Week 9 Sociology in Action Workshop: Eight Countries, Three Measures, and the Labels in Your Closet

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that the World Bank ranks countries into four income groups by GNI per capita, that a per capita figure is an average that hides how income is shared, and that a Gini value measures spread, not level. For fiscal year 2027 a high-income country has GNI per capita above 14,375 dollars and a low-income country 1,175 dollars or less. In this workshop you work with 8 made-up countries: you compute each one's income per person, place it in an income group, put its Gini value on the 0-to-100 scale, and look at how income per person and life expectancy line up. Then you read the pattern through modernization, dependency, and world-systems theory, take an inventory of the countries printed on labels in your own closet, 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: Across 8 countries, how does income per person line up with spread and with life expectancy, what can and can't those numbers tell you, and what do the labels on your own things say about the chain behind them?

Workshop data: eight illustrative countries' national figures and your own label inventory (illustrative)

Source: An illustrative dataset constructed for this workshop, not from any real country: 8 made-up countries, each with a gross national income, a population, a Gini value on the 0-to-1 scale, and a life expectancy, plus a label inventory you make from items you own.

• Rows: 8 countries, labelled A to H, one per row of the scaffold's first table
• Country columns: country; gross national income in billions of dollars; population in millions; Gini value on the 0-to-1 scale; life expectancy in years
• Observation rows: 5 rows you fill in from items you own or use

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 Country, GNI, Population, Gini, Life expectancy, and Gini 0-100 in columns A to F. In rows 2 to 9 copy the eight 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 9 hold Country A to Country H, and every Gini value sits between 0 and 1.
2. In G1 type GNI per capita. In G2 type =B2/C2*1000 and copy it down to G9; this turns billions of dollars over millions of people into dollars per person. Copy each result into the second table in Part 4 and write the World Bank income group beside it, using the thresholds in Part 1. 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 eight results run from 750 to 50,000 dollars, and every country lands in exactly one of the four groups.
3. In F2 type =D2*100 and copy it down to F9 to put each Gini value on the 0-to-100 scale. In F10 type =MEDIAN(F2:F9) and in F11 type =MAX(F2:F9)-MIN(F2:F9), then record both in the second table. 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: Every Gini value is now a whole number between 29 and 52, and the gap is labelled in points.
4. Sort the sheet by column G from lowest to highest. Write down whether life expectancy in column E rises steadily, mostly rises, or shows no pattern, and name any country that breaks the pattern. Then find the mean life expectancy of the high-income group and of the lower-middle group and the gap between them in years. Check: Life expectancy mostly rises with income per person, with at least one country out of line.
5. Pick 5 items you own or use, such as clothing, a phone, shoes, a bag, or packaged food. Read each label and fill in the observation frame in Part 4: the item and the country named on its label, the concept it shows, and why it matters. Describe the items and labels only, never the people of any country. Check: Every row names a real item and the country printed on it, not a guess about anyone.
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 inventory, 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. Divide each gross national income by its population and multiply by 1,000 for dollars per person, multiply each Gini value by 100, line up the eight Gini values to find the middle two and average them, subtract the lowest from the highest, and average the life expectancies in each group. Write every division, multiplication, 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 country figures; copy them into your sheet so every result comes from your own formulas.

Student scaffold table 1

Country	Gross national income (billions of dollars)	Population (millions)	Gini value (0-to-1 scale)	Life expectancy (years)	Your note on this country
Country A	6	8	0.44	61
Country B	21	7	0.39	66
Country C	40	10	0.52	64
Country D	54	9	0.36	71
Country E	120	12	0.47	70
Country F	65	5	0.31	74
Country G	90	4	0.29	78
Country H	300	6	0.33	81

Record what you computed here so your interpretation rests on numbers you produced yourself.

Student scaffold table 2

Country	GNI per capita (dollars)	Income group	Gini value (0-to-100 scale)
Country A
Country B
Country C
Country D
Country E
Country F
Country G
Country H
Median Gini value (0-to-100)
Widest Gini gap (points)
Mean life expectancy, high group versus lower-middle group (years)

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

Student scaffold table 3

What I observed	Which concept it shows	So what
Item 1 and the country on its label
Item 2 and the country on its label
Item 3 and the country on its label
Item 4 and the country on its label
Item 5 and the country on its label

