ReviseSociology

Category: Sociological concepts

  • Evaluate the strengths and limitations of using non-participant observation to investigate pupil behaviour in schools (20)

    This is a 20 mark methods in context questions from the 2020 A-level Sociology Education with Theory and Methods exam paper (7192/1).

    Link to the Mark Scheme for the Paper here.

    Below I include the Item and Question, a full answer, and some hints and tips.

    If you like this sort of thing then you might also like this post: pages and posts:

    The Question: Non-participant observation to investigate pupil behaviour in schools (20)


    Read Item C below and answer the question that follows.


    Item C

    Pupils behave in many different ways in schools. Some pupils conform to school rules, for example by wearing the correct uniform and completing tasks set, whilst others break school rules. Interactions between teachers and pupils, and between peers, are likely to influence behaviour.

    Sociologists are interested in researching patterns of pupil behaviour, particularly disruptive behaviour. One way of studying pupil behaviour in schools is to use non-participant observation. Pupils are often observed during the course of a school day. One advantage of nonparticipant observation is that the sociologist can observe behaviour both inside and outside classrooms. Non-participant observation allows behaviour categories to be decided before the observation begins. However, behaviour may not be classified in the same way by different researchers.

    Applying material from Item C and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using non-participant observation to investigate pupil behaviour in schools (20).

    Hints and Tips: How to Answer…

    These questions are METHOD + TOPIC, so you need to get in all of the methods stuff (theoretical, practical ethical) as a base, and then APPLY the methods to the topic, and this means USING THE ITEM!

    Key points from the item

    • pupil behaviour: uniform. completing tasks, breaking rules.
    • Interactions between teachers and pupils, and peers influence behaviour.
    • Non PO can be used inside and outside the classroom.
    • Can categorise behaviours before hand
    • Categories of behaviour may not be classified in the same way by researchers.

    Non-Participant Observation

    • Validity – depends on overt covert/ can’t ask questions about meaning (only observing)/ limited because you can only look for a few types of behaviour.
    • Practical – NOT practical, if in-person, one has to be in the classroom, can’t realistically follow pupils around easily outside of the classroom. Have to gain access to the school.
    • Representativeness – limited because of limited capacity to observe.
    • Reliability – can be repeated, but categories.
    • Ethics – consent?

    Personally I find it’s easiest to imagine you are going to do the research, put yourself in the shoes of the researcher and think it through….

    An Answer

    Non-Participant Observation (Non-PO) may be a useful way to research pupil behaviours in-school, but practically it will probably only be useful to explore a limited range of behaviours.

    Researchers could use Non PO in different classrooms to explore what kind of teaching approaches correlate with positive or negative student behaviours.

    For example, a researcher could sit in a classroom and count how many times a teacher praised pupils, how much time they devote to teacher-led compared to student-led learning, and how much time they spend helping students with the later, and see if this is correlated with higher student engagement in terms of less off-task chatter, more completion of tasks, or even test results if done in the lesson.

    If you did the research in league with the school you could focus on the same students and their behaviour responses in different teaching environments, and with different peers in their different subjects, this could be very scientific and favoured by positivists.

    This kind of comparative approach would require the researcher to know what they are looking for in the first place, and to be able to quantify their findings they would need appropriate activity and behaviour grids to record data into.

    In terms of validity, a problem may be that pupil behaviour may be different with a researcher present within the classroom. For this reason, filming a class may improve validity, although ethically students and ideally parents and teachers would have to be informed of this in advance to gain consent.

    One observer may also miss out on some pupil behaviour in larger classes, they simply may not be able to see everything going on in a class of say 30 pupils, and for this reason filming may again be useful to go back and observe again. Filming would also allow for a second research to check findings, improving reliability.

    The item mentions that different researchers may not categorise behaviour in the same way, this is a problem which could reduce reliability, especially if researchers are from different ethnic or class backgrounds, or different genders. Women may be less likely to see bad behaviour of girls, for example, and the same for men with boys, unconscious researcher bias may reduce validity and thus reliability. However as mentioned above, filming observations in classrooms could be a way to overcome this, different researchers can watch the same footage and come to an agreement around how to categorise behaviours.

    Practically non-PO is not very practical, researchers would have to gain access to the school, and classrooms, teachers and pupils would probably not be very keen. In terms of representatives you would be limited to one class at a time, and one hours work of in-class observations would have to be written up and checked afterwards. If you wanted to research across different schools, access would have to be negotiated for each school.

    The item mentions doing non PO outside of the classroom, the problem here is that if you’re doing this in corridors, playgrounds, or social spaces, there would be a lot of coming and going of different students, so you wouldn’t be able to focus on particular students, as you could do with being in a classroom.

    This kind of outside the classroom would be messier than in-classroom, and to be honest i don’t know what you’d be looking for, maybe just open ended observation would yield something useful, but I can’t really see the point? Maybe you could use this to measure general rowdiness in different schools and see if this is correlated with staff presence (but the answer here seems obvious?). On reflection there seems little to gain from doing this.

    Less structured non PO outside of classrooms would also be more subject to the subjectivities of the researchers.

    One other way of doing non participant observation may be to set cameras up in corridors and school gates, these could measure things like student lateness, and maybe other things with the right AI software, but of course AI software has to be programmed which means that is open to human bias too.

    Weaknesses of non-PO would be that you can’t ask students WHY they are doing what they are doing, so you wouldn’t have any in-depth information from participants.

    This also raises ethical problems in that non-PO done on its own would be researching without any say-so from the participants, treating them like guinea pigs, and this method is in some ways like a field-experiment. This method thus wouldn’t be favoured by interpretivists.

    One final thing is that OFSTED inspections and school internal observations offer a secondary source of non-PO data that could form the basis of further non-PO work, findings from either of these could be used as a jumping off point for further research.

    For example previous internal school observations may have found that, for example, Kahoot works really well to engage students, so further observations could see if this is true in a wider range of subjects, or if IT more generally improves student performance.

    In conclusion I think non PO is a useful method for exploring correlations of specific behaviours within classrooms, but must have a narrow focus to be useful. i can’t see how it would be useful doing more general observations outside of the classroom, it would be too impractical and too open to the subjective whims of the researchers to yield anything useful I think.

    Sources and Signposting

  • Social Democracy and the Welfare State

    Social democracy is the main ideological perspective to the left of the Middle Way. In Britain, it has traditionally been associated with the Fabian tradition and the Labour Party, although it overlaps with some of the ideas held today by Liberal Democrats as well as the Third Way.

    The Welfare State is a fundamental part of the ideology of social democracy.

    Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism

    Consequently, there is debate about the extent to which the social democratic perspective can (or should) be separated from democratic socialism, the term used by George and Wilding (1994). For instance, it can be distinguished on the grounds that democratic socialism implies a commitment to radical socialist change, albeit achieved by democratic means, whereas social democracy implies support for existing democratic structures but the use of these to pursue policies that are more interventionist and socially responsible.

    However, such a distinction is not consistently borne out in practice; and, even if there might be potential theoretical disagreement between the two perspectives over ends, there is substantial theoretical consensus across them over means.

    Core Principles of Social Democracy

    The commitment of social democracy is to social justice through the gradual reform of the economic capitalist market economy. At the core rests an identification of social inequalities, whether economic or material, which are removed through gradual social change and reform, rather than through revolution.

    This relies upon the existing structures of society to support, sustain, or ameliorate these problems and create a fairer system. Each proposal for such reform is based upon moral principles of collectivism and altruism: the pursuit of mutual support. These principles have also often been linked to Christian values of care and concern for one’s fellow man or woman.

    Social Democracy in Post-War Britain

    The pursuit of social democratic values is found within the practical politics of post-war Britain, often captured in the industrial muscle of the trade union movement. Through the electoral success of the Labour Party (formed by the trade unions in 1906), political success policies sought to force capitalist holders of wealth and other forms of privilege to redistribute resources, under the implicit threat of collective and revolutionary or disruptive social change.

    image of NHS leaflet from 1948
    The foundation. of the NHS was a core part of social democracy in the 1940s.

    Such redistribution of resources aimed to ameliorate the problems generated by capitalism, found within a broader pursuit of social justice.

    The Strategy of Equality: Tawney’s Influence on Social Democracy

    Perhaps the earliest theoretical exposition of this major theme of social justice can be found in Tawney’s (1931) discussion of the strategy of equality. He argued that social justice could, and should, be pursued within a capitalist economy through the introduction of universal welfare services and redistributive tax and benefit policies.

    Fifteen years later, the post-war welfare state reforms could be seen as an attempt by the Labour government under Attlee to engage directly in such a strategy. However, subsequent criticisms of these achievements of state welfare—particularly regarding securing greater equality in practice—cast doubt upon the viability of such a strategy (Le Grand, 1982).

    The Role of the State in Social Democracy

    During the early post-war years, Fabian politicians and academics such as Crosland (1956) wrote about the desirability of a mixed economy and continued to argue against revolutionary solutions. The transfer of power and resources to the lower classes and the state had resulted in an irreversible transformation of the social and economic structure and had fundamentally altered the character of the social and economic model within capitalist countries.

    The Impact of Neoliberalism and Welfare Reforms

    Large parts of this irreversible transfer remained, despite the anti-state reforms of the 1980s facilitated by New Right ideology. The introduction of state provision for health, education, and social security displaced much private market and voluntary sector provision.

    The universal welfare state is often claimed by social democrats as the embodiment of their ideological support for social justice, contrasting with Middle Way policies, which only provided limited state welfare. However, in twentieth-century Britain, social democracy only achieved major political influence between 1945 and 1951.

    Find out more about neoliberal approaches to welfare.

    Is the Welfare State an Irreversible Social Fact?

    Therborn (1986) argues that, once achieved, the welfare state becomes an irreversible feature of any modern democratic society. He suggests this is due to its functionality for the economy and its guarantee of electoral popularity—or rather, the popularity of those political parties that support it.

    Research from Taylor-Gooby (1991) and more recent electoral trends demonstrate that support for state welfare remained high even during periods of right-wing Conservative government.

    The Third Way and New Labour’s Shift

    Towards the end of the twentieth century, the popularity of social democracy and its approach to welfare began to be questioned within the Labour Party. This shift resulted from:

    • The electoral successes of Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
    • A review of the role of state welfare within social democracy.

    Following Labour’s 1992 election defeat, John Smith established a Commission on Social Justice (Borrie, 1994) to analyze policy directions. The report categorized perspectives into three groups:

    1. Deregulators – Advocated neoliberal policies and private markets.
    2. Levellers – Supported old-style social democratic justice through redistribution.
    3. Investors – Advocated social justice through economic growth and investment.

    The third group became central to New Labour’s “Third Way” rhetoric, with policy shifts emphasizing individual and community responsibility over traditional state dependency (Powell, 1999; 2002; 2008).

    Find out more about New Labour’s Third Way approach to welfare.

    Conclusion: The Future of Social Democracy

    As Page (2007) and Fitzpatrick (2003) argue, contemporary social democracy has shifted towards pragmatism, where welfare is framed as a form of social responsibility rather than an entitlement.

    Sources and further reading

    Alcock and Gregory (2022) Social Policy in Britain, Fifth Edition.

    You might also like to explore the following:

    Attlee, C. R. (1945–1951). Labour Government Post-War Welfare State Reforms.

    Blair, Tony (1997–2010). New Labour Governments and Third Way Policies.

    Borrie, Gordon (1994). Report of the Commission on Social Justice.

    Crosland, Anthony (1956). The Future of Socialism.

    George, V., & Wilding, P. (1994). Welfare and Ideology.

    Le Grand, Julian (1982). The Strategy of Equality: Redistribution and the Social Services.

    Page, Robert (2007). Revisiting the Welfare State.

    Pierson, Christopher (1988). Beyond the Welfare State? The New Political Economy of Welfare.

    Powell, Martin (1999, 2002, 2008). Evaluations of New Labour’s Social Policies.

    Smith, John (1992). Labour Party Leadership and the Commission on Social Justice.

    Tawney, R. H. (1931). Equality.

    Taylor-Gooby, Peter (1991). Public Opinion, Ideology, and State Welfare.

    Therborn, Göran, & Roebroek, Joop (1986). The Irreversibility of the Welfare State.

    To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

  • AUGUSTE COMTE: Positivism and the scientific study of Society 

    Auguste Comte is the founder of Positivism. The key idea of Positivism was that science can be used to understand society and build a better world. 

    Comte argued that knowledge of society can only be acquired through scientific investigation, and and by observing the laws that govern social stability and social change.

    He believed that Scientific understanding of these laws can bring about change and that this scientific knowledge could be used to bring about social progress. 

    Auguste Comte: HIstorical Context 

    By the end of the 18th century, increased industrialization had brought about radical changes to traditional society in Europe. At the same time, France was struggling to establish a new social order in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Some thinkers, such as Adam Smith, had sought to explain the rapidly changing face of society in economic terms; others, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, did so in terms of political philosophy. Adam Ferguson had described the social effects of modernization, but no one had yet offered an explanation of social progress to match the political and economic theories.

