Exam 1

The study of life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior

Sociology

Sociology investigates the _ of groups, organizations, and societies as well as how people _ within these contexts

Structure, interact

Sociology asks how social life is _ and why outcomes _ across groups, places, and time

Organized, differ

Subfield of sociology that examines the social causes and consequences of health, illness, medicine, and health care

Medical sociology

The biggest things sociologists look for is what?

Patterns

5 Steps in Sociologists Approaching a Question

(1) Look for a pattern, (2) Make a comparison, (3) Examine social organization, (4) Connect the person and social, (5) Check the explanation

Studies cognition, emotion, development, personality, and individual behavior

Psychology

Applies knowledge to support well-being, provide services, organize communities, and pursue social change

Social work

2 or more people who interact, recognize a connections, and share some identity, purpose, or relationship

Group

All people who share a specified characteristic or belong to a defined place or category, whether or not they interact

Population

A large population connected by enduring social relationships, institutions, and culture, usually within a common territory

Society

Shared meanings, values, beliefs, norms, language, symbols, knowledge, and practices through which people interpret and organize social lif

Culture

The lifelong process through which people learn culture, social expressions, identities, and ways of acting

Socialization

Surveys, censuses, administrative records, experiments, and statistical analysis

Quantitative

Interviews, focus groups, ethnography, observation, and document analysis

Qaulitative

A recurring, observable regularity in behavior, relationships, beliefs, or outcomes across groups, places, organizations, or periods of time

Social pattern

Limits of a Social Pattern

Patterns describe regularities, not every individual case

Unequal access to valued resources, power, security, or recognition

Inequality

The structure ranking of people and groups into unequal social positions

Social stratification

A person’s capacity to interpret a situation, make choices, act, resist expectations, and pursue goals

Agency

The relatively durable arrangement of roles, relationships, rules, resources, institutions, and inequalities that organizes social life

Social structure

Used to describe opportunities to obtain resources, including education, income, housing, health care, and longevity

Life chances

A factor that makes opportunities easier to reach for some groups than others

Social structure

Level of wealth that can provide security, transportation, well-funded schools, and medical care

Social class

Factors that can shape exposure to environmental hazards and treatment by institutions as a result of historical discrimination

Race and ethnicity

a set of roles, rules, practices, and organizations built around a social need

Social institution

Role of social institutions

Distribute responsibilities and resources, define legitimate behavior, and coordinate people

Three Levels of Sociological Analysis: Looks at encounters, communication, identities, and small groups; interaction and meaning

Micro

Three Levels of Sociological Analysis: Looks at hospitals, workplaces, schools, networks, and neighborhoods; organizations and communities

Meso

Three Levels of Sociological Analysis: Looks at major institutions, public policy, inequality, and change across large populations; society-wide arrangment

Macro

Connection of the 3 Levels of Sociolgy (Micro, Meso, Macro)

Large rules (Macro) are carried out through organizations (Meso) and experienced in everyday interactions (Micro)

Coined the term sociology and argued that society could be studied systematically

Auguste Comte

Examined capitalism, ownership, labor, exploitation, and conflict between groups with unequal resources

Karl Marx

Studied solidarity, institutions, norms, and group-level rates, including social patterns in suicide

Emile Durkheim

Studied social action, meaning, authority, status, bureaucracy, and the organization of modern life

Max Weber

a pioneering American sociologist, historian, and civil rights scholar who made racial inequality central to social research

W.E.B Du Bois

W.E.B Du Bois argument in the Philadelphia Negro

Racial health differences reflected differences in social factors, not inherent inferiority

Connects biography with history and personal experience with social structure

The sociological imagination

person’s location, relationships, choices, and experiences

Biography

the institutions, events, norms, and power arrangements operating during that person’s lifetime

History

Experienced within one person’s immediate life, relationships, and sense of available choices

Personal troubles

Extends beyond one person and is connected to institutions, policy, and patterned inequality

Public issue

Asks how institutions and roles contribute to stability, coordination, or disruption

Functionalism (order and interdependence)

Asks how dominant groups share rules, knowledge, and opportunities

Conflict theory (power and unequal resources)

Asks how identities and definitions are created in everyday encounters

Symbolic interaction (meaning in interaction)

Came up with the sick role and helped establish medical sociology

Talcott Parsons

Illness treated as a social role, not only a biological condition

The sick role

The sick role is part of what?

