population: 2. World Population:
1. U.S. population:
2. World Population:
Suppose you want to find out the latest poverty figures. A quick source of Census Bureau information is its press releases, which summarize recent Census Bureau research. Click on Newsroom--Releases and you will see the latest ones. Scroll down on this page to see if the latest press release about poverty rates is listed here. If not, click on Poverty under Releases by Subject on the right-hand side and locate the news release providing the most recent annual poverty data to answer the questions below. (Hint: the Census Bureau announces poverty data for the previous year each year in August or September.)
3. What is the most recent year for which national poverty data are available? 4. The poverty rate in that year was 5. The number of people in poverty in that year was 6. The date of the Press Release from which I obtained this information was
Close the Census Bureau window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
The U.S. Census Bureau's annual publication, The Statistical Abstract of the United States [http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstract-02.html] is an invaluable resource for looking up just about anything about U.S. society. Since one of the earliest and most classic studies in sociology was about suicide, let's check out suicide rates in the U.S. In his classic late-nineteenth century study, Emile Durkheim was impressed with the stability of suicide rates: the fact that they fluctuated very little from year to year, for him, this was evidence that he was looking at what he called a social fact.
Click on Vital Statistics for the 2003 edition, and when the PDF file comes in, find the table on Death Rates From Suicide by Sex and Race (Table 123 in the 2003 edition). Answer the following questions:
7. Does the suicide rate for all ages fluctuate wildly from year to year? Yes No 8. Do suicide rates vary by sex and race? Discuss briefly in the textbox below.
Close the Statistical Abstract window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
As internet technology has become more sophisticated, it has become possible to call up specified information from online databases, often in attractive table formats. In this part of our virtual exploration, we shall look at two such sites.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Kids Count [http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/index.htm] website tracks the status of children in the United States. Start by clicking on The Right Start online database, which looks at several measures of a "right start" for children. At the top of the page, click on Line Graphs. Choose the following states: Alabama, California, Iowa, Mississippi, New York, the U.S. average, and the state where you are living (if it is not one of these). Click Next Step, look at the indicators but keep Percent of Total Births to Teens highlighted, then click on Next Step, and then Next Step again, keeping the full range of available years as the default. You should now see the line graph that you created by your choices.
9. Do states vary very much in the percent of children born to teens? What sociological factors can you think of that might explain this? Discuss briefly below.
Now click on Maps at the top of the page. This time choose Percent of total births to mothers with less than 12 years of education. Click Next Step two times and you should see a color-coded map of the United States.
Now click on Rankings. In Step 1, choose a ranked list of cities. In Step 2, choose Percent of total births to unmarried women. Click Next Step three times. You should now see a ranked list of cities.
10a-b. The rate of births to unmarried women in these U.S. cities varies from a low of to . 11. In how many of the cities listed were more than half of all babies born to unmarried women? . 12. Are you surprised by these data? How would you explain them? Discuss briefly in the textbox below.
10a-b. The rate of births to unmarried women in these U.S. cities varies from a low of to .
11. In how many of the cities listed were more than half of all babies born to unmarried women? .
12. Are you surprised by these data? How would you explain them? Discuss briefly in the textbox below.
Close The Right Start window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
Let us now turn to two excellent sites for comparative international news and data. Start with World Press Online [http://www.worldpress.org/]. Scroll down to get a sense of the range of current news stories from newspapers and magazines around the world. Click then on Country Maps and Profiles under Reading Rooms on the left toolbar. Click on Africa and Asia to find the following information for Ghana (not labeled, but next to Cote d'Ivoire) in West Africa and South Korea in East Asia and find the following information. As you do, take note of the different kinds of issues and concerns reflected in the news links on the right.
GDP Per Capita Literacy Rate Ghana 13a. 13b. South Korea 13c. 13d.
Fifty years ago, Ghana and South Korea had almost exactly the same level of income and there was more optimism about Ghana's development than Korea's. Explaining such variations in development outcomes—and identifying lessons that can be drawn--has been a major concern of the sociology of development.