    August Comte was born in 1798 in the midst of these social changes in Montpellier, France. His parents were Catholics and monarchists, but Auguste rejected religion and adopted republicanism. In 1817 he became an assistant to Henri de Saint-Simon, who greatly influenced his ideas of a scientific study of society. After disagreements, Comte left Saint-Simon in 1824, and began his Course in Positive Philosophy, supported by John Stuart Mill, among others.

    Comte suffered during this time from mental disorders, and his marriage to Caroline Massin ended in divorce. He then fell madly in love with Clotilde de Vaux (who was separated from her husband), but their relationship was unconsummated; she died in 1846. Comte then devoted himself to writing and establishing a positivist “Religion of Humanity.”

    The 1830 revolution in France coincided with the publication of Comte’s book on positivism and seemed to usher in the age of social progress that he had been hoping for.

    He died in Paris in 1857.

    KEY DATES

    • 1813 French theorist Henri de Saint-Simon suggests the idea of a science of society.
    • 1840s Karl Marx argues that economic issues are at the root of historical change.
    • 1853 Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte introduces Comte’s ideas to a wider public.
    • 1865 British philosopher John Stuart Mill refers to Comte’s early sociological and later political ideas as “good Comte” and “bad Comte.”
    • 1895 In The Rules of Sociological Method, Émile Durkheim seeks to establish a systematic sociology.

    Key works

    • 1830–42 Course in Positive Philosophy (six volumes)
    • 1848 A General View of Positivism
    • 1851–54 System of Positive Polity (four volumes)

    The Foundations of Comte’s Positivism 

    Comte’s mentor, the social philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon, attempted to analyse the causes of social order, and how social order can be achieved. He suggested that there is a pattern to social progress, and that society goes through a number of different stages. But it was his protégé Auguste Comte who developed this idea into a comprehensive approach to the study of society on scientific principles, which he initially called “social physics” but later described as “sociology.”

    The emergence of scientific method during the Enlightenment influenced Comte’s approach to philosophy. He made a detailed analysis of the natural sciences and their methodology, then proposed that all branches of knowledge should adopt scientific principles and base their theory on observation.

    The central argument of Comte’s “positivism” philosophy is that valid knowledge of anything can only be derived from positive, scientific enquiry. He had seen the power of science to transform: scientific discoveries had provided the technological advances that brought about the Industrial Revolution and created the modern world he lived in.

    The time had come, he said, for a social science that would not only give us an understanding of the mechanisms of social order and social change, but also provide us with the means of transforming society, in the same way that the physical sciences had helped to modify our physical environment.

    Comte's Posiitivism

    Sociology: the Queen of the Sciences 

    Comte considered the study of human society, or sociology, to be the most challenging and complex, therefore it was the “Queen of sciences.”

    Comte’s argument that the scientific study of society was the culmination of progress in our quest for knowledge was influenced by an idea proposed by Henri de Saint-Simon and is set out as the “law of three stages.” This states that our understanding of phenomena passes through three phases: a theological stage, in which a god or gods are cited as the cause of things; a metaphysical stage, in which explanation is in terms of abstract concepts; and a positive stage, in which knowledge is verified by scientific methods.

    Comte’s grand theory of social evolution became an analysis of social progress too — an alternative to the merely descriptive ideas of the historical stages of hunter-gatherer, agrarian, and industrial-commercial. Society in France, Comte suggested, was rooted in the theological stage until the Enlightenment, when social order was based on rules that were ultimately religious in origin. Following the revolution in 1789, French society entered a metaphysical stage, becoming ordered according to secular principles and ideals, especially the rights to liberty and equality. Comte believed that, recognizing the shortcomings of post-revolutionary society, it now had the possibility of entering the positive stage, in which social order could be determined scientifically.

    Three Stages of Human Progress

    Comte identified three stages of progress in human understanding of the world. The theological stage came to an end with the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century. Focus then shifted from the divine to the human in a metaphysical stage of rational thought, from which evolved a final stage in which science provides the explanations.

    A science of society

    Comte proposed a framework for the new science of sociology, based on the existing “hard” sciences. He organized a hierarchy of sciences, arranged logically so that each science contributes to those following it but not to those preceding it. Beginning with mathematics, the hierarchy ranged through astronomy, physics, and chemistry, to biology. The apex of this ascending order of “positivity” was sociology. For this reason, Comte felt it was necessary to have a thorough grasp of the other sciences and their methods before attempting to apply these to the study of society.

    Paramount was the principle of verifiability from observation: theories supported by the evidence of facts. But Comte also recognized that it is necessary to have a hypothesis to guide the direction of scientific enquiry, and to determine the scope of observation.

    Although Comte was not the first to attempt an analysis of human society, he was a pioneer in establishing that it is capable of being studied scientifically. In addition, his positivist philosophy offered both an explanation of secular industrial society and the means of achieving social reform. He believed that just as the forces that determine social change can be studied, so too can social stability.

    Positivist Sociology: From theory to practice

    Comte formed his ideas during the chaos that followed the French Revolution, and set them out in his six-volume Course in Positive Philosophy, the first volume of which appeared the same year that France experienced a second revolution in July 1830.

    After the overthrow and restoration of monarchy, opinion in France was divided between those who wanted order and those who demanded progress. Comte believed his positivism offered a third way, a rational rather than ideological basis for action based on an objective study of society.

    His theories gained him as many critics as admirers in his native land, and he found more ready acceptance in Britain.

    Some of his greatest supporters were in Britain, including liberal intellectual John Stuart Mill, who provided him with financial support to enable him to continue with his project, and Harriet Martineau, who translated an edited version of his work into English.

    Unfortunately, the reputation Comte had built up was tarnished by his later work, in which he described how positivism could be applied in a political system. An unhappy personal life (a marriage break-up, depression, and a tragic affair) is often cited as causing a change in his thinking: from an objective scientific approach that examines society to a subjective and quasi-religious exposition of how it should be.

    The shift in Comte’s work from theory to how it could be put into practice lost him many followers. Mill and other British thinkers saw his prescriptive application of positivism as almost dictatorial, and the system of government he advocated as infringing liberty.

    By this time, an alternative approach to the scientific study of society had emerged. Against the same backdrop of social turmoil, Karl Marx offered an analysis of social progress, based on a science of economics, and a model for change based on political action rather than rationalism.

