Social policy - concerned with the ways societies across the world meet human needs for security,

education, work, health and wellbeing.

Nature - view that behaviour and human development is the product of biological factors.
Nurture - environmental influences that contribute to the development of an individual/
Culture - consists of the values, beliefs, systems of language, communication, and practices that people
share in common and that can be used to define them as a collective.
Norms - rules or expectations that are socially enforced.
Values - a set of principles that are morally acceptable by society.
Sanctions - mechanisms of social control, positive or negative
Social control - societal and political mechanisms that regulate individual and group behaviour to gain
conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group.
Subcultures - a group of people with a culture that differentiates themselves from the larger culture to
which they belong.
Socialisation - the process through which individuals learn the norms and values of society, leading to
social cohesion and a functional society.
Primary socialisation - the period early in a person's life during which they initially learn and build
themselves through experiences and interactions with family.
Secondary socialisation - when a child learns the values, beliefs and attitudes of their culture through
those outside of the family, such as teachers, friends and the media.
Status - a rank or position that someone holds.
Role - the behaviour expected of an individual who occupies a given social position or status.
Achieved status - a social position that a person can acquire based on merit and is earned or chosen.
Ascribed status - the social status of a person that is assigned at birth or assumed involuntarily later in life.
Structural view - the school of thought that human behaviour must be understood in the context of the
social system – or structure – in which they exist.
Social action view - a critical theory that holds that society is a construction of interactions and meanings
given to it by its members.
Functionalist - a theory that views society as a complex but orderly and stable system with interconnected
structures and functions or social patterns that operate to meet the needs of individuals in a society.
Marxist - a key conflict theory that believes capitalist society is based on inequalities between the
bourgeoisie (ruling capitalist class) and the proletariat (working class).
Feminist - the belief that women and men should have equal opportunities in economic, political, and
social life.
Postmodernist - an approach that attempts to define how society has progressed to an era beyond
modernity.
Research methods - an outline of the tools, techniques, and procedures used within a research study to
gather data, analyse it, and interpret it.