Week 7 Sociology in Action Workshop: Paychecks, Balances, and the Signals of Class

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that a paycheck is a flow and a balance is a stock, that income is reported as a median because a few very large values pull the mean up, and that wealth is more concentrated than income. The Census Bureau put the 2024 median household income at 83,730 dollars, but no single national figure tells you how wealth is spread. In this workshop you read a small, made-up survey of 9 households' incomes and wealth, find the middle of each two ways, and see for yourself which one is more concentrated. Then you run that pattern through the three perspectives, observe how one place in your own week signals social class, and ask a chatbot the same questions so you can catch where it goes wrong.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: In 9 households' incomes and wealth, which is more concentrated, what do the median and the mean each show, and how does one place in your own week signal where people stand?

Workshop data: a neighborhood association's household survey and your own class-signals observation (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative dataset constructed for this workshop, not from a real neighborhood: a hypothetical survey of 9 households listing each one's yearly income and its wealth, plus one observation you make in your own week.

• Rows: 9 households, labelled A to I, one per row of the scaffold's first table
• Survey columns: household number; yearly income in thousands of dollars; wealth (owned minus owed) in thousands of dollars
• Observation rows: 4 rows you fill in from one place or one media item 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 Household, Income, and Wealth in columns A, B, and C. In rows 2 to 10 copy the nine rows of the first table in Part 4, typing each negative wealth figure with a minus sign. 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 10 hold Households A to I, and three wealth cells are negative or small.
2. In B11 type =MEDIAN(B2:B10) and in B12 type =AVERAGE(B2:B10). Copy both formulas across to C11 and C12. Copy all four results into the second 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: For each column the mean sits above the median, and the gap is much wider for wealth.
3. In B13 type =SUM(B2:B10) and copy it to C13. In B14 type =B10/B13*100 and copy it to C14 to get the top household's share of each total, then round each share to one decimal and record it. 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 top household's share of total wealth is far larger than its share of total income.
4. Subtract the top household's income share from its wealth share and record the gap in percentage points. Then find the two households with the closest incomes in the middle of the table and write how far apart their wealth is. Check: The gap is labelled in percentage points, and two similar incomes sit beside very different wealth.
5. Pick one place or one media item from your own week that signals social class, such as a store, a menu, an advertisement, or a housing listing. Spend about 15 minutes noticing it, then fill in the observation frame in Part 4: the signals you saw (prices, words, design, who it addresses), the concept each one shows, and why it matters. Describe the place, never judge any person's class from how they look. Check: Every row of the observation frame names something you saw or read, not a guess about a person.
6. Answer the analysis questions in Part 5, then do the AI-critique step in Part 6, or the equivalent route printed there, and write the 3–5 sentence report. Check: Every answer points to a value in your tables, a row of your observation, or a definition from this week, and your report quotes at least two errors with corrections.

Fallback route

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

Work the same steps by hand or with a calculator. Line up each column from lowest to highest to find the middle value, add each column and divide by 9 for the mean, divide the top household's figure by each total and multiply by 100, and subtract the two shares. Write every sum, 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 figures; copy them into your sheet so every result comes from your own formulas.

Student scaffold table 1

Household	Yearly income (thousands of dollars)	Wealth, owned minus owed (thousands of dollars)	Your note on this household
Household A	24	−3
Household B	31	4
Household C	38	−12
Household D	45	9
Household E	52	118
Household F	58	21
Household G	66	35
Household H	79	60
Household I	147	488

Record the two middles and the top household's shares here so your interpretation rests on numbers you produced yourself.

Student scaffold table 2

Quantity	Income	Wealth
Median (thousands of dollars)
Mean (thousands of dollars)
Total of all 9 households (thousands of dollars)
Top household's share of the total (%)
Gap between the two top-household shares, in percentage points

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
One price, word, or design choice that signals who the place is for
Who the place or item seems to address, described by what it says or shows
One sign of status, in Weber's sense of honor or prestige
One way the place could shape someone's life chances

