DSOC 6001

DSOC 6001

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

The purpose of this course is to review, critically discuss, and apply several analytical approaches for measuring and explaining societal change. It is designed to serve as a complement to theories of development and social change. It reviews how researchers can empirically examine the competing claims from contending theories. More broadly, the course examines the empirical record on global change in such development outcomes as inequality, education, food sufficiency, health, women's status, and the reasons why these outcomes differ across societies and communities. In reviewing this empirical record, we draw from several methodological approaches, both quantitative and qualitative, including case studies, evaluative studies, cross-country or cross community analyses, historical analyses, analyses of individual and household survey data. The insights of weaknesses of these various approaches will be discussed. The course will also introduce a set of decomposition methods that are fundamentally useful to study social change by aggregating micro-level evidence on individual behavior and change therein.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (SBA)

Outcomes
  • Explain, evaluate, and effectively interpret factual claims, theories and assumptions in the student's discipline(s) (especially in one or more of the college's priority areas of land grant-agricultural sciences, applied social sciences, environmental sciences, and/or life sciences) and more broadly in the sciences and humanities.
  • Find, access, critically evaluate, and ethically use information.
  • Integrate quantitative and qualitative information to reach defensible and creative conclusions.

View Enrollment Information

Syllabi: none
  •   Regular Academic Session. 

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  • 15499 DSOC 6001   LEC 001

  • Graduate students only.