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Monterey Bay (CSUMB), most students choose a concentration path to follow. I have chosen
sociology, and I feel it is giving me the knowledge and ability to pursue work in many career
fields. Throughout my time at the university I have taken many classes that address the
concentration of sociology or concepts pertaining to it. Two of the most influential classes I have
taken are SBS 245: Native American Societies and SOC 333: Sociology of Deviance. In these
classes I produced papers and a demographic profile that help illustrate the principles of
To start lets define sociology. This is the study of societies and their institutions, systems,
problems, and potential. Sociologists are interested in watching societies evolve and using these
Sociologists often perform research using a multitude of methods, both quantitative and
qualitative, to better understand a society and their needs. Finally, sociologists are used by many
government agencies and private companies. The government uses the data generated from
sociologists to get an idea of the needs of its people. They are able to provide better social
programs, invest in what the people actually need, and determine the overall happiness of the
people just to name a few examples. A private company would use sociologists or sociological
methods to understand their market and evolve their products to reflect the wants of their
consumers. Also, they could be used to affect marketing strategies of the company. In general,
sociology has a lot of application in the world, and sociologists do a lot of work in both of the
complications they may find in their work. The biggest of all are ethical issues that could reduce
the quality of their arguments or, worst case scenario, discredit them entirely. Because most of
the work done by sociologists revolve around conducting research on a population, a lot of these
ethical issues arise from uninformed participants in the studies. If a researcher does not
thoroughly prove that their method will not bring any affect to those being observed and gets the
approval of a human subjects board, or if the researcher does not properly inform their subjects
there are inherent ethical issues in the study. The participants should not be harmed during the
study, this includes physically, emotionally, and even socially. If sensitive information is asked of
individuals, their records should be kept anonymous to protect them from potential repercussions
relating to their answers. It is incredibly important that sociologists protect their participants and
I had practice with this myself in a quantitative research methods course. We were
required to create a survey and produce results from said survey. It was important that we put
disclaimers in the beginning of the survey and also keep it anonymous. We asked information
regarding the individuals education level and income, which both could be considered sensitive
information, and wanted to maintain the integrity of our results, so we implemented the above
cautions. If we had not put the disclaimer or kept the survey anonymous it would have been
possible for our survey to be rejected by the professor or the human subjects review board. Also,
had the survey passed through those two filters, all of the work done after the survey could have
been jeopardized by the poor ethical quality of the initial survey. This would have been a
tremendous loss to our team and our grade, so it is not only important for the respondents that
beginning. In SBS 245 I spent a lot of time learning about Native American communities in the
past and the present. While we did not conduct any studies or research of our own in the class,
we were well read on existing studies and historical texts that provided the basis for our
understanding of the problems affecting this group of people. Native Americans today are put
through a lot of oppression, from poverty issues and negative stereotypes. Also, they are often
abused for the financial benefits that can come with their reservation land. For example, casinos
will take advantage of the tribes by setting up on their reservations. The casino is out of view of
the U.S. federal government and they get cheap labor out of the natives. However, they do not
give back to the community that is supporting them. Instead, they abuse them for labor and land
and continue the stereotypes and poverty problems the community is already facing. This was all
learned through course readings and exercises done in class and in the community.
The most influential course I have been a part of, in terms of sociological knowledge,
was SOC 333. This class required that I produce a paper using theory to explain a form of
deviance and a demographic profile of a city in America. Through the theory of crime paper, I
analyzed domestic partner homicide and how stress could be a factor in these crimes. I was able
to find information supporting this idea and I spent a lot of the paper discussing how the male
population is incredibly unsupported when it comes to this crime. Many people believe that
women are the majority abused and men are the majority abuser. And this is not necessarily true.
My paper used existing scholarly sources to argue that men are almost equally as abused by
women as women are by men. I also argued that more programs should exist to help abused men,
looked at demographic data from the United States Census Bureau and crime data from the
Uniform Crime Report, ran by the FBI, to look for causes of crime in Ferguson, Missouri. This
required that I use existing government data to put together a potential policy plan to improve the
crime rates of the town. I also analyzed the Ferguson Effect, a term coined after the shooting of
Michael Brown, and looked to see if the effect was real. I ended up having pretty interesting
goods and services sold, and our understanding of different groups of people. Many important
and influential studies are conducted by sociologists, and, as long as they are void of ethical
issues, these studies are used to progress society. It has been a fun ride being part of the