Stats America from Indiana Business Research Center

http://www.statsamerica.org/radius/big.aspx

About StatsAmerica

The goal of StatsAmerica is to provide actionable data for economic developers to use in site requests, developing metrics, grant writing and strategic planning.

StatsAmerica is a service of the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, which is ranked among the nation's top business schools. With support from the Economic Development Administration, we have developed a unique and useful set of tools and reports, as well as providing access to other EDA-funded projects.

We obtain thousands of data items from hundreds of data sets from dozens of federal and state sources, along with some commercial or private source data.  While StatsAmerica adds value to these data through easy access and functionality, we acknowledge the direct agency source of the data on every table, profile or map.

And speaking of adding value, you will see it in the form of calculations, graphs, comparisons of time or geography, time series and maps.  To ensure total accuracy, all data are verified first by analyzing the source data (we frequently report back to the source agencies about problems spotted with their data) and the resulting calculations we generate. These data are updated as they are released and arrive from the sources.

Feel free to contact us with specific questions about the data that you may have that aren’t covered through resources on our site.

About the IBRC

The IBRC is part of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and has been monitoring socioeconomic trends as they relate to our home state, the Midwest and the nation since 1925. Its flagship publication, the Indiana Business Review, has been in continuous publication since 1926. The IBRC has won numerous national awards for its work, including Best Web Site and Best Publications from the Association for University Business and Economic Research. Nationally recognized for its founding of the State Data Center Program in the early 1970s, it has been a key participant and state partner in that program since its national inception in 1978. We are also part of the BEA User Group and other organizations that further the meaningful use of statistical data for economic and community development.

Gendered Language and Reviews of College Professors

http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#

Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews

This interactive chart lets you explore the words used to describe male and female teachers in about 14 million reviews from RateMyProfessor.com.

You can enter any other word (or two-word phrase) into the box below to see how it is split across gender and discipline: the x-axis gives how many times your term is used per million words of text (normalized against gender and field). You can also limit to just negative or positive reviews (based on the numeric ratings on the site). For some more background, see here.

Not all words have gender splits, but a surprising number do. Even things like pronouns are used quite differently by gender.

CDC Data and Social Determintants of Health

https://www.cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/data/index.htm

Data can be a catalyst for improving community health and well-being. Understanding data on social determinants of health, such as income, educational level, and employment, can help focus efforts to improve community health. The following tools are supported by CDC resources; some tools include references to data sources outside of CDC.

CDC 

Lab: Random School Shootings

After reading the Kimmel and Mahler qualitative study of school shootings, research shootings since then to look for the same things that they found.  Does their thesis still hold up?

Lab: Media bias and coverage of criminal defendants.

From Victor Ray:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/austin-bombings-suspect.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


Use the above article in classes as an example of racialized media bias and white privilege. Contrast with the Mike Brown “no angel” article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/us/michael-brown-spent-last-weeks-grappling-with-lifes-mysteries.html?ref=us

Students can look up coverage of other events and compare the language used in each. Students can code the stories for different types of coverage.

Nikolas Cruz killed 17, wounded 17, & then police calmly arrested him. Mark Anthony Conditt killed 2, injured 5, & then blew himself up before he could be arrested. Stephon Clark held a cellphone in his backyard, police thought he was holding a gun, & then shot him 20 times.

187 replies6,511 retweets9,266 likes

Thrive

1.  What are three ideas from the reading that either surprised you or that you want to keep in mind as you get older?

2.  For you or your parents,  how is your life currently structure to not let you "thrive"?  What specifically will you do differently in your life?

3. Contrast these values to the movie and to the values from Kohl's Values Americans Live by.  How do Americans (and Mitch) structure their lives differently?

Checkout this review of the book Thrive. Here is the Thrive website. And you can read an excerpt and also take a happiness test. Try the happiness test - it will measure your satisfaction and make recommendations. Here is link to an interview with the author on the radio. In class, we did this with a partner: 1. Older person: Lookover your Thrive reading. Explain three ways that you would like to live your life that would help you “thrive”. Be specific about what you would do and how that is different from either how you live now or what you thought before the reading. Younger person: Lookover the list of values that make Americans unique (page 17). Review the values from the Kohl reading if necessary. 2. Older person: Share your ways of thriving with a younger partner. Be specific about what you would do and how that is different from either how you live now or what you thought before the reading. Younger partner: Open up to the list of American values (page17) and make a note about what American values will make it difficult for the other person to “thrive.” If you are not sure, ask follow up questions, like “Why do you think this will be hard? Or, “How were you planning to live your life differently before reading this reading?” 3. Switch roles and repeat.

Post 10: American Culture

This post is due next Wednesday May 17, 2017.

For Post 10, please post about American culture.  Using your sociological imagination, you can explain how living in the United States might affect someone.  We especially focused on cultural values.  Then using your sociological mindfulness you can post about how you might be affected by American cultural values and how you might want to make changes or fight against certain values that our culture promotes.  The nothing experiment is also a way to apply the concept to your own experience.

Don't forget to explain the connection of some sources to sociology.  We have looked at Kohl's The Values Americans Live By, Stefan Schirmer's Bemused in America, the video I Am or  Thrive by Dan Buettner.


