Essay On Roommate Interaction

2631 Words6 Pages

INTRODUCTION

Sociology studies heavily on the interactions between individuals in different settings. For those who go off to college and decide to live on campus, they are presented a new setting of living with another student who could possibly have a similar background or in contrast a very different background. The factors that can contribute to the background differences are endless. Human interaction is very fascinating and is constantly being observed. Therefore plenty of research has been done on roommate interactions. This paper focuses specifically on the University of California Los Angeles population of freshmen. UCLA has a large amount of diversity and is particularly great for the study of people with different backgrounds coming together and interacting. Both qualitative and quantitative research has been done on this topic, but this paper will focus on qualitative data through interviews. All the participants were thorough with their responses and tried their best to answer as honestly as possible. Overall the data presented varied results with each factor creating a different outcome when it came to the interactions and the closeness of the two roommates. Although the participants gave good insight into their backgrounds through the answering of the interview questions, there is the possibility of many other influences in their lives that could allow for either cohesiveness or non-cohesiveness with roommates that just weren’t examined closely enough. This paper will try to answer how differences in ethnicity or race, socioeconomic background, and other background aspects affect college roommate interactions.

RESEARCH QUESTION

How do differences in ethnicity or race, socioeconomic background, and other backgrou...

... middle of paper ...

... the same factors explored in this essay. Prejudices and ignorance play enormous roles with interactions. It’s not our goal to fix these issues but rather understand why they happen. College campuses are great for seeing how certain backgrounds can influence a relationship. Many of the relationships of the students where doomed from the beginning, because they were simply too different and they were not used to it. The only way a difference in factors such as race and class would be fine were those where both roomies had backgrounds that included previous interactions with those of different races and classes allowing for them to adjust easily.
Human interactions will continue as long as the human race exists and with that sociologist will continue to study and question these interactions and how they evolve and change with the change of cultures and societies.

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