Week 6 Sociology in Action Workshop: Which Place Has the Bigger Bike-Theft Problem, and Who Keeps Order Where You Are?

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that deviance is a group's judgment, that groups keep order through informal and formal social control, and that crime data must be read by rate and by source. In 2024 the National Crime Victimization Survey found that about half of the violent victimizations it counted never reached police records. In this workshop you read a small, made-up set of bike-theft records for three neighborhoods, turn counts into rates, and then compare one neighborhood's police records with what its residents told a survey before and after a new reporting app. Then you watch one setting in your own week and record how people there keep each other in line. Finally you ask a chatbot the same questions and catch where it goes wrong, the way you will check any crime claim for the rest of this course.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Which of three neighborhoods has the bigger bike-theft problem once you compare rates rather than counts, what does a rise in recorded thefts after a new reporting app actually show, and how do people in one setting of your own week enforce its norms?

Workshop data: three neighborhoods' bike-theft records, Westbrook's resident survey, and your own social-control observation (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative dataset constructed for this workshop, not from real places: hypothetical police-recorded bike thefts and resident counts for three neighborhoods in one year, a hypothetical resident survey in one neighborhood across two years, plus one observation you make in your own setting.

• Rows: 3 neighborhoods in the first scaffold table and 2 years for Westbrook in the second scaffold table
• Neighborhood columns: neighborhood; bike thefts recorded by police in one year; residents
• Westbrook columns: year; bike thefts recorded by police; bike thefts residents told the survey about
• 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 Neighborhood, Thefts, Residents, and Rate per 100,000 in columns A to D. In rows 2 to 4 copy the three rows of 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: Rows 2 to 4 hold Northside, Eastgate, and Westbrook with their counts and residents.
2. In D2 type =B2/C2*100000 and copy it to D3 and D4. Copy each rate into the first table in Part 4, and note which neighborhood has the largest count and which has the highest rate. 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 rate is a whole number, and the neighborhood with the most thefts is not the one with the highest rate.
3. In a second block, type Year in J1, Police-recorded in K1, Survey-reported in L1, and Share reported (%) in M1. Copy the two Westbrook rows from the second table in Part 4 into rows 2 and 3, and in M2 type =K2/L2*100 and copy it to M3. In M4 type =M3-M2 for the change in the share reported, and in M5 type =(K3-K2)/K2*100 for the percent rise in police-recorded thefts. 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 share reported rises while the survey count stays the same, and the change in the share is labelled in percentage points.
4. Pick one shared setting from your own week where people follow unwritten rules, such as a library floor, a gym, a break room, a bus, or an online group. Spend about 15 minutes noticing it, then fill in the observation table in Part 4: one norm, one moment someone broke it or nearly did, how others responded, and whether that response was informal or formal social control. Describe what people did, never who they are, and name no one. 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 neighborhood's thefts by its residents and multiply by 100,000 to get each rate, divide Westbrook's police-recorded thefts by its survey-reported thefts and multiply by 100 for each year's share reported, subtract the two shares, and divide the rise in recorded thefts by the first year's count and multiply by 100. 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 police-recorded bike thefts for one year; turn each count into a rate so you can compare neighborhoods of different sizes on one base.

Student scaffold table 1

Neighborhood	Bike thefts recorded by police	Residents	Rate per 100,000 residents
Northside	36	24,000
Eastgate	90	75,000
Westbrook	18	9,000

Westbrook launched a reporting app before its second year; compare what police recorded with what residents told a survey each year.

Student scaffold table 2

Year	Bike thefts recorded by police	Bike thefts residents told the survey about	Share reported to police (%)
Year 1, before the app	18	45
Year 2, after the app	27	45

Record the comparisons you computed so every interpretation rests on numbers you produced yourself.

