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Social Mobility

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I have to reflect (in 2000 words) on similarities and differences between me, my parents and my grandparents. Which is no problem. I have to do this in regard to various stratification variables and consider to what extent I am upwardly or downwardly mobile. I also have to explain why any differences exist and what caused them. I'm not exactly certain I understand what all this means. I am looking for clarification and/or examples of stratification variables and what is meant by upwardly or downwardly mobile.

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Solution Summary

This solution assists in examining the concept of stratification, including examples of stratification variables and what is meant by upwardly or downwardly mobile. References are provided.

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1. Let's look at stratification and stratification variables first:
Stratification
In research (which you are in a sense doing, as you are researching your and your families life), sometimes experimentation is not necessary, and common causes can be found using stratification of data. Stratifying data is essentially the separation of data into categories: what characteristics are shared or not shared?

It often needs to be done iteratively - you stratify at one level, then within one of those categories you stratify again, and so on. If you start at the most general level of the information you have, only the most superficial answer may appear. If you stratify the data at different levels, you may begin to see links. It's like an address on a letter. At the most general level, an address leads you to a country, then to a state, then a ZIP code or city, then to street, then a particular house on the street, and finally to a particular person in the house.

By sorting data into multiple levels of groups with shared characteristics, you can better pinpoint the root cause of a problem. For example, in one 6th grade class, there seems to be a lot of students failing their spelling tests. As you look at the data, you notice that many more students fail the test given on Tuesday than the one given on Friday. When you investigate ...

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