This is a fairly short unit, which has three associated tasks with it. You should be able to answer the questions within the unit, and in order to do this you should discuss some of the issues raised with your peers.

At the end of this unit you should be able to:

• Explore the ways in which society has been stratified.
• Examine some of the historical perspectives on stratification of society.
• Review the ways in which stratification of society has been used by health researchers.

In order to complete this unit, you should have access to the following:

• Your colleagues!
• An introductory sociology text book- for example Giddens, 2006.

Guidelines on these web pages: how to use them, and the various conventions used within them can be found on this link.