Remember to write properly.

God Grew Tired of US, Cultural values & Local Refugees

“Your calling is found where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” – Frederich Buechner

Recently I facilitated a sociology conference where we had a keynote speaker discuss refugees. 

James Hardan from the World Relief Fund discussed them for us:

Immigrants choose to leave but refugees are forced.

The road to refugee:

Flee homeland, leave everything behind, find temporary shelter (avg stay is 5 years) sometimes living in forest for extended time

Interview with UNHCR; often involves reliving the events

Wait for acceptance and nation to accept you

US resettles 50-60% of worldwide refugees

If accepted, go wherever you are sent and be prepared to pay back airfare costs!

26 million refugees worldwide.

50-80,000 refugees accepted to US each year

$900 given to each refugee to make it through first 3 months!

IL is 7^th largest recipient of refugees

UNHCR – US Dept state – IOM Travel logistics – Resettlement Services

Worldrelief Services:

Initial resettlement

Employment Services

Education Services/ESL

Refugee Counseling Services

Youth Services

Volunteer and Church Relations

Citizenship and immigration Legal Service

Challenges:

Educational factors: ESL and lagging academics

Family and Cultural Dynamics:

Parent child role reversal

Lack of parental involvement in students’ lives

Lack of parental involvement in school

Different parenting styles and discipline

Past and Current Trauma/stress:

Past trauma and identity crisis

IL refugees:

Bhutanese

Ethnic Lhotsampa

108,000 people displaced

Imprisoned, abused, denial of human rights

Iraqi

Very different from Bhutanese

Recent refugees, short term

Kids have seen and experienced more turmoil than Bhutanese
Here is a video showing you the life in a refugee camp in South Asia:

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I want to examine the refugees for cultural differences, especially cultural values.  Often, we are so surrounded by our own culture that we cannot see that it is a social construction and there are other realities that exist.  So, after watching the movie God Grew Tired of Us and reading The Values Americans Live By written by Kohl, reflect on these questions:

1.  Individually, react to the Kohl reading.  What are some of the values that Kohl mentions that you easily agree Americans have?  What are some specific examples that you can cite from your own life that show these values shaping either you or your parents or another example?

 

2.  Pick your best example of how these values are at play in The United States or at SHS or in your own life.  Take turns sharing each person’s best example.  Oldest person in the group goes first.  Write down the values that others share and their example:

3.  As a group, identify values that are contradictory to U.S. values from the film God Grew Tired of Us.

4.  Look at the list of values that Americans hold.  Identify American values that might compliment each other.  These are called value clusters.  List them here:

Value Cluster: ­­­­­­­­­­­________________________________________________________________________________

Now look for American values that might contradict the other American values.  These are called value contradictions.  List them here:

Value Contradiction: ________________________________________________________________________

5.  Do you think Americans value happiness?  Why? How?

Deviance both positive and negative

Deviance is the repeated or serious violation of society's expectations. What is expected by society varies depending on where you are and when you are there. For example, cell phones used to be unacceptable at any school function just a matter of years ago. Now, I see students wearing cell phones on their waists and they are not perceived as deviant. It should be noted though that deviance doesn't just have to be negative. Check out this story from NPR:

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.
But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
"He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"
READ THE WHOLE STORY OR LISTEN TO IT HERE.

What a crazy story. What do you think about that?


Here's another example of a former SHS teacher who quietly and secretly gave money to a homeless man on the CTA and someone else caught it on camera.  He posted it and it went viral.


So this brings me to the idea that deviance doesn't have to be negative; you can violate the norms of society by doing something positive, such as paying for the toll of a stranger, giving away money (even just a dollar) to someone who doesn't ask for it, offering to carry a fellow student's books/bag for no reason, etc... For your next experiment try violating a norm in a positive way. Try an act of positive deviance. How does it make it you feel? How hard was it to do? How did others react to you? Here are some suggestions from the Randomn Acts of Kindness(RAK) Foundation for RAK at school (yes this is a real organization). And here are some suggestions for individuals doing RAK in the community.  And here is a link to 35 pictures of people doing positive acts of deviance.

Here is my favorite story of positive deviance:

If you have some extra time here is a great story about positive deviance and a baseball all-star game:

Post 9: Culture

For the first half of Culture unit, we began by learning about how we react to different cultures with culture shock and ethnocentrism.  We also learned that sociologists seek cultural relativity when understanding other cultures.  We then learned about the different components of culture: Material culture, and non-material culture: gestures, language, norms (folkways, mores, taboos), and finally values. Finally, we learned that within cultures there are subcultures.

One idea about how to relate these sociology concepts to your own life is to post about if you have ever been to a foreign culture, or,  research a culture and post about how different it is.  Does it have unique components?  What are they?  What sources did you use to find them?

- Be sure to explain multiple sociology concepts and relate them to a unique example from your own life.

- Be sure to explain how two sources relate to these sociological concepts.  Sources can be readings, videoes, websites. (Some sources we have used include: God Grew Tired of Us, Social Time)  Also, remember that you can use your textbook as a source.

- Be sure to write properly, turn it in on time, spell check and proofread.

-Comment on two other posts.