Cash Welfare in the United States

This summer Marketplace put out a great podcast mini series on cash welfare in the United States.  Not only was the series informative, the accompanying website contained informative info graphics that would be useful in classes.

http://features.marketplace.org/yourstateonwelfare/

When you visit the site, scroll down to the bottom of the page to locate data on your own state. A sample graph is below.

 

It would be great to pair this with readings by some of the sociologists featured in the audio series, such Kathryn Edin or Tressie McMillan Cottom.

Are Young People Politically Challenged? [Video + Data + Map ]

Student at Texas Tech interviewed other students about their knowledge of political and historical topics.  They recorded and published the results here:



In the past I have designed a 'quiz' with similar questions but this video may be easier for you to put together.  I use the quiz or video to launch into a sociological discussion about youth and  political action. When talking about the political and power processes that influence youth engagement, I like to draw upon data and resources from  The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement [CIVIC] Check out their website here: http://www.civicyouth.org/

They recently published an interactive map that allows you to look at youth voting rates by state and over time. You can also make graphs.  The maps and graphs have a lot of functionality but the side effect is that the site can feel overwhelming and isn't the most user-friendly so I would not use it for the  first time in class.   However, once you get a feel for it, I think you will see that this is a great way to show students data.Link to Interactive Map: http://www.civicyouth.org/maps/elections/

Search for Words in Move and TV SubTitles [Interactive Feature]

Many of use have students who use content anaylsis as method of observation.  This tool was created by Benjamin Schmidt, history professor at Northeastern, and will likely be useful to students performing content analyses as well as professors covering the sociology of media in their classrooms.  You can type words into the search boxes and the tool searches TV and movies dialogue (It is based on Subtitles). You can filter the results by TV show, movie genres, etc. Clicking on the line will actually direct you to the specific  texts.

I think it is interesting  way to show how the media reflects and constructs culture.

Here is the link to the tool: http://movies.benschmidt.org/

For example, I looked at he usage of gay vs. lesbian over time and posted the information below.  You can see that TV shows are much more likely to mentions "gay" than they are to mention "lesbian". Ask your students to speculate on why.  [The large spike in 1951 seems to come from one particular i Love Lucy episode. Unfortunately, you don't always know the context of the word.]

I still wan to play around with this more and haven't yet used it in class but it seems like a great tool.

Compare countries on key OECD indicators [Data]

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides data on this website to make graphic comparisons among countries on the following indicators:

• Agriculture
• Education
• Health
• Poverty and Inequality
• Taxation
• Development
• Employment
• Migration
• Quality of Life
• Trade
• Economic Projections
• Environment
• Pensions
• Regulation

Link to the data: http://www.oecd.org/statistics/compare-your-country.htm

Demographics of State Legislature[Data]

If you are looking to show your students how politics reflects division of race, ethnicity, and gender, the National Conference of State Legislature has put together some very user friendly data on the composition of state legislators.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/legislator-data.aspx

The above link will take you to a page where you can find information about

• Women in state legislatures
• African American legislators
• Hispanic legislators
• Legislator occupation
• Political party composition

 I like to ask students to find the information on their home states and then I use the information to initiate a conversation about under representation of minorities. 

Student Loan Debt by State [Interactive Map + Data]

If you are looking to start a conversation on student loan debt, The Institute for College Access and Success is a great place to find data.

The link to the website below will bring you to an interactive map, where you can look at state by state data on student loan debt.
http://www.projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-data.php

Clicking on a state will bring you to a page that includes information on most schools within that state. An interesting exercise would be to have students look up your university and compare it to other types of university.  You can also download the data from the site.

Finding Data About Education [Data]

The National Center for Education Statistics provides links to data that can be very useful when discussing the Sociology of Education in your courses. You can look at enrollment, educational attainment, school districts, teachers--and many other topics that might be of interest to you and your students.   The available data changes depending on the level of education that you are interested in.

The upside: The data are extensive - with so much to choose from, you will surely find data to help students who are completing methods projects or you will come up with interesting talking and discussion points for class.

