Question

What is a demographic variable? Using race and social class as two major demographic variables, define each and explain the consequences of developing notions of race and social class.

Answer 1

A demographic variable may be defined as a personal attribute of the individuals in a population which is used to describe and understand the distribution of the sample used within inferential statistics. Thus, demographic variables are the details about the socioeconomic status, caste, class, race, educational background, age, gender, place of birth, etc which help toidentify and classify the sample in terms of the influence of these demographic variables on the final outcome of research.

Race and socioeconomic class are two of the most commonly applied demographic variables in the social sciences. Race as a demographic variable indicates the classification of the sample based on the physical appearance or skin colour of the different individuals who constitute the population. Race as a demographic variable would involve categorisation of the sample in terms of White Anglo Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, South East Asians, Arabs, Caucasians, Australian Aboriginals, etc. using race as an important demographic variable becomes an important way of understandings the differences or variability within the different racial groups within the population and it can thus provide an effective way to counterbalance the homogenising tendency of the researchers to undermine the diversity of the population and instead negate the unique experiences of the different races in relation to the phenomena under study. Thus for instance, by noticing the differences in the sample in terms of the demographic variable of race, researches in health can throw useful light on the epidemiological rate of stress and anxiety across the different races living in the United States and identify the most vulnerable groups for future intervention programmes.

Similarly, social class is another major demographic variable which indicates the socioeconomic status of a group of individuals in terms of their income and lifestyle. Studies within Social Psychology, Sociology In particular identify and draw their sample from the different social classes - the rich or the elite, the upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class, and the poor or underprivileged communities. Consideration of the different classes in the sample helps to ensure representation of each of these classes from the population so as to arrive at accurate generalisations about the population and avoid any biases due to neglect or ignorance about the socioeconomic dynamics of many psychological as well as social phenomenon such as stress and auto immune disorders, lack of literacy or education and poverty.