Introduction
Society attaches prestige and honor to positions held by different individuals in society. The position, which is referred to as social status, can be defined on the basis of inheritance (ascribed status) or a person’s achievements. Ascribed status is mainly fixed to the person as a factor of their sex, race, or class (Kendall, 2018). The paper covers an interview on two people that seeks to establish their position in society. The individuals are a pastor from a neighboring church and a teacher at a local high school. The discussion further covers the individual’s culture, social perspective and the benefits and limitations of the use of interview method in research.
Role of Class, Race and Gender
Social stratification classifies people in a society hierarchically drop the top class (superior) to the low class (inferior). The interview findings indicate that the teacher and the priest fall under the middle class in society. Their positions are as a result of adequate college education. The teacher is trained in teaching science subjects and the priest has undertaken a course in theology.
Racial stratification is a way of classifying people based on their race or skin color. It defines the differential gains and social stature for people in society. The priest is from the African American race and black color and preaches to people of all races and color. The school teacher in a native male white American born individual. Her work involves interacting of different races and color. However, race and color have affected the performance of their everyday duties due to racial differences in society.
Components of Culture
Culture embodies the diverse and vast collection of largely intangible aspects of the social order, such as beliefs, language, values, and common practices. These components enable members of the society to enrich social interactions and ensure the conformity and integration of people (Kendall, 2018). The pastor is guided by beliefs and values based on the biblical and religious intuition of Christianity, which define good and evil. The pastor has learnt different languages that he can use to preach the biblical teachings to the multiracial church. The teacher derives her principles from the skills and knowledge she has acquired through education and experience. The educational values and principles establish the level of interaction with the students in promoting a better society.
Sociological Perspective
Sociological perspectives define different viewpoints from which people look at varied aspects of society. The interview is founded on the functionalist approach, which perceives the social order as a network of affiliated facets that collaborate to strengthen social balance and stability (Macionis, 2017). The priest and the teacher play different roles in society at the religious and educational spaces, respectively. The priest is in charge of different functions within the church, which include supporting societal cohesion through providing biblical teachings. The teachings help people to make appropriate decisions by themselves and influence others to choose appropriately. The pastor also provides guidance to different groups, including the youth, families, women, and other congregations.
On the other hand, the teacher performs different functional in the education sector. Principally, the tasks involve imparting educational skills and knowledge to students that enable them to succeed in performing different duties in society. Education is the main support for innovation since knowledge can be used to devise better ways of conducting activities that improve livelihoods. Therefore, the teacher ensures the students are adequately skilled that are they can use to help the community meet different demands.
Benefits and Limitations of Interviews
Interviews are widely used in collection of primary data for research activities. It focuses on providing deeper insight and opinion through active involvement of the participants. This enables the interviewer to keenly evaluate and seek clarification on the responses provided by respondents (Wang, 2018). In addition, interviews provide numerous stances of a subject matter that the interviewer may not have considered at the first instance. Unstructured interviews give the participants a feeling of influence of the interview by giving them the leeway to freely fashion their responses. Therefore, the data assembled out of an interview is expected to be more accurate than other research methods and can be skillfully altered to meet the wishes and proficiency of the respondents.
On the contrary, interviews face a number of drawbacks, especially on resources and time required to collect the responses. Since they involve speaking directly to the respondents, the interviewer has to budget for travel expenses, telephone bills, or other costs of obtaining the direct responses. Additionally, a lot of time is required to analyze the data that involves sorting the data into an appropriate form (Wang, 2018). The data calls for different techniques to analyze the data, as such the researcher has to have the required knowledge and skills in data analysis. Interviews are further limited by concerns on interviewer bias, which can affect the quality of information gathered.
Conclusion
The interviews conducted involving the pastor and teacher provided valuable data on understanding their race, class, and gender. The two interviews belong to the middle class in society based on their jobs and level of education. Their mandate is influenced by the culture, which defines their believe and value system. The data collected is defined based on the functionalist approach to sociology. The pastor promotes biblical approach to issues in society while the teacher impacts students with appropriate skills and knowledge, they can apply to perform different roles in the community. The use of interviews in collecting data is highly beneficial but is faced by several drawbacks that limit its application in research.
References
Kendall, D. E. (2018). Sociology in our times: The essentials (11th ed.). Boston, Ma Cengage Learning.
Macionis, J. J. (2017). Sociology. Pearson.
Wang, S. (2018). Exploring a research method – Interview. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 2(7). Web.