Skidmore Social Class

Empirical Essay #2- Social Class at Skidmore College

Social class, also known as socioeconomic status, is a complex term that contains various meanings, but can be loosely defined as “an individuals position in a stratified social order, [which] is composed of any combination of parental educational income, and family wealth”(Conley, 2013). A person’s socioeconomic status has the ability to dictate his/her present and future opportunity in many facets of life, such as the continuation of higher education, belonging to particular social groups, and type of occupations available. With that being said, I hypothesize that social class is a strong determinant in one’s social life at Skidmore College because of the limitations it can cause for

Long constructed an intensive study on the effects of social class on belongingness within a small liberal arts college similar to Skidmore College. The survey included 322 participants taking multiple surveys about adjustment to college, sense of belongingness at college, and social class. The study found that “Indeed, social-class background was strongly related to a sense of belonging at college, which in turn predicted social and academic adjustment to college, quality of experience at college, and academic performance”(Ostrove and Long, 2007). This finding can be applied to the social class background of students at Skidmore College. Students of a lower socioeconomic background have a more difficult social adjustment than students of higher social class. Therefore, their social class inhibits their social life by making it harder to integrate into college and find a sense of

My survey contained six questions that were focused on one’s social life in reference to their socioeconomic status. Because of methodological limitations, I use approximate household income as a proxy for socioeconomic status. My survey includes the following questions: Do you attend Skidmore College?; What is your approximate household income?; Do you sense that your friends are from a similar socioeconomic background?; How comfortable are you spending money in your day to day social life?(eating out, going to bars, etc.); Do you feel like your social life is inhibited by your ability to spend money?; Do you think Skidmore Students are understanding of their peers’ financial limitations?. After creating my survey on Survey Monkey, I electronically distributed my survey to my teammates, my friends, the Skidmore Class of 2019 Facebook group, my Facebook friends, and my Twitter followers. As a result, I received 52 responses. Although I did mention this survey is intended for Skidmore Students only, I received 2 respondents that were non-Skidmore students; therefore, I expunged their survey