Study sheet: SES Foundations and Revision Methods

📋 Course Outline

1. Effective Revision Sheets
2. Types of Revision Sheets
3. Three SES Disciplines
4. Models and Social Inquiry
5. Population, Samples and Percentages
6. Correlation and Causality

📖 1. Effective Revision Sheets

★ Must-know

• Creating a revision sheet mobilizes:
  • selection
  • organization
  • reformulation
  • active memorization

📌 Regular revision, spaced reactivation, and frequent short revision sessions are more effective than preparing revision sheets only on the eve of an assessment.

Further detail

• A successful revision sheet is clear, useful, and personal.

💡 Memory Hook

Select → organize → reformulate → actively memorize

📖 2. Types of Revision Sheets

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Classic revision sheet : combines a plan, key notions, and examples
• Mind map : A mind map is particularly useful for visual learners and can organize a topic through linked notions such as actors, causes, and consequences.

★ Must-know

• 🔄 The mechanism proceeds through:
  1. higher wages
  2. higher purchasing power
  3. higher consumption
  4. higher production
  5. higher demand
  6. job creation

Further detail

• Flashcards are suitable for:

  • definitions
  • authors
  • dates
  • key notions

• In 1936, John Maynard Keynes published “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”.

💡 Memory Hook

Classic plan versus visual map versus mechanism chain versus flashcard

📖 3. Three SES Disciplines

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Economics : studies choices made necessary by the scarcity of resources
• Sociology : studies social regularities and social behaviors
• Political science : studies the conquest of political power and the actors and institutions responsible for organizing life in society
• Allocation of resources : the way an economy uses labor, capital, and natural resources to produce goods and services
• Social behavior : behavior explained by internalized norms and values
• Political power : power whose purpose is to organize life in society

💡 Memory Hook

E-S-P: Economy, Sociology, Politics

📖 4. Models and Social Inquiry

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Model : a simplified representation of reality based on hypotheses that must be confronted with reality
• Investigation : the collection of information used to study a group of individuals

★ Must-know

📌 Two variables can be correlated without being linked by a causal relationship.

Further detail

• Social scientists use:
  • investigations
  • surveys
  • statistical data

💡 Memory Hook

Models simplify reality → surveys and statistics test them

📖 5. Population, Samples and Percentages

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Effective resource allocation : the optimal use of resources when it is impossible to increase one production without reducing another

★ Must-know

• An investigation identifies a population, selects a representative sample, and collects data from that sample instead of questioning the entire population.

• According to Insee, 42% of the French population consumes meat approximately once a week.

📐 Formula — A percentage change is calculated as $\frac{\text{final value} - \text{initial value}}{\text{initial value}} \times 100$.

Further detail

• In the cited Insee investigation, the population and sample consisted of 1,000 French people aged 14 and over.

• According to the US Social Security Administration, the popularity of the name Taylor decreased by 92.4% between 1995 and 2022.

📖 6. Correlation and Causality

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Correlation : a statistical link between two variables; it is positive when their variations move in the same direction and negative when they move in opposite directions
• Causality : a cause-and-effect relationship

★ Must-know

📌 Correlation is an indication of a possible causal relationship, but it can be misleading because correlation may exist without causality.

Further detail

• The correlation between strong chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel Prize winners can be explained by the hidden variable of a country's wealth.

• The relationship between strong chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel Prize winners is a positive correlation because both variables move in the same direction.

💡 Memory Hook

Correlation observes co-variation, whereas causality identifies a cause-and-effect relationship

📊 Synthesis Tables

The Three SES Disciplines

Discipline	Main object	Central question
Economics	Choices made necessary by scarce resources	How are scarce resources allocated effectively?
Sociology	Social regularities and behaviors	How is society formed and how are behaviors explained?
Political science	Conquest and exercise of political power	How is political power conquered and exercised?