Katie Herrera
Sociology 4
Profesor Alvarado
March 25,2015
In the reading ‘The Impact of Social Structure on Mate Selection’ by John F.Zipp, Zipp believes that “many student find it hard to understand social structure and how it shapes their lives” (pg 95). Social structure is the organized pattern of social relationships and social institutions that together compose society. Social structures are not immediately visible to the untrained observer, however they are present and affect all dimensions of human experience in society.(Ashley Crossman, Sociology Expert). Based off of his theory he begins to explain the process and outcome of his experiment. His experiment focuses on whether or not an active-learning environment is a better method for college students to understand and grasp the concept of mate selection and how social structure plays an important role in the martial process.
Zipp states that college students are unaware that social structure is an important factor in choosing a mate, therefore, he began an experiment with his class. He divided them into two groups, 62 were in an experimental/ active-learning group and 63 were in the control/ lecture group. Both groups were asked to give reasons as to why they would marry, the active-learning group was to write their answers down and given a time frame of two to three minutes whereas the control group as given a lecture and their answers were discussed amongst each other. The outcome was; love, companionship, money or to start a family. He then went ahead and formed a more personal question “what are they looking for in a future (or current) partner? ” Yet again their answers did not mention anything about social structure but more about their characteristics; educated/intelligent, caring,sense of humor, and so on.
Zipp then begins a different approach and introduces the role of race,age, religion and social status on mate selection.The active-learning participated in an active while the control group was given a topic of the day: the role that social structure plays in whom one chooses to marry. The control group was also told to read a chapter on “Families and Intimate Relationships”. After doing so Zipp wanted to detect if the students understood the importance of social structure in mate selection, in order to do so he ask, “What was the most important thing you learned in class today? ” The conclusion was that 63.2 percent of the whole class mentioned one or more social structures where the most important thing in mate selection, however when looked upon in their split groups the active-learning group had 82.3 percent compared to the control group who only had 44.4 percent.
Nonetheless, after those findings Zipp began to question whether there might of been any factors that could cause his experiment to lead over to one side more than the other. His possible indicators were that the groups were not randomly assigned, therefore the experiment could have been selection, as opposed to treatment. After further testing he concluded that there were no factors that may have compromised his experiment and that infact the active-learning method is a better approach in teaching students the concept of social structure in the mate selection.
In conclusion, after defining the issue, conducting his experiment, and analyzing his results, Zipps experiment has proven that the active-learning group did grasp the concept of Social Structure in Mate Selection. The results determined that students who participated in the active- learning group were able to name one or more social structure factors as the “ most important thing” in the mate selection process; outcome was six times higher than those who attended the lecture (pg101).
Questions:
1.Which method do you believe is a more effective way of teaching; an active-learning or a lecture.
2.Do you believe that interracial marriages are going to continue to increase in society?
3. Has this made you think about your mate selection process ?