Sociologists

 Sociologicalts use tools when they use scientific method o Concept  label, term used to identified similar processes and things o Concept album came along an the most popular concept albums were made by pink Floyd. Concept album is album built around by concept. Concept album called Wall. Wall is first, second, or third, keeps changing, biggest selling album of all time. Concept  Mama’s gonna put all your fears into you, going to make your nightmares come true. What is the concept? Comfortably none and takes a negative look at education. Alienation is a big concept in sociology. A term that stands for something. Alienation has sub concept. What pink Floyd tries to do is that modern life is represented by an absence of power, people are powerless in the modern world, live in a technological civilization, modern life lacks meaning, all about social isolation, self estrangement  you become estranged from yourself. Norm is a concept. All sciences have their own battery of concepts. Status is a concept, status is a position in society father, mother, doctor, lawyer. One of the big concepts we dealt with last term is social class. When you learn a discipline, you must learn its concept. Same applies in psychology as it does in sociology. Social class is made up of three sub concepts, EDUCATION, OCCUPATION, and INCOME. Variable is a concept that varies in time and space. Mental construct, race, gender, as a concept. Sex refers to biological fact, difference, between males and females. o Operationalization  refers to values are assigned to concepts o Variables and concepts are interchangeable o If you want to operationalize age, if you want to operationalize gender (number won’t do it) when dealing with gender two categories  male and female that is how you measure a concept, you categorize it o Number does it for age, you can operationalize income with numbers, education with numbers, how many years of schooling do you have. If researcher asks you what your religion, you can’t use number you have to use category, have to identify religion as a categorize it o If you want to operationalize family, you have to develop categories, single-parent, traditional nuclear family, o Hypotheses are explanations, explanatory o Hypothesis is a social explanation gives explanation to variables o Hypothesis are tentative or provision  can be disproved, o When you start research we usually start with hypothesis o Evidence you collect either by number or category, may confern or support your hypothesis or reject it o Hypothesis never confirm once and for all, it can always be disproved o For instance, example of hypothesis  more poverty you have, the more common- crime (muggings, robberies, stealing cars, theft, extortion) o Common-crimes are created by lower, working class individuals o More poverty you have in society, the higher the rate you have in those types of crime o The reason we say common crime, because we don’t want to confuse it with white collar crime  stealing fr