Week 5 Sociology in Action Workshop: Who Passed Along the Lead, and Where Is Your Front Stage?

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that a group can pull your judgment, that the people at the edge of your life often carry news your close friends do not, and that everyday life runs on a front stage and a back stage. In Granovetter's 1973 survey, more than four in five of the job-finders who used a contact saw that contact only occasionally or rarely. In this workshop you read a small, made-up survey of how 80 graduates of a job-training program found their jobs, turn its counts into shares, and decide what those shares can and cannot say. Then you observe one setting in your own week through Goffman's eyes. Finally you ask a chatbot the same questions and catch where it goes wrong, the way you will check any claim about groups for the rest of this course.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What do 80 graduates' job contacts show, and not show, about weak ties, and where in one setting of your own week do you see a front stage and a back stage?

Workshop data: a job-training program's contacts survey and your own front-stage observation (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative dataset constructed for this workshop, not from a real program: a hypothetical survey of 80 graduates of a job-training program who found their current job through a contact, plus one observation you make in your own setting.

• Rows: 80 graduates in the survey, summarized in 3 rows of the scaffold's first table (often, occasionally, rarely)
• Survey columns: how often the graduate saw the contact; number of graduates
• Observation rows: 4 rows you fill in from one setting in your own week

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet)
• A document or notebook for your written answers

Ways of working

• apply-a-perspective-to-a-case
• read-and-interpret-social-data
• structured-observation-and-reflection

Procedure

1. Open a blank sheet. In row 1 type the headers Contact seen, Graduates, and Share (%) in columns A, B, and C. In rows 2 to 4 copy the three rows of the first table in Part 4, and in B5 type =SUM(B2:B4). Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: Rows 2 to 4 hold often, occasionally, and rarely, and B5 shows the 80 graduates.
2. In C2 type =B2/$B$5*100 and copy it to C3 and C4. Copy each share into the first table in Part 4. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: Each share is a whole number between 0 and 100, and the three shares add to 100.
3. In C6 type =C3+C4 for the combined share who saw the contact occasionally or rarely, in C7 type =C3-C2 for the gap between the occasionally and often shares, and in C8 type =(B3+B4)/B2 for how many times as common the occasional-or-rare route was. Copy all three into the results table and label the gap in percentage points. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The gap is labelled in percentage points, not percent, and the times-as-common value is a whole number.
4. Pick one setting from your own week where people perform for an audience, such as a shift at work, a class, a team practice, or a video call. Spend about 15 minutes noticing it, then fill in the observation table in Part 4: the front stage, the back stage, one prop or line of impression management, and who the audience is in each place. Describe what people do, never who they are. Check: Every row of the observation table names something you saw or heard, not a guess about someone's character.
5. Answer the analysis questions in Part 5 in your document, using only the numbers in your tables and your own observation notes. Check: Every answer points to a value in your tables, a row of your observation, or a definition from this week.
6. Do the AI-critique step in Part 6, or the equivalent route printed there, and write the 3–5 sentence report. Check: Your report quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if no spreadsheet is available.

Work the same steps by hand or with a calculator. Divide each count by the 80 graduates and multiply by 100 to get each share, add the occasionally and rarely shares, subtract the often share from the occasionally share, and divide the occasionally-plus-rarely count by the often count. Write every division and subtraction in your document so it can be checked, complete every scaffold table, answer every analysis question, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

These are the workshop's illustrative survey counts; turn each count into a share so you can compare the three kinds of contact on one base.

Student scaffold table 1

How often the graduate saw the contact	Graduates	Share of the 80 (%)
Often	16
Occasionally	40
Rarely	24

Record your combined share, your gap, and your comparison here so every interpretation rests on numbers you produced yourself.

Student scaffold table 2

Quantity	Your value or words	How you found it
Combined share who saw the contact occasionally or rarely (%)
Gap between the occasionally and often shares, in percentage points
How many times as common the occasional-or-rare route was
One thing the table does not show

Use this observation frame to move from what you saw, to the concept it shows, to why it matters.

Student scaffold table 3

What I observed	Which concept it shows	So what
The front stage, and who the audience was
The back stage, and who was allowed in
One prop or line of impression management
One moment the performance slipped or switched