Structural functionalism

The Sick Role: a sick person may be temporarily excused from ordinary responsibilities and is not automatically blamed for being ill

Rights

The Sick Role: Talcott Parons’s called illness a form of

Deviance (because it can interrupt behavior, meaning a departure from social expectations)

The Sick Role: The person is expected to want recovery and to seek competent help

Responsibilities

A harmful condition connected to social arrangements that becomes a matter of collective concern

Social problem

Term for the way social conditions become affect someone in a physical sense

Embodiment

Focuses on medicine as a social institution, investigating how various factors of society influence the health care system

Sociology of Medicine

Uses sociological knowledge and research, and applies it to the practice of medicine to improve health outcomes.

Sociology in Medicine

Focuses on the social distribution and social causes of health-related outcomes and behaviors

Social Epidemiology

Focuses on social psychology of health and illness studies how our social environment influence health outcomes

Social Psychology of Health and Illness

a process through which a condition, behavior, or life experience becomes defined and treated as a medical problem

Medicalization

The absence of disease

Health

Term for if a person care for themselves and take part in their usual activities

Functioning

a social process through which people are labeled, stereotyped, devalued, or treated differently because of an attribute or diagnosis

Stigma

the ability to control resources, define categories, shape institutions, and influence decisions that affect health

Power

Shapes who can diagnose illness, prescribe treatment, and decide which conditions receive medical recognition

Professional power

Influences access to safe housing, secure employment, healthy working conditions, and health care

Economic power

Influences which communities receive public investment, services, and protection from environmental hazards.

Political power

Argues that health at one age reflects earlier experiences, present circumstances, and the pathways that connect them

Life course perspective

Advantages and disadvantages build over time and affect later health

Accumulation

The effect of school, work, migration, relationships, or illness depends partly on when it occurs

Timing and turning points

Family members’ opportunities, stress, and care affect one another

Linked lives

An idea, category, or definition develops its meaning through social interaction, shared language, and institutions

Social construction

A condition that medicine defines through diagnostic criteria.

Disease

Is the person’s experience of the condition

Illness

The social position of someone others recognize as ill

Sickness

Refers to how cultural beliefs, social norms, and institutions shape what people consider healthy or sick, how they interpret symptoms, and how they respond to illness

Social construction of illness

Includes beliefs about what a condition says about a person

Cultural meanings

Concerns how people make sense of a condition and live with it

Illness experience

Describes a historical change in causes of death. A diagnosis today may reflect circumstances from much earlier life

The epidemiological transition

Considers how biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors interact throughout life. It examines health across body systems

Whole person health

Explains disease through processes in the body, including infection, injury, and physiological dysfunction. It also examines genetic susceptibility

Biomedical model

Looks for recurring differences in health across populations and ask how social conditions help explain them

Sociological model of health

Concerns the health outcomes of a group and how those outcomes are distributed within the group

Population health

The aspect of health that a study seeks to explain

Health outcomes

A condition or exposure that may influence health

Health determinant

Asks people to describe their own symptoms, health, or quality of life.

Subjective health measure

Commonly asks people to describe their general health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor.

Self rated health

Assess what people can do in everyday life and the help they need.

Functional measures

identifies a disorder through professional evaluation and diagnostic criteria

Clinical diagnosis

Asks about experiences such as depressed mood or anxiety. It can identify distress among people who have never received care.

Symptom scale

Refers to feeling that one has control over important circumstances

Mastery

A person’s sense of fulfillment and ability to function well in everyday life

Psychological wellbeing

A person’s overall sense of their own worth and value, or how positively or negatively they evaluate themselves

Self esteem

A person’s overall evaluation of how satisfied they are with their life, based on their own goals, expectations, and standards

Life satisfaction

Explains how health behaviors are shaped by both individual choices and a person’s social circumstances

Health lifestyles theory

Refers to restrictions on participation in everyday life that arise when a person’s impairments interact with barriers such as inaccessible spaces, inflexible institutional rules, and discriminatory attitudes

Disability

Making spaces, transportation, information, and services usable by people with disabilities

Accessibility

Focuses primarily on diagnosing, treating, and preventing illness in individual patients

Medicine

focuses on preventing disease and improving health across populations through programs, policies, and interventions

Public health

The social conditions in which people live and the wider systems that shape those conditions

Social determinants of health

5 Social Determinants of Health

Income, education, housing, work, and neighborhood conditions

The social determinants of health are a

Framework