Applying Sociology to Public Practice Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Applying Sociology to Public Practice - Essay ExampleSociology is defined as the scientific study of the relationship between world social organization and human behavioural processes. Its early proponents and still sociologists today believe that they sens develop a scientific way of studying mankind and his social nature in the same way as natural scientists have formulated a scientific approach to explain the physical world. Fundamental to the field is the notion that the relationship between human organization and social behaviour are subject to law-like processes and forces which can be revealed thru a systematic and careful observation and study. The theoretical models of causality should also be subject to empirical tests. (James, 1996)The problem with sociology which can be observed in the article authored by Francis et al (2007) entitled Attitude toward Christianity among secondary school pupils in Northern Ireland shifts in denominational differences is that sociology t ends to become unscientific. Sociology attempts to understand human behaviour not thru a set of a step-by-step analysis of characteristics of individuals but on the influence of interactions among individuals. It emphasizes the social forces present in a indisputable group which cannot be generalized to other groups much like the way scientific laws work. Social forces cannot be observed directly but must be inferred from human behaviour. In other words, there is no assurance that an observed and analyzed social phenomenon could be applied on another set of events. For example, the facial expression for the article can only be found in Ireland. Sociology, therefore, becomes ambiguous. There is no finality in sociological pursuits because it is subjected to miscellany and what is much more press is that machines are often unidentifiable. Even if it was identified, there is always the question of finality. In the article by Francis et al, one can note that there was not even an a ttempt to determine the mechanism which caused the change in the regard for Christianity by male and female Irish children. All they did was to determine whether there was a change without even attempting to identify whether this was expected or whether it followed some kind of process. There was not even a discussion of a theoretical background discussing the mechanism of change for religious perception. They even conveniently stated that they did not deem it proper to know the underlying cause because it was out of the limits they have set. While it is unsloped to know that there is an improvement in religious perception, wouldnt it have been more useful if one knows what is causing the change so that it may be hike developed Sociology will only assume the science mantle when it shakes off its reliance on first person subjective evaluations and surveys. The article itself depends widely on previous studies for comparison and does not even provide a scale of similarity with the p rocedures used. Most sociologists have little or no understanding of tartar yet they often present least-squares results as with the article. Sociology is for the most part verbal rather than quantitative. (James, 1996)Competing PerspectivesAs can be deduced from the previous discussion, there is a end for sociological knowledge to become of little value. According to Levin (2006), while there are indeed sociological researches that