Poppin Soda Caps

Sudhir Venkatesh, the author of Gang Leader for A Day revealed that being a sociologist, you can't always get your information and research from asking general questions, such as 'how does it feel to be black and poor?' He knew this quantitative approach would not be useful in understanding why these people in poverty live the way they do. These generic questions would never get them to open up the way he wanted. So in order to get a real feel of how they live, he knew he had to live amongst them and put himself in their shoes. I don't really think that Venkatesh owes J.T. any money or anything because he wasn't glorifying or putting down the way J.T. and the other gang members live their lives. He was simply researching and trying to figure out why there are gangs and what they contribute to towns in poverty. Also, the fact that J.T. was accepting of Venkatesh hanging around them shows that he wasn't expecting anything in return and he knew that he strictely there for a sense of learning and experience. Even though Venkatesh eventually wrote a book about the experience, he wasn't intending on it when he was doing this experiment. So I think that overall he had good intentions and was just being a sociologist. I can see how quantitative information can be important in relation to wanting to choose a good school for your children. If you want to know the school's average ACT score or average GPA, stats are very neccessary to see if students are getting a good education or not. If students scores and grades are low then you probably wouldn't want your child going to a school that doesn't provide good education. On the other hand, if the stats are good, then it shows that your child has the potential to be successful in the school. However, for example, when someone is interested in going to college because of whatever reason, they usually want to visit the school first, to see if it is the right type of encironment for them. This shows that after you get the facts, you still need qualitative studies to get a better understanding.