Information is the root of Sociology. Any action or observation done by a group could be qualified as important information in the field. These groups and studies are based on variables such as sex, gender, race, age, environment, etc.  There are many ways to research these variables and their correlation to other variables.  The goal would be to eliminate spurious relationships in order to present the field with a causal relationship.  Jonathan Kozol presents his research in Savage Inequalities as an ethnographic study.  This type of study doesn’t necessarily allow him to generalize his findings but he can distinctly state what is happening in that community and conduct interviews to demonstrate why the phenomena is happening as it is.  He couples that method with previously found data on income, school districts, and resources from previous studies.  Information in Kozol’s study would be any type of answer to a question or statistics of spending per child in a school.  Any observation that Kozol or any other sociologist makes during their study is information on the topic.

This demonstrates a longitudinal study on imprisonment race distributions through time.


Information never becomes out-dated because
sociologists use that information to compare and contrast the present with a past event or study to note progress or regression pertaining to a variable in society.  In the case of Savage Inequalities professors still have students read this book published in 1991 because it demonstrates a huge disparity that is still pertinent in society today. Information is the first step in attaining knowledge because one is only truly knowledgeable if the connection between information and context is recognized.