Week 5 — Going Along and Getting Hired: Reading Two Studies of Group Life — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 5 of the term — read two classic studies of group life, work out what their figures say, and explain to someone outside sociology what the weak-ties finding can and cannot tell a job seeker.

This week you learned how people build a shared reality, how statuses and roles shape what you do, how everyday life works as a performance, how groups differ, how a unanimous group can pull a judgment, how weak ties carry news, and how formal organizations run on rules. In Week 2 you learned to read any study four ways and to keep percentage points separate from percent; this week you use those habits on two classic studies of group life. In this assignment you work four short problems, interpret each one, and explain a finding to someone who has never studied sociology. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Sociology in Action Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

You will use these figures, all from this week's chapter:

• Asch's line-judgment study (1951): 50 participants each faced a unanimous majority of confederates who gave a plainly wrong answer on the critical trials. 37 of the 50 went along with the wrong majority at least once. About one-third (32%) of critical-trial answers were pro-majority errors under a unanimous majority, and 10.4% were when one partner answered correctly.
• Granovetter's weak-ties survey (1973): of 54 professional, technical, and managerial job changers who found their job through a contact, 16.7% saw that contact often, 55.6% occasionally, and 27.8% rarely.

Work these four problems, showing your arithmetic:

1. In Asch's 1951 line-judgment study, 37 of 50 participants went along with a plainly wrong unanimous majority at least once. What percent of the participants is that?
2. In Asch's 1951 study, pro-majority errors were 32% of critical-trial answers under a unanimous majority and 10.4% when one partner answered correctly. By how many percentage points did the error share fall?
3. In Granovetter's 1973 survey of 54 job-finders who used a contact, 55.6% saw the contact occasionally and 27.8% saw the contact rarely. What percent saw the contact occasionally or rarely?
4. In Granovetter's 1973 survey, 55.6% of the job-finders saw their contact occasionally and 16.7% saw their contact often. By how many percentage points does the occasionally share exceed the often share?

Beside each answer, add one brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it. For problem 1, say what the figure measures and whom it describes, and explain why it does not mean that most people always conform. For problem 2, explain why the drop is written in percentage points rather than as a percent, and say whether Asch's result is a correlation or a cause, and why. For problem 3, say what the combined share shows, name one thing it does not show, and say whether the survey is a correlation, a cause, or neither. For problem 4, use tie strength to explain why an acquaintance can carry job news that a close friend does not, and name the kind of group a person's strongest ties usually form.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your cousin is job hunting, has never studied sociology, and says, "I'm only telling my closest friends I'm looking; they're the only ones who will really help." Write a 3–5 sentence message to your cousin that recommends a more useful plan, explains in everyday words what Granovetter's survey found about the people who passed along job leads, says what the figures do not show (they do not show that close friends are useless or that acquaintances are better people to know), and names one limit, such as that the survey covered 54 people in professional, technical, and managerial jobs at one time. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one accurate plan can be defensible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a volunteer coordinator for a 30-member community choir who worries, "We're too big to be a close group anymore." Model answer: "I'd say 'Size alone doesn't decide how close we are.' Sociologists sort groups by how personal and lasting the relationships are, not by how many people belong. A choir whose members have sung together and supported one another for years can work like a close, primary group even with 30 people, while a small crew that only talks about the task stays impersonal. The limit is that closeness still depends on how members actually treat each other, so it is worth asking them."

Use that pattern for your message to your cousin, with your own recommendation and evidence.

Show your arithmetic. A reader should be able to reproduce every number you report from the values above without guessing which values or steps you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single data-reading report containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and a brief interpretation of what that value shows and one limit of it;
• your message to your cousin, recommending a more useful plan, explaining the finding in everyday words, saying what the figures do not show, and naming one limit; and
• a one-line restatement of the values you used, so your results are reproducible.

Keep it to roughly one page. Clear and correct beats long.

Choose how you show it. Present your report as written text, or as a recorded audio or video explanation of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled diagram of the Asch and Granovetter shares with a short note. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the computations, the interpretations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. You may use a calculator or a spreadsheet for the arithmetic. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's numbers, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com