M2 Use different sociological perspectives to discuss patterns and trends of health and illness in two different social groups
D1 Evaluate different sociological explanations for patterns and trends of health and illness in two different social groups
The following assignment will discuss the different sociological explanations in relation to the patterns and trends of health and illness in the different social groups. It will then evaluate these different sociological explanations looking at both the strengths and weaknesses that they have. The association between class and health in the society presents a great puzzle for sociologists. There is no one answer to say why there is no definite answer to this relationship. The black report outlined four different explanations to explain this relationship:
* The artefact approach
* Health selection approach
* Cultural Explanation
* Structural Explanation.
The first explanation, the artefact approach has the vision that both class and health are artefacts of the measurement process. The approach suggests that the inequalities that are present in health are not real inequalities, but instead occur as part of the measurement process. One must look at the processes that are involved in how these statistics are produced. A number of different factors have been identified as contributing factors to the relationship between class and health; these include the variations in diagnosis, certification, and classification and also the coding processes. There have been problems when collecting this type of data, in relation to race and health. This is due to the lack of universally agreed definition of ethnic or racial cultures. One statistic states that there are higher morbidity rates in women, being a product of their poorer social circumstances. But this approach questions that these statistics may simply be the result which reflects from the fact women over report ill health, while men under...