Chapter 2 Journal Exercise
For many of us, one of the most interesting and fun aspects of studying sociology is how relevant the discipline is to our everyday lives. This is even true of the methods we use to study sociology. Hardly a day goes by without reading or hearing about research that can help explain our lives. For example, we are learning that life expectancy in the U.S. is on the decline, which may seem counter-intuitive. After all, we are the richest nation on earth with excellent medical care improved by constantly improving technological discoveries. Misunderstanding life expectancy is generally on the decline may lead to misconceptions on general limits of medicine and science. But when we look a little deeper at studies of life expectancy, we learn that for the wealthiest Americans, life expectancy is on the rise, while for those with the lowest socio-economic status (SES), it is on the decline. Since there are more people of lower SES than the highest, the overall rate is pushed downward.
This is one example of how we can make better sense of commonly-held information, if we just look a little deeper.
During or after completing the reading for Chapter 2, describe a piece of information that commonly passes for knowledge, but is actually partially or completely wrong. This can, perhaps, be based on personal views that had been long-debunked but live-on, or a partially valid claim that seems perplexing. You may have observed it be repeated at home, work, or the community or in the media. Include 1) a description of the information, 2) how you think that information was created, 3) your own reaction to that information/partial or total misconception, and 4) what kind of sociological research method may be used to improve and deepen our understanding of this information.
Journal entries should be written in essay form, and will be evaluated based on their completeness in addressing the prompt, in the quality of the writing, and engagement of relevant reading from our textbook (audio and video are not accepted formats for journal entries).
Note on use of evidence: your personal observations are what we call anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence is partial evidence based on personal observation, collected in a casual or non-systematic manner. In other words, its not objective evidence and cannot be used to make an argument in a scholarly forum. Anecdotal evidence lacks validity since it is superficial and lacks reliability because there is no reason to believe the same observation will hold when applied to a population of any size. If you use personal observations as support your writing, you can use them to explain your initial interest in a topic. However, you cannot use them to make an argument.
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