    It is not difficult to see why, in a period driven by revolutions, Comte’s vision of harmony was eclipsed by the dynamism of socialism and capitalism. Nevertheless, it was Comte, and to a lesser extent his mentor Saint-Simon, who first proposed the idea of sociology as a discipline based on scientific principles rather than mere theorizing. In particular he established the basis for methods of observation and theory for the social sciences that was taken directly from the physical sciences.

    Later sociologists, notably Émile Durkheim, disagreed with the detail of his positivism, and the application of it, Comte provided a solid, and still foundational, framework. Although today Comte’s dream of sociology as the “Queen of sciences” may seem naive, the objectivity he advocated remains a guiding principle.

    Signposting and Sourcees

    This material is mainly relevant to the theory and methods aspect of Sociology.

  • A-level results day 2024: back to normal!

    Congratulations to most of you on your A-level, BTEC and T-Level Results. Commiserations to the rest of you!

    While there will be many individual triumphs and tragedies, I’m going to take a positivist approach here and look at the overall trends

    Remember, positivists are interested in looking at the bigger picture. They are interested in macro level trends using statistics and making comparisons.

    The government’s initial posting of results on its website is a modern day positivist overview of results…

    To summarise the main trends:

    The overall trend in A-level results 2019 to 2024

    A-level results 2008 to 2024 trends graph

    • The A-level pass rate was 97.1%
    • The C and above pass rate was 76%
    • The A and A* pass rate was 27.6%

    All of these results for 2024 are slightly above the A-level results in 2019, the last year of valid results before the Pandemic’s invalid non-results which were made up by teachers.

    BTEC results 2024

    The Distinction and Distinction* rates stood at 39.1% in 2024 for Vocation level 3 qualifications, up slightly from 2019 when it was 33%.

    T-Level Results 2024

    The relatively new T-levels are a lot harder to pass and get a high grade in compared to other level 3 qualifications.

    Only 3.3% achieved an A or A* for T-levels, with only around 50% getting a C or above.

    Signposting

    This material is relevant to the education module, usually taught as part of first year A-level sociology.

  • Media Bias in the 2024 General Election

    The day of general election offers us a great chance to see the explicit political bias of newspapers.

    I took the opportunity to simply take some photos of today’s headlines… on the fourth of July 2024….

    Some of them are obviously pro-Labour while others are biased towards the Tories. One dirty filth rag is even supporting Reform UK.

    Pro-Labour Newspapers

    Pro-Labour newspapers include The Mirror and The Guardian as you might expect. The Sun as switched to supporting Labour this election too.

    The Sun

    The Sun famously claimed ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It‘ back in 1992 when it supported the Torys. However back then it may have had a claim as a hung parliament was predicted. The Sun has mostly supported the Tories, but switched in 1997 to support Blair, then back following Gordon Brown.

    This time they are supporting Labour with a football twist. This just about sums up how seriously we take politics these days!

    The Sun newspaper election day headline 2024

    The Mirror

    A long term left-wing paper. No surprise here, just a clear positive statement to vote Labour.

    The Mirror newspaper election day headline 2024

    The Guardian

    More subtle Labour support than with The Mirror. A picture of Starmer with supporters, mention of ‘new age of hope’. O.K. maybe it’s not that subtle lefty bias?

    Neutral headlines

    Headlines in the Times and Independent are more neutral. However if you read the articles, you might find bias

    The Times

    The Independent

    Pro-Tory Newspapers

    The Telegraph and the Express are the only two newspapers which are overtly Tory this election….

    The Telegraph

    Note nothing positive about the Tories, fearmongering about Labour.

    The Express

    Nothing specific in here, either…

    The Daily Mail

    The Daily Hate warns you off voting Reform, no doubt the message inside will be to vote Tory (maybe Lib Dem).

    The daily mail filthy hate paper.

    Of course true to its negative hate-spewing form the Mail doesn’t give you positive reasons why you should vote Tory. Instead it focusses on spreading unfounded gossip attempting to badmouth Labour.

    What a disgusting piece of filth. The best you can say about the Mail is it’s a good model for how NOT to end up like!

    The Daily Star

    Not really sure who these guys support, anything but Tory by the looks of it!

    Newspapers and Election Coverage 2024 Conclusions…..

    I enjoy doing my four yearly photo session of these papers, but newspaper circulation is so very low these days. So this is such an indulgence. More influential will be social media output.

    However, the above news sources do feed into our social media feeds, so these biases will still have an influence!

    Signposting

    This material is most relevant to Media Studies, an option within second year A-level sociology.

  • How are Criminals Punished in England and Wales?

    Courts decide how criminals should be punished in England and Wales. 80% of offenders receive a fine as punishment. Only 11% of offenders receive some kind of prison sentence.

    Sentencing in England and Wales

    Sentencing in England and Wales takes place in either a magistrates or crown court. 

    Magistrates courts deal with less serious offences. These are resided over by a magistrate. Magistrates are just ordinary citizens who take on the role voluntarily. The maximum prison term you can receive from a magistrates court is 6 months.

    Crown courts deal with more serious offences. These are resided over by professional judges who have more extensive powers to pass longer jail sentences than magistrates.

    When sentencing the court will take into account the following factors: 

    • How serious it the offence is 
    • Whether the defendant pleaded guilty or not guilty.. 
    • The defendant’s character, personal circumstance and any criminal record. 

    Punishments for criminal offences in England and Wales

    In England and Wales, there are four main types of sentences for those found guilty of crimes, in order of seriousness….

    • Discharges for the least serious offences. 2% of offenders receive a discharge.
    • Fines. 80% of offenders receive a fine as a punishment.
    • Community sentences. These require an offender to do something. This may be unpaid work, getting treatment for an addition, adhering to a restraining order or avoiding going to a particular place. Only 7% of offenders receive a community sentence.
    • Custodial sentences (aka prison). These are only for the most serious offences. 11% of offenders get a custodial sentence.
    pie chart showing what percentage of criminals get fined community sentences, discharged or sent to jail.

    Discharges 

    Judges award discharges for the most minor offences. With a discharge the offender is still found guilty and still gets a criminal record.

    An offender can receive either an absolute or conditional discharge.

    With an absolute discharge the offender is effectively free to go with no further punishment or conditions. 

    A conditional discharge means if the offender commits another crime they can be sentenced for their first offence along with that one. 

    Alongside a discharge an offender may also get a disqualification orders, compensation orders, and/ or court costs. 

    In 2022 only 2% of offenders received a discharge. In fact, with an absolute discharge, going to court is the only real punishment.

    Fines

    Fines are the most common form of punishment in England and Wales. Judges hand out fines for 80% of offences.

