Introduction.
The topic that I have chosen is Social Control and Deviance. In this topic I am going to focus on the area of truancy.
Truancy, by definition is 'absence from school for no legitimate reason' (Stoll, 1990). Although deciding what constitutes
a 'legitimate reason' may be contentious, the 1996 Education Act says that only schools, and not parents or students can authorise
absense. Therefore any time taken off school, that is not authorised by the school, is classed as truancy.
Truanting from school is deviant. It goes against the norms and values of today's socioety - where children are expected
to attend school everyday. As truancy in schools was becoming such a problem, the government took action and it is now possible
for parents to recieve a fine if their children are regular truants. No one knows the personal reasons as to why the individual
may decide to not go to school and it seems obvious that there may be several reasons for this deviant behaviour.
This will be my hypothesis. In order to prove or disprove my hypothesis i am going to address the following sub-questions:
I decided to choose the topic of Social Control and Deviance because it was the topic that i was most interested in. I
think that studying the reasons behind such a common problem will be interesting and worthwhile. I also feel that it will
be easy to carry out my research, as it will be extremely easy to get hold of existing data and previous sociologists research
on this topic.
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Methodology.
In order to carry out my research I am going to conduct a questionnaire to send to a number of different students to complete.
Using a questionnaire to gather primary data is a relevant method of research for my coursework, as it will supply me with
quantitative data. Using quantitative data will make it easier to answer my hypothesis as I can use numbers and statistics
to back up any ideas. This is why i chose to use a questionnaire as opposed to an interview. An interview would give me qualitative
data, which simply means description and words, rather than numbers. This would make it harder to create graphs and tables
from my primary data as the answers given may be extremly varied. Quantitative data is extremely easy to make comparisons
from and group together.
A questionnaire is also appropriate as it is competely annonymous. This should mean my sample answer the questions honestly
and do not feel pressured to answer in a certain way. This helps the validity of the responses, meaning they reflect the reality
they are describing, eg. answering with responses that the student thinks the researcher wants to hear, rather than what they
actually think.
I need to be careful when choosing whom to give my questionnaire to. It is important that i choose a wide range of students,
possibly from different schools and different year groups. This will ensure that I get a range of responses. My sample will
be between the ages of 13 and 16. This will cover the majority of secondary school students and therefore i can get a wide
range of opinions on the subject.
For my secondary research I am going to look on the internet and in magazines, newspapers and books for existing research
on my topic. This means i can collect data that is on the internet or in books, and use it to back up my hypothesis and sub-questions.
Specific sociology websites should be helpful and newspapers may have articles relating to truancy.
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Primary Research.
My primary research was compiled by sending out questionnaires to different students in secondary schools. Responses that
were recieved back I used to help answer my sub-questions and hypothesis.
In my questionnaire i asked the question;
"Have you truanted regularly in the past two years?"
I asked this as it should help give an answer to my first sub-question - "How many students in Britain today are regularly
truanting?". The choice of answers for this question were: I regularly truant, I truant occasionally, I have never truanted.
Here are the responses i recieved back put into a graph:
From looking at my results I can see that truancy is quite common. Out of 30 questionnaires given out, 60% of people have
truanted, 6 of these people being regular truants. This is more than half of the sample. This shows me that truancy is becoming
a major problem.
In my questionnaire i also asked the question;
"Do you feel pressured to truant from school by your friends/peers?"
This question relates directly to my hypothesis and the answers that were given should help me back up the idea that peer
pressure is a common reason for truancy.
Here is a graph of my responses:
As you can see, it seems that peer pressure is a reason for truancy, however it is not a remarkably common reason. Only
30% of students reveal that they feel pressure to truant from peers. This seems to go againsgt my hypothesis, however it is
important to remember that there may be a validity issue with students not wanting to answer in a way that perhaps 'drops
their friends in it' so to speak. Researching peer pressure and it's links to truancy, further in my secondary research, will
give me a winder range of data to study.
To find out data in relation the sub-question - "What is the most common reason given as to why students truant?" - i asked
the question:
"Why do you truant?"
This links directly to answering my sub-question and using the responses given i am able to plot a bar chart to show the
different reasons given. From this bar chart i can see the most commonly occuring reasons and see if any of these relate to
my hypothesis. As there was an 'other' response in this question, I recieved some qualitative data. This is harder to study
however, gives a better insight into the personal reasons behind truancy. Here are the responses:
From looking at this bar chart, the most common reason given for truanting students is a subject they dislike. Peer pressure
("because my friends were") is a reason given, with 9 people giving this response. This tells me that peer pressure, although
a given reason, is not the most common reason. Out of the 18 students that have said they truant, 12 of these students say
it is because they did not like the subject. Other reasons given include 'because i hate school' and several students say
it is because they were 'bored'.
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Secondary Research.
PUT AFTER PARA 4 --> This is a massive majority of not only older children, but also younger children taking authorised
absense from school. Unathorised absense is not as common however 21% is a large amount of people. Also, the massive figures
from the DFES website tells me that truancy is a problem and that an extreme number of students today are truanting.
ADD BEFORE "ON ONE WEBSITE CHILDRENEXPRESS -> This tells me that perhaps peer pressure is not the main reason for truancy.
It is, undoubtedly, a reason, however it seems to be one of many.
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Conclusion.
ADD IN -> From looking at my primary research i can see that 'peer pressure' is perhaps not the main reason for truancy
among school children in Britain today. Further researching this on the internet, for my secondary data, I see the same thing
- although peer pressure is a reason that crops up, it is one of many different reasons.
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