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report the median and the mean of income and of wealth, each total, the top household's share of each total, and the gap between those two shares in percentage points, showing the formula or the arithmetic behind each.
2. Read the survey four ways: what is measured, over whom, what it shows and does not, and whether the link between income and wealth in the table is a correlation, a cause, or neither. Then explain in two sentences why the mean sits so far above the median for wealth, and why income is reported as a median.
3. Run the table's pattern, wealth far more concentrated than income, through structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism, one or two sentences each, naming each one's level of analysis. Use the Davis–Moore thesis, Tumin's critique, or the conflict view where they fit, state each at full strength, and declare no winner.
4. From your observation frame, describe the class signals you saw and connect at least one to Weber's status, in the sense of honor or prestige, and one to life chances. 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 the survey is illustrative and covers only 9 households, that wealth figures depend on how a household values what it owns, that one year's income can be unusual, or that one 15-minute observation is a single place, 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 household earning 147 thousand dollars must have earned its 488 thousand in wealth through hard work alone; what would you tell them, and what evidence would change your answer? (b) think of two people or households you know of with similar paychecks but very different balances; without naming anyone, what might explain the difference, and at what level does that explanation work?

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 neighborhood survey of 9 households lists each household's yearly income and its wealth (what it owns minus what it owes), both in thousands of dollars. Incomes: 24, 31, 38, 45, 52, 58, 66, 79, 147. Wealth, in the same household order: −3, 4, −12, 9, 118, 21, 35, 60, 488. Please do five things. First, find the median and the mean of income and of wealth, and the top household's share of each total. Second, tell me who wrote the thesis that unequal rewards fill the most important positions, and in what year, and who split inequality into class, status, and party. Third, explain whether a higher income causes higher wealth in this table. Fourth, describe what kind of people tend to end up with negative wealth. Fifth, tell me how much wealth the household earning 52 thousand dollars should expect to hold.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often add an outside figure with no source, such as a confident national share of wealth held by the richest one percent or a named study that supposedly proved inheritance explains wealth.
• Chatbots often credit class, status, and party to Marx, or credit the functional theory of unequal rewards to Durkheim or Parsons, or give it the wrong year.
• Chatbots often describe who holds negative wealth from a stereotype, naming an age group, a kind of job, or a type of family as the people who end up owing more than they own.
• Chatbots often say the table shows that earning more causes a household to build more wealth, or that wealth causes income.
• Chatbots often apply the group's mean wealth of 80 thousand dollars, or the median, to the household earning 52 thousand dollars as if it told that household what it holds or should hold.

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 5 (analyze social stratification, class, and global inequality — caste and class systems, income versus wealth, poverty measures, social mobility, the Davis-Moore thesis against the conflict view, and modernization against dependency and world-systems perspectives — reading income, poverty, and cross-national inequality data with their sources and years) and Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for), 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 table proves that a higher income causes a household to build more wealth. A national study shows that the richest one percent hold most of the country's wealth. Marx split inequality into class, status, and party, and Durkheim argued in 1945 that unequal rewards fill the most important jobs. Households with negative wealth are usually young renters who spend too much. So the household earning 52 thousand dollars should expect to hold about 80 thousand dollars in wealth, the average for the group." 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 neighborhood's household survey and one class-signals observation: three completed tables (the survey with your notes, the two middles and the top household's shares, 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 two middles 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 middles, shares, and gap	The median and mean of both columns, both totals, the top household's two shares, and the gap in percentage points are computed from the workshop's figures with the formulas or arithmetic shown, and the gap is labelled in percentage points.	Most values are computed, but one middle or share is missing or wrong, a step is not shown, or the gap is labelled as a percent.	No values are reported, or the values are invented rather than computed.
Reading the survey: income, wealth, and the two middles	The answer reads the survey four ways, calls the income and wealth link an association rather than a cause, explains why the mean sits far above the median for wealth, and refuses to apply a group middle to one household.	The answer reads the survey but either treats the link as a cause, applies a middle to a household, or leaves out why the mean and the median differ.	No answer is given, or the survey is read as proof that income causes wealth.
Three perspectives and the class-signals observation	The pattern is run through all three perspectives with each level named and the accounts stated fairly without a verdict, and the observation names real class signals tied to Weber's status and to life chances, describing the place rather than any person.	One perspective or level is missing, one account is stated unfairly, or the observation names signals without tying them to a concept.	No perspective analysis or observation is given, or the observation judges people rather than describing a place.
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 median, mean, total, share, and gap in your tables comes from your own formulas or your own hand calculation from the workshop's figures, never from memory or a chatbot.
• Every difference between two shares is written in percentage points.
• Your survey answer calls the link between income and wealth in the table an association, not a cause.
• Your answers never apply the group's median or mean to one household.
• Your perspective answer states each account at full strength and declares no winner.
• Your observation describes a place or a media item, not any person's class, 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.