    How large a fine will depend on how serious the crime is and the offender’s capacity to pay. 

    Technically the courts can set unlimited fines, but guidelines for amounts vary for different crimes. 

    Fines are the most common form of punishment. In 2022 79% of offenders received a fine as a punishment. That’s 831 000 fines in 2022!

    Community Sentences

    Community sentences involve punishments carried out within the community and require the offender to actively do something. 

    Examples of community service includes:

    • Doing up to 300 hours of unpaid work. 
    • Taking part in programmes to change behaviour. 
    • Getting treatment for mental health issues or undertaking rehabilitation for drugs or alcohol. 
    • Offenders may have to refrain from doing certain things. This may include curfews, avoiding certain places, not travelling abroad.

    There are generally three aims for community service: to punish, to change behaviour and to pay back the community. 

    In 2022 7% of offenders (69 000) received some type of community service as punishment.

    Custodial Sentences

    Custodial sentences are given for the most serious crimes, such as violent crimes, weapons offences and drug trafficking. 

    There are different maximum sentences depending on the crime, and some crimes carry minimum custodial terms. For example if you threaten someone with a weapon there is a minimum six month sentence. 

    Some offences also have a ‘three strike’ rule. For example after your third domestic burglary, the minimum sentence is three years. 

    There are four types of custodial sentence:

    • Suspended sentences. A judge may decide to suspend sentences up to two years. If the offender complies with all conditions set and doesn’t offend again for the term of the sentence they won’t go to jail. If they commit a further offence during their suspended sentence, they will most likely serve the original custodial term. 
    • Determinate sentences. Here the judge specifies the maximum number of years an offender could spend in jail. For less serious offences of up to four years the offender will typically spend half the term in jail, then be released on license. For offences over four years, offenders will serve two thirds of the time before release on license. 
    • Extended sentences. These are for more serious offences. Here offenders may apply for parole after they have served two-thirds of their sentence. 
    • Life sentences. These are for the most serious offences such as murder and terrorism. Here the judge sets a minimum term which depends on the offence. The offender then serves that term and then may apply for parole. They remain ‘on license’ for the rest of their lives and can be recalled to jail at any time. In the most serious cases judges may pass whole life sentences. There are currently 65 people in jail for the rest of their lives. 

    In 2022 4% of offenders received a suspended sentence, and 6% received a determinate sentence. Only 1% received an extended sentence. 

    Disposal Orders 

    For people with limited mental capacity the court may make a disposal order. This is where they are put in a hospital for treatment or under guardianship. 

    Ancillary Orders 

    In addition to any of the above punishments, the court may also impose ancillary orders. These are further conditions offenders need to meet. 

    They include such things as restraining orders, criminal behaviour orders and driving bans.

    Signposting

    This material is mainly relevant to the A-level sociology Crime and Deviance module.

    It should enable students to evaluate sociological perspectives on punishment.

  • Security, Surveillance and Crime Control in Digital Society 

    The advent of digital society has powerful implications for social control, surveillance, crime and social policy. 

    Digital societies are those in which digital technologies are today integrated into daily life. They have powerfully changed the way human societies are governed. 

    Digital technologies provide massive volumes of data which are analysed and used to inform policing practices and social control policies more generally. 

    The police use big Data to construct gang databases for selective surveillance, and in sentencing decision making. 

    This post explores how crime control is changing with the rise of Smart Cities, focusing on predictive policing as part of this. It also applies several social theories to understanding social control in digital society and examines criticisms. 

    Social Control in Smart Cities 

    Smart Cities link digital and physical infrastructure to enable social ordering. 

    They are often presented as being desirable places to lift, with some accounts being utopian. However, they also allow for huge volumes of data to be collected and used to control citizens. 

    According to Laufs et al (2020) there are three layers of technologies within Smart Cities…

    1. The sensor layer which are data collection units. Most obviously cameras, but this also includes facial recognition software. 
    2. The network layer – the infrastructure to analyse and aggregate data.
    3. The actuator layer – alerts which inform actors to act on the basis of data collected. Fully automated machines or human beings will do this analysis.

    Thus in Smart Cities hardware, software and human beings are all integrated into a crime control network. 

    diagram outlining the key features of a smart city.

    How Smart Cities change Crime 

    Smart cities open up new opportunities for certain actors to commit crime, and make new types of crime possible:

    1. There is more potential for domestic state crimes to take place.  The State now has more data on more people than ever in human history. 
    2. There is more scope for international state crime to take place. Transnational Corporations have greater access to public data. 
    3. Corporations such as Meta harvest much of our data. Thus there is more potential for Corporate Crime. 
    4. There is more potential for organised crime groups to hack state or corporate data. 
    5. There is more potential for cyber-terrorism. 

    Digital Cities have multiple attack vectors for criminals:

    • Weak software and password security is one way in. 
    • Poor maintenance of out of date software systems.
    • Cascade effects with higher levels of integration. 
    • Criminals may exploit human error and disgruntled employees as a way in. 

    Examples of damaging cyber-crimes:

    • The 2019 Suxnet Worm attack on an Iranian nuclear facility
    • The ‘WannaCry’ ransomware attack which damaged the NHS’ patient databases in 2017. 
    • Russia’s cyber attack on Estonia in 2007 which targeted banking, news providers and voting systems. 
    screencapture from the wannacry ransomware attack.
    Screencapture from the wannaCry Ransomware attack.

    Potential crimes we may see in Smart Cities include:

    • Taking control of traffic networks and vehicles. 
    • Attacks on Smart Buildings – control of lifts, lighting, heating. 
    • Healthcare emergency and response systems 
    • Falsifying payments through smart metres, for example. 

    Implications for security and surveillance 

    We are already seeing the increased use of Body Worn Cameras by the police. We also see more Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones), and the increasing use of GPS tracking to control crime. 

    Technology in Smart Cities can prevent crime in the following ways:

    • Detecting crimes through cameras and other surveillance tools.
    • Authenticating at secure entrances to only allow authorised persons to enter buildings. 
    • Identifying actual criminals through facial recognition software 
    • Profiling the types of people who may have committed a crime, using existing data. 
    • Tracking objects through GPS, which can help prevent theft or find stolen goods. 

    We now have an increasing array of sensors beyond cameras. These include acoustic sensors (to detect gunshots for example), and atmospheric sensors to detect potential harmful substances. Cameras have also evolved to track gait analysis and facial features. There is even ‘sentiment’ analysis.  