Student scaffold table 3

Quantity	Your value or words	How you found it
Neighborhood with the largest count, and with the highest rate
Change in Westbrook's share reported, in percentage points
Percent rise in Westbrook's police-recorded thefts
One thing the tables do not show

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

Student scaffold table 4

What I observed	Which concept it shows	So what
One norm people in the setting followed
One moment someone broke it or nearly did
How others responded
Informal or formal social control, and why

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report each neighborhood's rate per 100,000, Westbrook's share reported in each year, the change in that share in percentage points, and the percent rise in police-recorded thefts, showing the division or subtraction behind each.
2. Read the neighborhood table four ways: what is measured, over whom and when, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation, a cause, or neither. Say which neighborhood a headline built on counts would blame, and why the rate tells a different story.
3. Use the reporting effect to explain Westbrook's rise from 18 to 27 recorded thefts, and say what the survey adds that police records cannot. Then say what Westbrook's rate can and cannot tell you about any one resident.
4. From your observation table, describe the norm, the moment of deviance, and the response you saw, and say whether the response was informal or formal social control. Then read the moment through one perspective, structural functionalism, conflict theory, or symbolic interactionism, and name its level of analysis.
5. Name two limits, such as that the neighborhoods are illustrative, that the survey depends on what residents remember and choose to say, that one year of police records shows no trend, 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 neighbor says Westbrook is the most dangerous neighborhood and is getting worse; what would you tell them, and what evidence would change your answer? (b) think of a rule in a group you belong to that is enforced mostly by informal social control; who reacts when it is broken, and what would change if an office with written rules took it over?

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. In an illustrative example, three neighborhoods recorded bike thefts in one year: Northside had 36 among 24,000 residents, Eastgate had 90 among 75,000 residents, and Westbrook had 18 among 9,000 residents. Please do five things. First, compute each neighborhood's rate per 100,000 residents and tell me which has the biggest bike-theft problem. Second, tell me who developed labeling theory and who developed strain theory, and in what years. Third, explain why Westbrook's police-recorded bike thefts rose from 18 to 27 the year a new reporting app launched. Fourth, describe what kind of people usually steal bikes. Fifth, tell me whether a Westbrook resident is more likely to be a bike thief than an Eastgate resident.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often add an outside figure with no source, such as a national bike-theft rate, a claimed share of thefts that go unreported everywhere, or a named study about reporting apps.
• Chatbots often credit labeling theory to Merton or to Durkheim, or credit strain theory to Durkheim, mixing up who said what.
• Chatbots often describe who steals bikes from a stereotype, naming an age group, a neighborhood type, or a kind of person as the usual thief.
• Chatbots often say the app caused more bike theft, or that Westbrook's small size causes its high rate.
• Chatbots often turn Westbrook's higher rate into a claim about one resident, such as saying a Westbrook resident is more likely to be a thief or a victim than someone in Eastgate.

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: "Eastgate has the worst bike-theft problem because it had 90 thefts, far more than anyone else. The new app caused bike theft in Westbrook to rise by 50 percent. A national report shows that 70% of bike thefts are never reported. Durkheim developed labeling theory, and strain theory comes from Becker. Bike thieves are usually bored teenagers. So any Westbrook resident is more likely to be a bike thief than someone from Eastgate." 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 four 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 three neighborhoods' bike-theft records and one social-control observation: four completed tables (the three rates, Westbrook's police and survey comparison, your computed comparisons 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 rates 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 rates, shares, and changes	All three rates, both shares reported, the change in percentage points, and the percent rise are computed from the workshop's counts with the divisions and subtractions shown, each rate names its base, and the change is labelled in percentage points.	Most values are computed, but one rate or share is missing or wrong, a step is not shown, a base is missing, or the change is labelled as a percent.	No rates are reported, or the values are invented rather than computed.
Reading the records and the survey	The answer reads the neighborhood table four ways, compares by rate rather than count, explains the rise in recorded thefts with the reporting effect, says what the survey adds, and refuses to apply a neighborhood's rate to one resident.	The answer reads the data but compares by count, treats the rise as more theft, leaves out what the survey adds, or applies the rate to a resident.	No answer is given, or the rise in recorded thefts is read as proof that theft increased.
Observing social control through a perspective	The observation names a real norm, a moment of deviance, the response, and whether it was informal or formal social control, describes behavior rather than character, and reads the moment through one perspective with its level of analysis named.	The observation names a norm and a response but leaves out the type of social control, the perspective, or 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 rate, share, change, and percent rise 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 rate names its base, and every change between two shares is written in percentage points.
• Your answers compare neighborhoods by rate, not by count.
• Your answers never apply a neighborhood's rate to one resident.
• 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.