Sociology (9699)

5 sections available · 32 chapters available

Free Sociology (9699) revision notes for Cambridge International AS Level students. Each chapter covers a key topic with worked examples and practice prompts you can take straight into the thinka app.

Socialisation and the creation of social identity (Paper 1)

  • The process of learning and socialisation

  • Agencies of socialisation and social control

  • Social control, conformity and resistance

  • Structure and agency: structuralist and interactionist views

  • Deviance and non-conformity

  • Social identity: class, gender, ethnicity and age

  • Changing identities, globalisation and hybridity

Methods of research (Paper 1)

  • Types of data: primary, secondary, quantitative, qualitative

  • Secondary sources: official statistics, documents, digital and media content

  • Quantitative methods: questionnaires, structured interviews, experiments, content analysis

  • Qualitative methods: observation, unstructured and group interviews

  • Stages of research design, sampling and operationalisation

  • Research approaches: case studies, surveys, ethnography, longitudinal and mixed methods

  • Positivism, interpretivism and the science debate

  • Research issues: theoretical, practical and ethical considerations

Theories of the family and social change (Paper 2)

  • Functionalist and Marxist perspectives on the family

  • Feminist responses to functionalist and Marxist accounts

  • Changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, divorce and separation

  • Family and household forms and dimensions of diversity

  • The nuclear family debate: New Right and postmodernist views

  • The state and social policy as influences on the family

Family roles and changing relationships (Paper 2)

  • Gender equality and power in the family

  • Conjugal roles: housework, childcare and emotion work

  • Positive and negative experiences of family life

  • The social construction of childhood

  • Grandparents, life expectancy and the family

  • Changing concepts of motherhood and fatherhood

Exam skills (Paper 1 and Paper 2)

  • Short-answer and 'give two explanations' questions

  • Evaluating a research method or a sociological theory

  • Explaining and arguing against a quoted sociological view

  • Writing the Section B essay: AO1, AO2 and AO3

  • Command words: describe, explain, evaluate, give

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