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report each country's GNI per capita and income group, each Gini value on the 0-to-100 scale, the median Gini value, the widest Gini gap in points, and the gap in mean life expectancy between the high-income and lower-middle groups, showing the formula or the arithmetic behind each.
2. Read the table four ways: what is measured, over whom, what it shows and does not, and whether the link between GNI per capita and life expectancy is a correlation, a cause, or neither. Name at least two directions the arrow could run, and explain in one sentence why a low Gini value does not make a country rich.
3. Read the gap between the richest and poorest of the 8 countries through modernization theory, dependency theory, and world-systems theory, one or two sentences each, stating each at full strength with its critique, naming the level of analysis, and declaring no winner.
4. From your label inventory, describe the pattern you saw in where your items were made, and connect at least one row to globalization and one to a multinational corporation or to one theory's reading of the chain. Describe items and labels, not people.
5. Name two limits, such as that the 8 countries are illustrative, that GNI per capita hides how income is shared, that Gini values from income and from consumption surveys are not strictly comparable, or that a few labels from one closet are not a sample of world trade, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude.
6. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) a friend says a typical worker in Country E earns about 10,000 dollars a year; what would you tell them, and what evidence would change your answer? (b) pick one item from your inventory and, without naming anyone, say which theory's reading of its chain fits best and at what level that explanation works.

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 set of 8 countries, labelled A to H, lists each country's gross national income in billions of dollars, its population in millions, its Gini value on the 0-to-1 scale, and its life expectancy in years. Country A: 6, 8, 0.44, 61. Country B: 21, 7, 0.39, 66. Country C: 40, 10, 0.52, 64. Country D: 54, 9, 0.36, 71. Country E: 120, 12, 0.47, 70. Country F: 65, 5, 0.31, 74. Country G: 90, 4, 0.29, 78. Country H: 300, 6, 0.33, 81. Please do five things. First, find each country's GNI per capita and its World Bank income group, and the median Gini value on the 0-to-100 scale. Second, tell me who wrote The Stages of Economic Growth and who developed world-systems theory, and in what years. Third, explain whether a higher GNI per capita causes longer life expectancy in this table. Fourth, describe what the people of Country A are like. Fifth, tell me how much a typical worker in Country E earns in a year.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often bring in an outside figure with no source, such as a confident Gini value or GNI per capita for a named real country, or a named study that supposedly proved money buys longer lives.
• Chatbots often credit world-systems theory to Rostow or the stages of growth to Wallerstein, give either book the wrong year, or name a founder of dependency theory as if the course pinned one.
• Chatbots often describe the people of the lowest-income country from a stereotype, as lacking effort, education, or modern values.
• Chatbots often say the table shows that a higher GNI per capita causes longer life expectancy.
• Chatbots often say a typical worker in Country E earns about 10,000 dollars a year, reading the country's GNI per capita as one person's pay.

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 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 table proves that a higher GNI per capita causes people to live longer. A well-known study shows that every extra thousand dollars per person adds a year of life. Wallerstein's 1960 book The Stages of Economic Growth explains why Country A is poor: its people have not yet adopted modern values. Country G has the lowest Gini value, so it must be the richest country. And since Country E's GNI per capita is 10,000 dollars, a typical worker there earns 10,000 dollars a year." 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 label inventory
• 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 8 illustrative countries and your own label inventory: three completed tables (the country figures with your notes, your computed per capita figures, groups, and Gini values, and your inventory), 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 your computed figures and your inventory 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 per capita figures, groups, and Gini values	Every GNI per capita, income group, 0-to-100 Gini value, the median, the widest gap, and the life-expectancy gap are computed from the workshop's figures with the formulas or arithmetic shown, and the Gini gap is labelled in points.	Most values are computed, but one per capita figure, group, or Gini value is missing or wrong, a step is not shown, or the Gini gap is labelled in percentage points.	No values are reported, or the values are invented rather than computed.
Reading the table: averages, spread, and the arrow	The answer reads the table four ways, calls the income and life-expectancy link an association with at least two possible directions, keeps spread apart from level, and refuses to apply a country average to one person.	The answer reads the table but treats the link as a cause, reads a low Gini as a rich country, or applies a country average to a person.	No answer is given, or the table is read as proof that income causes longer life.
Three theories and the label inventory	The gap is read through all three theories with each critique and the level named and no verdict, and the inventory ties real labels to globalization and to a multinational corporation or a theory, describing items rather than people.	One theory or level is missing, one theory is stated unfairly, or the inventory names labels without tying them to a concept.	No theory analysis or inventory is given, or the inventory judges the people of a country rather than describing items.
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 GNI per capita, income group, Gini value, median, gap, and mean 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 gap between two Gini values is written in points on the 0-to-100 scale.
• Your table answer calls the link between income per person and life expectancy an association, not a cause.
• Your answers never apply a country's GNI per capita to one person.
• Your theory answer states each account at full strength and declares no winner.
• Your inventory describes items and labels, not the people of any country.
• 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.