The downside: The data are extensive -- they feel overwhelming! This might be mitigated by a better table search feature.

Link to the site here: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/2012menu_tables.asp

(This link brings you to the 2012 table data. If you would rather see other years, just change the year using the drop down menu. If you would rather see charts and maps, click the radio button for "Figures" on the top right.)

Here is an example of a  figure that I found on the site.

Learn More About Gender in the Workplace [Data]

Catalyst is an organization that advocates for gender equality in the workplace.

Their Knowledge Center is a great source of data-driven charts and graphs that give information on women in the workplace. Link to the knowledge center here: http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/by-the-numbers

While the majority of the charts focus on gender, many of their reports focus on race and LGBT issues in the workplace. Many of the charts are also interactive.

Here is an example of a chart that I found in the Knowledge Center

Learning More About Families [Data]

The National Survey of Family Growth has a lot of useful data on "family life, marriage and divorce, pregnancy, infertility, use of contraception, and men's and women's health." 

Link to the Site Here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm


If you are looking for a quick statistic to use in class, click on "Key Statistics" on the left sidebar and then use the alphabetical listing or the keyword search to find some information.

If you are looking for more information on a certain topic,  the PDF Links to their newest publications include short summaries of the findings along with useful charts and graphs. You can also download the actual data for more information or to have your students work on analyzing the data.

Here is an example of the types of graphs that are readily available. I found this by clicking on "Key Statitstics" and then clicking on "Child Care"

Voter Turnout [Data]

Looking to give your students a project where they locate data on voter turnout in elections?

Check out the United States Election Project here: http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout



You can get national and state level data from the site.

Finding and Analyzing Arrest Data [Data] [Interactive Feature]

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has a pretty cool interactive tool that let you look at arrest statistics from 1980 onward.  The interactive tables also allow you to look at how certain arrest rates differ by race and gender.  You can see an example below.

In order to make this graph I clicked on the "National Estimates" and then selected "Trend Graphs by Sex".  The tool then gave me the option to choose Age Group, Sex, and Offense. If you want to see a trend line for both men and women (as I do above), make sure you select the check box for men and women. After I made all my selected, I click on "Make Rates Graph"

I like that it is easy to generate the graphs - giving  very visual representation of trends. You could ask them to hypothesize how certain offenses might vary by gender, race, or over time. After discussion, you can easily generate a graph to answer the question. They can also easily generate these graphs at home. In addition, you can download the data into Excel.

This would also be a great tool to start a discussion about this type of data.  Are "arrests" good measures of crime? How are rates different from counts?

UN Human Development Index [Data]

The UN Human Development Index measures the life expectancy, educational attainment, and income of most nations. "The breakthrough for the HDI was the creation of a single statistic which was to serve as a frame of reference for both social and economic development."

The site is a great way to have students look up differences between nations and regions on three major indicators. The data are also easy to sort on the spot- and so you could use this in class to start a discussion on global inequality.

UN Human Development Index

The site does a great job explaining how each data point was calculated, so this would also be a nice tool to use if you wanted to talk about measuring and operationalizing concepts.

Finding Polling Data Online [Data Downloads]

Sometimes you are interested in looking at polling data on social issues in order to make a point to class. Other times, students are looking for evidence to support their arguments.

Polling Report is a good place to grab some quick information on public opinion.
Link to Polling Report

 This stripped down site simply lists a number of topic areas. Click on each one to see recent polling data.

Once you click on a topic, you will see information of who conducted the poll, the polling dates, sample size, and margin of error. You can also see the exact question that was asked and the percentage of people who gave each response. (This is a great tool to use for talking about building survey questions). Occasionally, you will also see additional information that shows responses by demographics such as age, gender, or political party.

While this is a great way to get a pulse on some social issues, one downside is that you can't actually download any data from this site or delve further into the methods or responses. However once you see a poll that you are interested in, you can usually google that specific polling organization to get more some information on that particular poll.

Other Good Sites for Finding Polling Data

Gallup Poll