cause and effect

Examples of cause and effect in the following topics:

• Social Constructionism

  • Berger and Thomas Luckmann with their 1966 book The Social Construction of Reality.
  • Drawing on Symbolic Interactionist insights about the ongoing production and affirmation of meaning, social constructionism aims to discover the ways that individuals and groups create their perceived reality.
  • Social constructionism focuses on the description of institutions and actions and not on analyzing cause and effect.
  • Berger and Luckmann argue that social construction describes both subjective and objective reality - that is that no reality exists outside what is produced and reproduced in social interactions.
  • A clear example of social constructionist thought is, following Sigmund Freud and Émile Durkheim, religion.

• Economic Sociology

  • Economic sociology is the study of the social causes and social effects of various economic phenomena.
  • Economic sociology is the study of the social causes and social effects of various economic phenomena.
  • The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its phenomenological progeny, such as rationalization, secularization, urbanization, and social stratification.
  • In some cases, contemporary economic sociology borrows mathematical tools and economic theories such as utility maximization and game theory.
  • Examine the two periods of economic sociology - classical and contemporary - and the difference between economic sociology and socioeconomics

• Social Epidemiology and Health

  • Social epidemiologists can help understand the original causes of the cancer cluster by collecting information about the affected people while working with other medical professionals.
  • Epidemiology is the study (or the science of the study) of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined populations.
  • Major areas of epidemiological study include disease etiology, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance and screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials.
  • Epidemiologists rely on other scientific disciplines like biology to better understand disease processes, statistics to make efficient use of the data and draw appropriate conclusions, social sciences to better understand proximate and distal causes, and engineering for exposure assessment.
  • Use of such multilevel models is also known as hierarchical and mixed effects models.

• Behavior and Environmental Influences on Health

  • Research on the effects of moderate drinking is in its early stages.
  • Fetal alcohol exposure is regarded by researchers as the leading known cause of mental and physical birth defects, surpassing both spina bifida and Down syndrome, producing more severe abnormalities than heroin, cocaine, or marijuana, and is the most common preventable cause of birth defects in the United States.
  • It can cause mental retardation, facial deformities, stunted physical and emotional development, behavioral problems, memory deficiencies, attention deficits, impulsiveness, an inability to reason from cause to effect; a failure to comprehend the concept of time; and an inability to tell reality from fantasy.
  • In trials, there is no evidence suggesting that reducing fat intake has an effect on obesity.
  • However, reimbursement would not be given if a treatment was not proven to be effective.

• Preventing Illness

  • Public health inspections can include recreational waters, swimming pools, beaches, food preparation and serving, and industrial hygiene inspections and surveys.
  • For an intervention to be applied widely it generally needs to be affordable and highly cost effective.
  • For instance, intrauterine devices (IUD) are highly effective and highly cost effective contraceptives, however where universal health care is not available the initial cost may be a barrier.
  • Preventive solutions may be less profitable and therefore less attractive to makers and marketers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
  • This data is outdated and was in fact significantly revised in subsequent reports of the leading causes of deaths, especially for obesity-related diseases.

• Correlation and Causation

  • In the scientific pursuit of quantitative prediction and explanation, two relationships between variables are often confused: correlation and causation.
  • Causation refers to a relationship between two (or more) variables where one variable causes the other.
  • In order for a variable to cause another, it must meet the following three criteria:
  • Thus, while these two variables are correlated, ice cream consumption does not cause crime or vice versa.
  • It is important to not confound a correlation with a cause/effect relationship.

• Urban Decline

  • Another characteristic of urban decay is blight, the visual, psychological, and physical effects of living daily life among empty lots, abandoned buildings, and condemned houses.
  • But what causes urban decay?
  • Given that economic fluctuations have such profound effects on urban development, it makes sense that issues associated with the modern iteration of urban decline began during the Industrial Revolution, the time period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when rural people flocked to cities for employment in manufacturing.
  • Deindustrialization, or the process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial capacity in a region that is known for its manufacturing industry, is one of the main recent causes for urban decline in the United States.
  • Analyze the causes and solutions to urban decline experienced both during the Industrial Revolution and in America today

• Colonialism and the Spread of Diseases

  • Trade routes and new world conquests devastated indigenous populations, while being exposed to new pathogens and newly domesticated animals.
  • Encounters between explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced new diseases, which sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence.
  • In response to becoming infected, European military and government officials living in African and Asian colonies were quarantined to safety in areas away from natives, who were believed to be disease carriers, and, thus, "biologically inferior. " The leading cause of death in Europe and North America in the nineteenth century was tuberculosis.
  • The ill health effects are long lasting, especially because the health of Europeans improved while the health of colonized nations worsened.
  • These same models continued to benefit elites and addressed the "rural poor" once the "needs of the urban elite were attended to. " Hospitals in metropolitan areas were first priority, followed by small rural clinics that were underfunded, understaffed, and, thus, less effective.

• Models of Urban Growth

  • Urban sprawl is also associated with negative environmental and public health effects, many of which are related to automobile dependence: increases in personal transportation costs, air pollution and reliance on fossil fuel, increases in traffic accidents, delays in emergency medical services response times, and decreases in land and water quantity and quality.
  • According to these critics, urban decay is caused by the excessive density and crowding of cities, and it drives out residents, creating the conditions for urban sprawl.
  • An alternative theory suggests that density does not cause crime, and crime does not cause people to leave the city; when people leave, city neighborhoods are abandoned and neglected, resulting in crime and decay.
  • Smart growth programs often incorporate transit-oriented development goals to encourage effective public transit systems and make bicyclers and pedestrians more comfortable.
  • Most homes would be within a five-minute walk of the center and would provide a variety of housing options, including houses, row houses, and apartments to encourage the mixing of younger and older people, singles and families, and poor and wealthy.

• The Evolution of Health Care and Medicine

  • The first, the medical model, focuses on the eradication of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment.
  • Western, scientific medicine has proven uniquely effective at treating and preventing some diseases while wholly inadequate in treating others (note that the amount of diseases that it has been demonstrated to treat effectively outnumbers the other side to date).
  • Western medicine is notably secular in name, officially indifferent to ideas of the supernatural or the spirit, and officially concentrated on the body and society to determine causes and cures, but throughout history religious organizations and institutions (especially with corporate or economic backing) have exerted considerable influence upon much Western Scientific medical development and practice).
  • Critics agree that people should be free to choose, but when choosing, people must be certain that whatever method they choose will be safe and effective.
  • Testimonials are particularly disturbing in this regard because, by chance alone, some people may see some improvement in the ailment for which they are being treated and will proceed to testify that the method helped them when the method was not the true cause of improvement.