Close the World Press Review Map windows and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
Now go to the U.C. Atlas of Global Inequality [http://ucatlas.ucsc.edu/], a project of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies of the University of California at Santa Cruz. This superb site is worth extensive exploration; we will use its database to explore the question of whether level of economic development (measured by GDP per capita) is the key determinant of human development (as measured by literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy).
Click on Database on the top toolbar. You will proceed to generate your own table by choosing Countries, then highlighting the following countries (one by one) and put each in the right box by clicking on the right arrow: Brazil, China, Egypt, Japan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and United States. Once you have these countries in the right-hand box, proceed to Step 2 by choosing List Everything and then shift the following indicators into the right-hand box: GDP Per Capita, Illiteracy Rate (adult female), Life Expectacy At Birth, Mortality Rate, Infant. In Step 3, set Beginning and Ending both for 2000. Leave the defaults in Steps 4 and 5 and click on Submit Query at the bottom. You will now get a table comparing these ten countries, ranked by GDP per capita. (You may want to print out this table in order to answer the following questions more easily.)
14. What two countries have the highest illiteracy rate? and 15. What two countries have the highest infant mortality rate? and 16. Does the table consistently support the hypothesis, The higher the per capita income of a country, the higher the human development, as measured by the three indicators? Discuss below.
14. What two countries have the highest illiteracy rate? and
15. What two countries have the highest infant mortality rate? and
16. Does the table consistently support the hypothesis, The higher the per capita income of a country, the higher the human development, as measured by the three indicators? Discuss below.
Close the U.C. Atlas window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration
Some websites allow you to go a step further than calling up information. These sites enable you to engage in basic data analysis online. Such sites give you a range of choices in manipulating data and can calculate tests of statistical significance.
Most students pursue a college degree in part to raise their status in society. Will higher social status make you happy? Sociology can't tell you that, but sociological data can tell us if there is a relationship between social class and reported happiness. Let's look at a website that allows us to analyze data online to find out.
Go to the University of California's Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA) Archive [http://csa.berkeley.edu:7502/archive.htm]. This site makes available a number of datasets; click on GSS Cumulative Datafile, 1972-2002. Under Select an Action, click the button by Frequencies or Crosstabulation, then Start. In the form you are presented with, type in happy for the row variable and class for the column variable. Click on the boxes for Column Percentaging, Statistics, and Question Text. Then click Run the Table.
Enter the percentage of people who say they are "very happy" in the following social classes:
17a. Lower 17b. Working 17c. Middle 17d. Upper 18. Does (reported) happiness increase with (reported) class position?
17a. Lower 17b. Working 17c. Middle 17d. Upper
18. Does (reported) happiness increase with (reported) class position?
Close the SDA window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
Several sites on the web attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of sociologically-relevant internet resources. Here is one example.
Larry Ridener's Dead Sociologists Index [http://media.pfeiffer.edu/lridener/DSS/] provides a useful overview of many of the major sociological theorists. Click on the picture of Auguste Comte, the man who first coined the term sociology and laid out a vision of its potential. Then look for A Summary of Ideas and click on Introduction under it. Read the first four paragraphs.
19. What was the first term that Comte used to name the new social science he wished to create, before he changed it to sociology? 20. What does his original term tell us about how Comte conceived of what he eventually called sociology? Did he believe that the task of sociology was to uncover fundamental laws, just as the natural sciences do?
19. What was the first term that Comte used to name the new social science he wished to create, before he changed it to sociology?
20. What does his original term tell us about how Comte conceived of what he eventually called sociology? Did he believe that the task of sociology was to uncover fundamental laws, just as the natural sciences do?
Close the Auguste Comte window and return to the Sociology Virtual Exploration.
In this introductory Virtual Exploration, we have looked up information at two U.S. government websites; called up data about children and nations from two online databases; engaged in online data analysis; and looked at two mega-sites in sociology, following links to both academic and advocacy websites. Extraordinary sociological resources are available on the world wide web, but it is always important to evaluate the reliability and potential biases of what you find.
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