Research Proposal on a Study of Social Class and Educational Achievement

1. Hypothesis/Aim
Hypothesis: Educational Achievement depends on the social class someone belongs from.

The underlying purpose of this research thesis is to accept or reject the hypothesis that educational achievement depends on the social class anyone belongs to. Major portion of our society believes that only people with high social class can achieve high educational level. Children from working social class face more economical hardships during their education than children from higher or middle class. Interest of parents in their childrens education is one important factor; lower class people are tend to show less interest because of less time and education of their own while middle or high pay much attention towards their children.

2. Context and Concepts

According to research article, The Social Class Gap for Educational Achievement by Emma Perry and Becky Francis, social class is the one of the important dimension tool to measure the achievement level of education almost everywhere in this world. In this article, the scale for measuring social class gap has been developed followed by the acknowledgement of other factors that affect the level of educational achievement. Moreover, from the early years social gap has been also explored through this piece of research. Now, policy makers want to decrease this social class gaps in education through innovative and creative ideas (Perry & Francis, 2010).

Another research essay, Social Class and Educational Achievement by Realsociology, also indicates that lower classes are more to attain less in education because they have fewer opportunities in terms of material and money to send their children in reputed institutes. Furthermore, lower or working class people are restricted to limited speech code as they are not much exposed to various social events. Working class parents in many countries want their kids

to provide them support in their work rather than sending them to universities (Realsociology, 2011).

Conceptual Framework
Through conceptual framework different variables are identified and defined that have logical relationship with the research and important to the problem. Here in this research study, Dependent variable is level of educational achievement Independent variable is social class

Educational Achievement Educational achievement is defined as the highest level of education one has achieved and which is consider to be the acceptable level for social esteem. This concept can be measure by the amount one has completed his/her education level e-g, intermediate, undergraduate, graduate, scholar and PhD etc.

Social Class Social class can be defined as the different social status we apply to the individuals or group of individuals depending on their condition with the reference of their economical, professional, educational and living situations. This is basically the hierarchy which starts from upper class to middle class then working class and ends at lower class. Upon this hierarchical basis, this concept can be measured and can assign values to them.

Subculture Subculture of a school also plays an important part that can aid in creating difference among students of same school but different social class. Because the thinking patterns of every social class vary as working class is more fatalistic concerned but middle or upper class is not rather they are more concerned about future time.

Parents Interest Parents interest in their kids education is defined as to what degree they pay attention towards the quality of education their children are receiving.

The reason of mentioning these concepts is that they are the major concern of our research study and highly influencing on the results.

3. Main Research Method and Reasons for choosing method

This will be a basic research with explanatory in nature. The approach of this research will be qualitative and deductive. Primary and secondary data will be used in analyzing this work, as a huge number of researches have been done on this important social issue. Sample type of population will be individuals that belong to different social classes, occupation and age. Sample size of population will be comprised of 100 individuals who will have age ranging from 20 to 50 years. Research will be done through mainly questionnaires and interviews for lower class aged individuals who dont know how to fill the questionnaire. Questionnaires will be distributed in the university, shopping malls, schools of different categories of social class, whereas interviews can be conducted at local markets or shops or areas where working class will be found easily. Number of secondary sources will be used in the data collection that includes published and non-published sources. For example, reports of central and state Government, census reports, official publications, journals, magazines, periodicals and published work of research institutes and universities.

The reasons of choosing this research design have many justifications. Basic research is also known as pure search, which is carried out to enhance the understanding of a phenomena or problems that commonly occur in social settings and seek methods of solving them in general.

Questionnaires are the medium of collecting primary data because responses can be recorded in a more standardized way and objectively. Moreover, they save time as compared to interviews especially when a large sample size is involved in the research. Sample size of 100 is chosen because this will include individuals from every category of real life and every social class from higher to lower/working class in order to get the real result of our findings.

Main data will be collected through primary research but secondary data will also be used in order to support our study. Advantage of using secondary sources for data collection is that it saves time and less expensive to obtain. Moreover, it saves researcher from the hassle of engaging in activities associated with primary data collection (sampling and processing).

4. Potential Problems
Potential problems that can be faced during this research might include the sample size we have chosen that is at least 100 individuals from every class of our society. This sample size is not very small and not very big at the same time, so we have to be very much concerned about the distribution of questionnaires that they should reach equally to every class in order to get fair representation of the research conducted. Furthermore, individuals may hide their genuine response in the survey that will affect the authenticity of the study. Access to the data from the working class might be of one limitation because no one really tells the hardships of his/her life they and their children face. Besides the working class we also have plan to get information from some successful professionals and record their true story that how they got this high position and up to what extent their social class level played role in it.

Some significant problems in using secondary sources of data is that outdated data because timely information is necessary, different units of measurement could have been used and researchers might have no control over the accuracy of information published i-e sustainability report of an organization could be biased.

One important limitation that we might face will be in terms of time management, in order to get the survey done through interviews of working class may require the morning time interviews and at that time we have to attend our classes in university as well. Due to time constraint we are only considering limited number of factors that are present in social class and can influence educational achievement.

References
Perry, E., & Francis, B. (2010). The Social Class Gap for Educational Achievement: a review of the literature. RSA Projects. Realsociology. (2011, March 30). Social class and educational achievement.