    In terms of analysis the police are using more and more data in certain cases. Digital Forensics is a growing field, used especially in child abuse cases. This might sometimes involve hours and hours of searching through all phone records or browsing history. 

    Predictive Policing 

    Predictive policing is where police forces use existing data to predict patterns in future offending.

    Four ways in which policing has become predictive:

    1. Spatio-temporal – where and when are crimes more likely to occur..? 
    2. Predicting offenders – what types of people are more likely to commit crimes in the future..?
    3. Identifying what types of offence are more likely to occur when and where and who is more likely to be committing the offence.
    4. Identifying victims. 

    Predictive policing has increasing amounts in common with actuarialism (insurance). This is where the police calculate the risks of offending taking place based on past data. 

    This means that algorithms based on past data are increasingly determining where police resources should be deployed. 

    One company which worked with several police departments in America was PredPol. You can view a slide show of its presentation here. It outlines how its algorithms will show police at the beginning of a shift where the crime hotspots are in their areas. 

    PredPol’s marketing presentation

    NB evidence suggests this software is very inacurate! 

    Criticisms of predictive policing 

    Predictive Policing algorithms are not neutral. Old biases will feed into them. For example, historically the criminal justice system has been biased against young black men. This means any algorithm used to predict future offending may exaggerate the chances that any young black man could be a potential offender. In 2021 The Los Angeles Police Department scrapped their predictive policing programme because of this. 

    These biases hold true for a range of characteristics: those from the lower social classes, in poverty, from inner-city estates, for example. 

    Where algorithms are concerned there may be exponential combination effects when calculating risks of offending. Predictive Policing software is much more likely to flag someone with multiple ‘criminal risk features’.

    Historically there is more data collected on the powerless than the wealthy elite. Thus, predictive policing models are more likely to catch the powerless, not the wealthy elite who have always committed crime but never got caught doing it. (Which is the case if you are coming from a Marxist perspective on crime!).  

    Theories of surveillance applied to Digital Society 

    Foucault’s classic theory of the Panopticon model of surveillance doesn’t work here. According to Foucault the general population are more likely to regulate their own behaviour because they know that a central authority is observing them. 

    This panopticon model doesn’t capture the way surveillance in the Digital Society works. Surveillance today works by categorising people into those who need to be surveilled more and those who don’t. This is the case with predictive policing, for example. Here there are huge numbers of people: mainly middle class, older and white who simply aren’t in the police models as potential criminals. However, if you’re young, black, male and poor, the surveillance net is more likely to catch you.

    Similarly, airport surveillance makes life easier for most of us, by making security checks quicker. However if you have a male muslim profile from a certain country, you are more likely to be checked. 

    Mathieson’s model of synoptic surveillance works better in some respects. According to Mathieson we are all observing each other and this is where control comes from. This includes the relatively powerless observing the powerful. The case study of George Floyd is an example of this: where ordinary citizens filmed the police murdering him. 

    In order to fully understand surveillance today we need to understand that we exist within a ‘surveillant assemblage’. This is where the state, the police, and private companies are all involved together in a social control network. 

    This is easy to see if you consider how many surveillance technologies are created by private companies. However they are then paid for by the state and used day to day by the police. Facial recognition software is a great example of this. 

    Actor Network Theory may be useful in helping to understand social control through surveillance in digital society. Actor Network Theory holds that technology acts like an agent. This means that while people shape technology, technology also shapes people and their environments. 

    Relevance to A-level Sociology 

    This material is most obviously relevant to the module in crime and deviance. It is also relevant to social theory, research methods and social policy! 

    Relevance to social theory 

    This is extremely relevant to postmodernism and approaches to social control in a post, or late-modern society…. 

    Following Swift (2005) we live in an age of informational capitalism. In this age the distinction between online and offline worlds is blurred. Indeed, to be a citizen in the fullest sense of the word we need to be online. 

    So it is unlikely we are going to see masses of people go offline anytime soon. Thus more and more people are going to be subject to social control in smart cities. More and more people are going to be subject to predictive policing. These shifts in social control are relevant to everyone! 

    Relevance to research methods…

    The use of Big Data in policing policy illustrates a shift in the way research methods relates to social policy…

    Big Data has brought two epistemological shifts that have fundamentally changed the way we understand the world. 

    1. We are now less reliant on representative sampling. Big Data means we are more able to get relevant data for an entire population under study. 
    2. Issues of causality become less relevant. Correlations between different data points become more relevant. 

    The implications for social policy are that speculative knowledge gains more status. Policy makers make data on the basis of correlations between the data points we have available based on digital technologies. 

    Digital data analysis may appear neutral, but it is always biassed.

    Sources 

    Liebling et al (2023) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology

    Smart City Picture

    WannaCry Screen Shot Picture

  • Should we control children’s use of mobile phones more?

    The Department for Education recently revealed new guidelines on ‘banning’ mobile phones from classrooms across England. 

    The D of E points out that by the age of 12, 97% of children have their own mobile phones. These can potentially cause students to get distracted from learning. Worse, they can facilitate harassment, sexual abuse and bullying in and outside of school. 

    The guidelines present four models of prohibition which range from an outright ban on school premises, to allowing pupils to carry them as long as they are never used. 

    Maybe these guidelines don’t go far enough?

    The guidelines are just that, guidelines, they are NOT a social policy!

    There is no obligation for schools to implement any of the suggested measures.  

    Most schools already have strict policies on the use of mobile phones. 

    More than 80% of schools forbid their use or only allow use when specifically permitted by teachers. Less than 1% of pupils use them at will when in school. 

    However, despite the rules, students still use them when they shouldn’t be. One third of secondary school students say they’ve seen phones being used secretly in lessons. 

    The guidelines don’t address the deeper problem of children’s exposure to social media via their phones more generally. For younger people especially, a constant string of notifications daily can fuel a toxic cycle of addiction. Many pupils will be distracted from homework and revision due to their mobiles.

    Similarly these rules don’t address the harms from exposure to the more toxic aspects of social media. This will carry on outside of school, with pupils being exposed to the likes of Andrew Tate. 

    Maybe what we need is more stringent societal level rules restricting children’s use of mobile phones more generally. We could, for example, only allow the sale of restricted phones to under 16s (or under 18s) that have very limited functionality. 

    Signposting

    This material is relevant to the education module within A-level sociology. It is also relevant to social control, an integral part of the Crime and Deviance module.

    Find out more


    Details of the guidelines on mobile phones can be found here.

  • Police and Policing in the U.K. 

    The police have legal sanctions and are able to use legitimate force to control crime and deviance. Policing embodies the quest for general and stratified order, from parking tickets to class repression. The police are the people who the public turn to when they feel something ought to not be happening, and that someone better do something about it now!

