| Term | Definition |
| antipovitism | the view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values |
| conflict theory | a theory that looks at society as a competition for limited resources |
| contructivism | an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be |
| culture | a group's shared practices, values, and beliefs |
| dramatical analysis | a technique sociologists use in which they view society through the metaphor of theatrical performance |
| dynamic equilibrium | a stable state in which all parts of a healthy society work together properly |
| dysfunctions | social patterns that have undesirable consequences for the operation of society |
| figuration | the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of an individual and the society that shapes that behavior |
| function | the part a recurrent activity plays in the social life as a whole and the contribution it makes to structural continuity |
| functionalism | a theoretical approach that sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of individuals that make up society |
| generalized others | the organized and generalized attitude of a social group |
| grand theories | an attempt to explain large-scale relationships and answer fundamental questions such as why societies form and why they change |
| hypothesis | a testable proposition |
| latent functions | the unrecognized or unintended consequences of a social process |
| macro-level | a wide-scale view of the role of social structures within a society |
| manifest functions | sought consequences of a social process |
| micro-level theories | the study of specific relationships between individuals or small groups |
| paradigms | philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them |
| positivism | the scientific study of social patterns |
| qualitative sociology | in-depth interviews, focus groups, and/or analysis of content sources as the source of its data |
| quantitative sociology | statistical methods such as surveys with large numbers of participants |
| reification | an error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence |
| significant others | specific individuals that impact a person's life |
| social facts | the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social life |
| social institutions | patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs |
| social solidarity | the social ties that bind a group of people together such as kinship, shared location, and religion |
| society | a group of people who live in a defined geographical area who interact with one another and who share a common culture |
| sociological imagination | the ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as as to history in general and societal structures in particular |
| sociology | the systematic study of society and social interaction |
| symbolic interactionsm | a theoretical perspective through which scholars examine the relationship of individuals within their society by studying their communication (language and symbols) |
| theory | a proposed explanation about social interactions or society |
| verstehen | a German word that means to understand in a deep way |
| qualitative design | Design is generally based on a social constructivism perspective. Research problems become research questions based on prior research experience. Data collection involves interview, observation, and/or archival (content) data. |
| quantitative design | Quantitative methods emphasize objective measurements and the statistical, mathematical, or numerical analysis of data collected through polls, questionnaires, and surveys, or by manipulating pre-existing statistical data using computational techniques. |