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report each share, the combined share for occasionally or rarely, the gap between the occasionally and often shares in percentage points, and how many times as common the occasional-or-rare route was, showing the division or subtraction behind each.
2. Read the survey four ways: what is measured, over whom, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation, a cause, or neither. Then say in one sentence how its pattern compares with Granovetter's finding that more than four in five of his job-finders used a contact seen occasionally or rarely, without treating the made-up program as real evidence.
3. Use tie strength to explain why an acquaintance could pass along a job lead a close friend did not hear about, and name the kind of group a graduate's strongest ties usually form. Then say what the group's 80% can and cannot tell you about how any one graduate should look for work.
4. From your observation table, describe the front stage and the back stage you saw, the impression management you noticed, and the audience in each place. Which of the three perspectives does this observation use, and at what level of analysis does it work?
5. Name two limits, such as that graduates had to recall how often they saw a contact, that the survey covers one program and only people who found a job through a contact, that the program is illustrative, or that one 15-minute observation is a single setting, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude.
6. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) a friend says the survey proves that acquaintances are better people to know than close friends; what would you tell them, and what evidence would change your answer? (b) think of a time someone at the edge of your life passed along news you would not otherwise have heard; what made that tie weak, and what did it reach that your close ties did not?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. An illustrative job-training program surveyed 80 of its graduates who found their current job through a contact: 16 saw that contact often, 40 saw that contact occasionally, and 24 saw that contact rarely. Please do five things. First, compute each share and the combined share who saw the contact occasionally or rarely. Second, tell me who first described the strength of weak ties and in what year, and who named the primary group. Third, explain what these results say about why some graduates got better jobs than others. Fourth, describe what kind of people tend to rely on weak ties. Fifth, tell me whether any one graduate of this program should stop asking close friends for help finding work.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often add an outside figure with no source, such as a claim that a stated share of all jobs are found through networking or that a named survey proved weak ties work best.
• Chatbots often credit the primary group to Mead or to Goffman, or give the wrong author or year for the strength of weak ties.
• Chatbots often describe who relies on weak ties from a stereotype, such as saying outgoing people, younger workers, or people in one kind of job depend on acquaintances.
• Chatbots often say the results show that weak ties lead to better jobs or that acquaintances cause success.
• Chatbots often turn the group's combined 80% into advice about one person, such as telling any graduate to stop relying on close friends because acquaintances work four times as often.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two sentences it got wrong, and correct each one with evidence from your tables or this week's definitions.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 4 (explain social interaction, groups, and organizations — status and role, dramaturgy, primary and secondary groups, conformity, and bureaucracy — and compare the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist explanations of deviance and social control, reading crime data as rates rather than counts) and Objective 2 (describe and evaluate the major sociological research methods (surveys, experiments, field research and ethnography, secondary-data analysis), distinguish reliability from validity and a population from a sample, and read a social statistic critically — what it measures, over what population and period, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation or a cause), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The survey proves that weak ties lead to better jobs, since 80% of the graduates used an acquaintance. A national study shows that 85% of all jobs are found through networking. Mead named the primary group, and the strength of weak ties was described by Goffman. Outgoing, younger workers are the ones who rely on acquaintances. So any graduate of this program should stop asking close friends for job help, because acquaintances work four times as often." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with evidence from your tables or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All three completed scaffold tables, including your observation frame
• Written answers to all six analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Sociology in Action Workshop report on a job-training program's contacts survey and one front-stage observation: three completed tables (the three shares, your combined share, gap, and comparison with one limit, and your observation frame), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's answers to the same questions, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. 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. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled diagram of the shares and your observation with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Computing the shares, the gap, and the comparison	All three shares, the combined share, the gap in percentage points, and the times-as-common comparison are computed from the workshop's counts with the divisions and subtractions shown, and the gap is labelled in percentage points.	Most values are computed, but one share or comparison is missing or wrong, a step is not shown, or the gap is labelled as a percent.	No shares are reported, or the values are invented rather than computed.
Reading the survey and its ties	The answer reads the survey four ways, calls it a description rather than a cause, explains with tie strength why an acquaintance can carry new job news, names the primary group as the home of strong ties, and refuses to apply the group's share to one graduate.	The answer reads the survey but either treats it as a cause, applies the share to a graduate, or leaves out tie strength or the group concept.	No answer is given, or the survey is read as proof that weak ties cause better jobs.
Observing the front stage and back stage	The observation names a real front stage and back stage with their audiences, one prop or line of impression management, and one slip or switch, describes behavior rather than character, and names symbolic interactionism at the micro level.	The observation names a front stage and back stage but leaves out the audience, the impression management, or the perspective and its level.	No observation is given, or it describes no setting the student saw.
Critique and correction	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the tables or this week's definitions; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis names an error but corrects it without evidence, or corrects only one; both routes earn this band equally.	No chatbot critique report or marked-up flawed analysis is submitted, or the output is pasted without any check; both routes are scored the same way.
Limits and reflection	Two real limits are named with their effect on the conclusion, and the chosen reflection option is answered with a reason.	One limit is named, or a limit is named without its effect, or the reflection gives no reason.	No limit or reflection is given.

Quality Gate

• Every share, sum, gap, and comparison in your tables comes from your own formulas or your own hand calculation from the workshop's counts, never from memory or a chatbot.
• Every difference between two shares is written in percentage points.
• Your survey answer says the table describes which contacts the graduates used and is not a cause.
• Your answers never apply the group's share to one graduate.
• Your observation describes what people did and said, not who they are, and names no one.
• No statistic, study, or source is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.