    Definitions of the police and policing

    It is usual to distinguish between the police and policing.

    Police: the specialist state agency tasked with crime control, order maintenance, and emergency response. 

    Policing: organised forms of order-maintenance, peace-keeping, rule or law enforcement, crime investigation and prevention and other forms of investigation and information-brokering, which may involve a conscious exercise of coercive power, undertaken by individuals or organisations, where such activities are viewed by them and/ or others as a central or key defining part of their purpose (Jones and Newburn, 19888: 18-19). 

    As we will see below policing may be carried out by agencies other than the police, such as private security firms. 

    Five Functions of Policing 

    Police work performs a variety of social functions:

    • Crime control 
    • Emergency response 
    • Social service
    • Order maintenance 
    • Political repression. 

    Police Discretion and Control 

    Police discretion is the leeway officers enjoy in selecting from more than one choice in carrying out their work (Mastrofski, 2004: 101). 

    Discretion is inevitable given the impossibility of enforcement of every law all of the time and also because of the need for interpretation on the frontline of policing practice which often involves complex and unpredictable situations. 

    James Q Wilson (1968) observed that within the police force the amount of discretion increases as one moves down the hierarchy. 

    A lot of police work is low in visibility and thus regulating police discretion is difficult. However in recent years the police have been required to spend more time recording their activities and body cams have been introduced in some areas of policing. 

    Police Subcultures 

    Much social research suggests occupational police subcultures are best understood as a collective cultural adaptation to the everyday realities of police work rather than down to individual personality traits. 

    Early studies which were based on the observations of rank and file officers identified a relatively stable set of factors which made up cop culture. 

    Skolnick (1996) identified three main aspects of cop culture: suspiciousness, internal solidarity coupled with social isolation, and conservatism. 

    1. Suspiciousness arises because of the pressure to achieve results by catching offenders and the concern with danger. People and places are constantly scrutinised for signs of crime or risk. This also encourages profiling of certain people along stereotypical lines. 
    2. Solidarity and isolation reinforce one another. Solidarity emerges because of the reliance on colleagues in difficult situations, and isolation comes because of people’s reluctance to engage with authority figures, compounded by shift work. 
    3. Conservatism is due to the police’s role in upholding the status quo. 

    Later studies added to this checklist: an exaggerated sense of mission, cynicism and pragmatism, machismo and racial prejudice. 

    Most studies of cop culture do not support the notion of a freestanding phenomenon into which successive generations are passively socialised. 

    Police culture is generated and sustained by the problems and tensions of the role of the police, structured by legal and social pressures. Culture does not determine practice, for example racist officers can be deterred. 

    Many reforms over the past 30 years have seen police culture as a problem and reforms have tried to address this in three ways:

    • Introducing more diversity and preventing recruits with inappropriate views from signing up. Also training has attempted to shift views of current officers. 
    • Moves to constrain discretion. This means tightening the rules surrounding what the police can and can’t do. 
    • Making procedural justice more transparent – Building trust and legitimacy…. People are more likely to obey the law if they feel the police and other authorities are acting appropriately and treating the public fairly and with respect and dignity. 
    The BBCS’ 2003 Documentary ‘The Secret Policeman‘ explored police subcultures.

    Unequal Policing 

    Certain groups in society tend to be over-police and certain victims are more likely to be ignored. 

    Policing tends to focus on marginalised groups, for example poor young men, and ethnic minorities. Young black men in inner-city areas experience over-policing to the extent that they develop a view of the police as the enemy and distrust them, which makes developing positive working relationships very difficult. 

    Domestic abuse cases have traditionally been under-policed and thus the mainly female victims have got a raw deal. Improvements have been made in recent years, but challenges still remain. 

    Governance and Accountability 

    Police forces are ultimately answerable to the general public, who they serve. However meeting public need is difficult as the public is so diverse and has conflicting views about what the police should be doing. 

    Police and Crime Commissioners are responsible for local police force areas. They are 

    • Securing and maintaining the local police force. 
    • Holding chief constables to account. 
    • Publishing a police and crime plan with strategic objectives for the area. 
    • Work cooperatively with community safety partners and develop joined-up responses to local crime and disorder problems. 
    • Commission community safety services including victim support. 
    • Some have responsibility for fire and rescue services. 

    The idea behind them is operational independence from local authorities and central government. 

    Models of Policing… 

    Three popular models of policing are community policing, problem-oriented and linked policing models. 

    Community Policing

    Community policing proposes greater citizen involvement in the identification of the problems that the police should prioritise and in how they should respond to these problems. At heart, community policing is about overcoming concerns about the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public.

    Community policing was very popular during the 1980s when police-community relations had deteriorated in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It was championed by Left Realist Criminologists.

    By the end of the 1980s community policing was orthodoxy among senior police officers, which made it difficult for them at a time when politicians were driving home more of a right realist agenda. 

    The problem with community policing is that it is a vague concept: almost anything can come under the term. It involves inclusiveness, consensus and consultation, but it is difficult to pin down. 

    Problem oriented policing

    Problem oriented policing is often considered a variant of community policing. 

    POP is an explicit attempt to make police work more analytical in the identification of problems to be addressed and constructive in the way solutions are applied to the problems identified. 

    The problem with policing as usual is that it tends to treat crimes or other problems as discrete events. However, with POP it looks for patterns and connections with the aim of finding lasting solutions. 

    One tool is the problem analysis triangle: the offender, victim, location. 

    Another is the SARA process – scanning, analysis, response, assessment:

    Sustaining such strategies continues to be problematic. 

    Linked Policing 

    Linked policing strategies focus on patterns such as repeat offenders or prolific offenders. There is a growing literature around ‘hotspot policing’. Experimental studies and meta-analysis show significant, if small, crime control gains with potential diffusion of gains.  (Braga et al 2019). 

    This is aka evidence based policing. 

    However, few forces are equipped to take this approach and the appeal of traditional policing remains strong. 

    Intelligence Led Policing (ILP) – prioritises crime hot spots, repeat victims, criminal groups, prolific offenders, aim is to make policing more efficient. 

    Predictive policing or smart policing is linked to big data. Uses historical data to detect spatial and temporal patterns in crime and identify likely targets for police intervention to prevent crime or solve past crimes by making statistical predictions. 

    Automatic Facial Recognition (AFR)  is a variation on this. This Increases surveillance capacity of the police. 

    Technologies such as AFR represent a Move to preemptive policing. This is a sectoral shift in which more responsibility lies outside of the police! 

