| ASA Research Program |
|
The ASA Research and Development Department is responsible for developing and disseminating knowledge on sociology both as a discipline and a profession by collecting primary and secondary data, by building and maintaining databases, and disseminating findings in a variety of formats so that members of the profession to benefit can use them for research, policy, and planning purposes.
|
| What Can I Do With a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology? |
|
Sociology majors, their parents, and the public often ask, “What can bachelors-level graduates do with their degrees in sociology?” To find out what these graduates are actually doing, the Research and Development Department is conducting a two phase study of sociology students.
The Sociology Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided support for this study.
Phase I Results
Seniors were asked about the concepts, skills, and career advice they gained as part of their majors, which skills they place on their resumes, and their future plans.
Almost 1,800 students responded to the questionnaire.
The Chart Book, What Can I Do with A Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology? A National Survey of Seniors Majoring in Sociology: First Glances: What Do They Know and Where Are They Going? contains findings from Phase I of the survey.
Illustrated with 18 figures and 5 tables, The Chart Book compares student responses by type of school, race and ethnicity, and gender. Useful to students and faculty, the book also contains sites for career information. Hard copies of our chart book of results is available from the online bookstore. The chart book is also available here as a free download (PDF, 391 KB).
Phase II will be going into the field in Fall, 2006. Phase II will ask students about their jobs, the skills they use on the job, and their graduate school experiences.
|
|
Briefs & Articles
|
|
Reports and articles produced by the ASA Department of Research and Development for dissemination in a variety of venues, including the ASA Annual Meeting, regional meetings, and Footnotes, the Association newsletter. Topics include faculty salaries, BA production growth, graduate department vitality, adjunct/part-time faculty, minority doctoral pipeline and faculty, work/family issues, and a profile of the ASA membership. [more]
|
|
|
Beyond the Fear Factor.
A new research brief that investigates whether work-family policies are distributed as resources or rewards among a cohort of PhD six years after they received their degrees. Forthcoming this fall.
|
|
|
Sociology Salaries Sink in Academic Year 2004/05.
Read our most recent report on faculty salaries in ASA's Footnotes newsletter (July/August 2005).
|
| |
|
|
|
Sociology Faculty Salaries Grow by More than 3% in 2005/06
|
| CUPA-HR’s annual national faculty salary survey finds that most sociology faculty enjoyed at least a 3% pay raise during the 2005/2006 academic year, measured in current dollars. Initial results by rank and institution type are now available here. |
 |
| |
| Sociologists to Study Social Processes of Acceptance and Diffusion |
|
The American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education (CASEE) will hold a two-day, NSF-funded workshop in late April 2006 in Washington, DC to bring together nine selected engineering faculty and nine sociologists to investigate the social processes that can result in the diffusion and acceptance of “new engineering curricula and pedagogy.”
The intent of the workshop is to develop joint studies and models that will explore how social processes can increase acceptance and diffusion of curricular and pedagogical methods.
Workshop attendees will write short papers addressing What we know and what we need to know about the following underlying questions:
- How does new knowledge, curriculum, and pedagogical practice gain legitimacy, and spread?
- What are the impediments and the facilitators of individual and institutional diffusion and change that can be modeled?
The results of the meeting will be documented in a special monograph jointly issued by the ASA and CASEE. It is expected that team members will generate additional research proposals and scholarly articles.
|
|
|
|
Surveys
|
|
Beyond the Ivory Tower: What Do Sociologists Do in Applied and Research Settings?
Now available! Preliminary survey results [PDF, 688KB] on the occupational characteristics, skills, and sociological imagination sociologists working in applied and research settings.
As of mid-February 2006, 800 sociologists responded to the on-line survey Beyond the Ivory Tower: What Do Sociologists Do in Applied and Research Settings? The survey is directed at PhD-level sociologists working in applied and research settings as managers, administrators, researchers, policy makers, program evaluators, program directors, advocates, and consultants. It is co-sponsored by the American Sociological Association, the Rural Sociological Society, and the newly-merged Society for Applied Sociology and Sociological Practice Association.
The survey examines the skills, graduate school training, productivity, and career satisfaction of sociologists employed outside the professorate.
The questionnaire was developed and tested in meetings with sociologists employed in government, non-profit organizations, and independent practice. ASA and our partners will widely disseminate the summary results in an effort to enhance opportunities and services for all sociologists, gain media recognition for non-academic sociologists, and to assist departments in curriculum development. A future survey will emphasize the career and life stories of sociologists employed in applied and research settings.
|
| |
| What Can I Do With a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology? |
|
Phase II Activities
We are beginning to prepare for Phase II of the survey which will be conducted in the Fall 2006. In the last few weeks we sent e-mail to Phase I survey participants with an announcement that the results from Phase I of “What Can I Do with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology?” are now available to them. We asked them to provide us with address updates, announced that those who did would be entered in a drawing to win a Nano I-Pod. We reminded them that we would be conducting a second phase of the project to learn how survey participants are doing in terms of work or graduate school, and how aspects of their sociology major proved useful. Any Phase I B&B participants who did not receive this e-mail, please get in touch with Roberta Spalter-Roth, the Project Director, at spalter-roth@asanet.org. |
|
How Does Your Department Compare? A Peer Analysis from the 2000-2001 Survey of Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Sociology Purchase the report at the ASA Bookstore.
|
| |
| Need Today’s Data Yesterday? Trend Data on the Profession Descriptive statistics from a variety of sources summing-up the state of sociology as a profession. Includes tables on baccalaureate and graduate degrees, graduate enrollments and stipends, employment data, faculty distributions by rank, and faculty salaries. Eight tables breakdown degrees, graduate enrollments, and faculty distributions by race/ethnicity and gender. [more] |
|