    The Pluralisation of Policing

    The pluralisation of policing is the process of policing becoming more diverse including other non-police agencies taking over some of the functions of policing. 

    Examples of the pluralisation of policing include…

    • The expansion of private security firms.
    • New forms of public sector policing auxiliaries such as local authority patrol forces and municipal wardens 
    • The creation of new patrolling ranks such as Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) 
    • The increase in informal community self-policing such as vigilante groups. 

    Bayley and Shearing (2001) have argued that we may be moving away from the era of one system policing. 

    The expansion of the private security sector is the main driver of the pluralisation of policing. There are many more private security personnel in the United Kingdom than there are police officers. 

    The Security Industry Authority estimates there are 440 000 licensed security personnel in the United Kingdom compared to only 149 000 police officers. 

    Security Personnel work in areas such as asset-protection, body guarding, debt collection, and door-services (‘bouncers’). The most significant expansion in recent years has been the increase in the use of CCTV monitoring, and many security personnel work in surveillance and alarm monitoring. GPS tagging services are also on the increase. 

    Shearing (2006) suggests that the State is increasingly less important in providing security. He suggested that we now have a pluralised security network consisting of a range of private and public sector nodes. 

    Brodeur (2010) uses the terms ‘policing web’ and ‘policing assemblage’ to describe modern policing to emphasise the idea that modern policing for security is still co-ordinated. 

    Why has policing become more pluralised?

    Crime has become more diverse and complex. In particular cybercrime and fraud are so complex that the police now have to work in partnerships. 

    Public sector cuts mean the police are less able financially to meet security needs, and so private sector agencies have stepped in to plug the gaps. 

    In some cases deliberate Tory privatisation policies have shifted previously state functions to the private sector. For example in 2012 Lincolnshire police outsourced 18 police functions to G4S, including custody services. 

    The growing privatisation of public space has also resulted in an increase of private security services to manage these. 

    Problems with pluralisation

    • Market pressures being involved in security provision are unlikely to improve public safety. 
    • The differential ability to pay for security services may increase inequalities. 
    • The commodification of security services may undermine public trust and civic engagement. 

    The Globalisation of Policing 

    The increasing globalisation of crime has resulted in the increasing globalisation of policing, where 

    Transnational policing refers to activities undertaken by policing bodies that draw their authority from polities that lie beyond individual nation states. 

    The International Criminal Commission was first established in Vienna in 1923, succeeded after the Second World War by the International Criminal Police Office, or Interpol. 

    Interpol has expanded significantly over the last 70 years, operating in more than 200 countries today, however it is no longer the primary site of transnational policing activity. 

    Two key factors behind the increase in transnational policing are the increasing reach of US law enforcement activities and the expanding power of the European Union. 

    Europol was established in 1992, becoming fully operational in 1999. Europol is the Europe wide police intelligence agency which receives and provides intel from police forces in member states. 

    European policing expanded significantly after the September 11th 2001 attacks Today Europol is mainly focused on transnational organised crime and international terrorism. 

    In the last five years Europol’s mandate has expanded to include investigation of murder, kidnapping, hostage-taking, racism, corruption, drug-trafficking, people-smuggling and motor vehicle crime. A European Arrest Warrant exists in 15 member states. The UK is still part of Europol, despite Brexit. 

    The private security and private military services have also expanded globally. The value of the global private security industry was valued at over $100 billion, and that was over 10 years ago. 

    A combination of wars, ecological disasters and global economic instability has resulted in increasing mass migrations and transnational security has become increasingly focused on border control as a result. This control is a fusion of public and private agencies and raises serious concerns about human rights. 

    NB it is important not to exaggerate the significance of global policing, a lot of policing remains focused on local concerns. 

    Signposting and Sources

    This material is mainly relevant to the Crime and Deviance module within A-level sociology.

    Sources

    The Oxford HandBook of Criminology.

  • People in England and Wales are more class conscious today!

    People in England and Wales are more class conscious today than they were in the 1980s!

    This is according to the latest British Social Attitudes data. The latest wave of the BSA surveys was carried out between 7th September and 30th October 2022. The sample size was 6638, which is double the usual 3000 respondents. 

    Social class identity in Britain in 2022

    People today are much more likely to identify as working class. 

    • 29% of people identified as middle class
    • 46% of people identified as working class. 
    • In 2022 people are more likely to identify as either working or middle class rather than ‘no class’.
    • From the 1980s of the 2010s there was a stable level of class identification. Around 30% identified as working class, and 20% as middle class
    • Since 2015 class identification has increased, for both classes. 
    • This is despite the decline in traditionally working class jobs!
    graph showing changing social class identities England and Wales 1983 to 2022
    PINK: percent identifying middle class, PURPLE: percent identifying working class. England and Wales, 1983 to 2022.

    Methodological note 

    The survey asked people the following question: 

    Do you ever think of yourself as belonging to any particular social class?

    • Yes, middle class
    • Yes, working class
    • Yes (other) please write in
    • No

    If they didn’t respond as being either middle or working class a prompt question followed. This referred specifically to being either class. The above figures show the unprompted responses, so people who self-identified as either middle or working class.  

    Who identifies as working class?

    The job someone does isn’t necessarily related to the social class they feel they are. Although people who do traditionally working class jobs are more likely to identify as working class. 

    • 62% of people in working class jobs identify as working class  
    • 38% of people in middle class jobs identify as working class. 

    Level of education is correlated with social class identity 

    • 60% of people who left school with GCSEs as their highest level of qualification identify as working class
    • 28% who went to university identify as social class. 

    Somewhat surprisingly income levels are less well correlated with social class identity than education. 52% of those in the lowest quintile identified as working class compared to 32% of those in the highest. 

    Attitudes towards social class mobility 

    84% of respondents said they thought it was fairly or very difficult to move from one class to another in 2022. This has increased from just 59% of respondents  in 2005. 

    table showing attitudes towards social mobility UK

    Attitudes to politics and social policy 

    Those who self identify as working class are more likely to hold left wing values. They are more likely to be supportive of policies which redistribute wealth and which restrict wealth accumulation. 

    Interestingly those who identify as working class are no more likely to hold authoritarian views compared to those who identify as middle class. In other words, working class people are no more likely to ‘blame the immigrants’ for our problems than middle class people. 

    Relevance to A-level sociology 

    This material is an important update to the social class identity topic. This topic is part of the culture and identity module. 

    Sources 

    National Centre for Social Research (September 2023) 40 years of British Social Attitudes: Class identity and awareness still matter