AQA A-Level Sociology: Health, Work-Poverty-Welfare & Global Development Revision Guide

Paper 2 of AQA A-Level Sociology (7192/2) is "Topics in Sociology". You answer two of four options in Section A (Culture and Identity; Families and Households; Health; Work, Poverty and Welfare) and one of four in Section B (Beliefs in Society; Global Development; the Media; Stratification and Differentiation). Most centres teach Families and Households alongside Beliefs or the Media -- but a significant minority build their course around the options covered in this guide: Health, Work, Poverty and Welfare, and Global Development.

These options are no less rigorous, and the question structure is identical across every topic: a 2-mark, a 4-mark, a 6-mark, a 10-mark "analyse" question using an Item, and a 20-mark "evaluate" essay. This guide works through the core content of all three, names the studies and theorists you must know, and shows how to convert that knowledge into top-band answers.

Health

The sociology of health treats health and illness not as purely biological facts but as socially constructed, socially patterned and socially produced phenomena.

Models of Health

The biomedical (medical) model treats illness as a malfunction of the body, diagnosed and cured by medical professionals -- the model that underpins the sick role described by Talcott Parsons, in which the sick person is exempted from normal duties but obliged to seek expert help and want to recover. The social model counters that health is shaped by social conditions -- housing, income, work, environment -- and that the experience and meaning of illness vary across cultures and history. Engel's biopsychosocial model attempts to integrate biological, psychological and social dimensions.

Inequalities in Health

The patterning of health by social class is the heart of this option. The Black Report (1980) set out four explanations of the class gradient in health -- the artefact explanation, social selection, cultural/behavioural explanations, and material/structural explanations -- and concluded that material factors were decisive. The later Marmot Review reinforced the existence of a social gradient in health. Tudor Hart's inverse care law observes that the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need of the population served.

Health also varies by gender (women report more morbidity but tend to live longer, and processes such as the medicalisation of childbirth are heavily gendered), by ethnicity (where material disadvantage, cultural factors and racism all feature in explanations), and by region (the so-called "postcode lottery" of access).

Mental Health, the Body, Disability and the Professions

Mental illness is a rich seam for evaluation: Goffman's study of "total institutions" and the mortification of the self, Szasz's provocative argument that mental illness is a myth, and labelling approaches all challenge a purely medical reading. The sociology of the body (Foucault on biopower and the clinical gaze; Shilling on the "body project") treats the body as social rather than merely natural. The social model of disability (Oliver, Barnes) distinguishes impairment from the disabling barriers society erects. Finally, the medical profession itself is a sociological object: Freidson on professional dominance, and Illich on iatrogenesis and medicalisation.

Work, Poverty and Welfare

This option examines how poverty is defined and measured, who experiences it and why, and how societies organise work and welfare.

Defining and Measuring Poverty

Absolute poverty -- lacking the resources for physical survival -- is associated with Rowntree's pioneering studies of York. Relative poverty, developed by Townsend, defines poverty in relation to the normal living standards of a society, measured through a deprivation index. Mack and Lansley's consensual ("breadline") approach asks the public to define the necessities a household should not have to go without. The broader concept of social exclusion captures the way poverty cuts people off from ordinary social participation.

Explaining Poverty

Explanations divide into the cultural and the structural. Cultural explanations locate the causes in the attitudes or behaviour of the poor: Oscar Lewis's "culture of poverty" thesis, and Charles Murray's New Right account of a welfare-dependent "underclass". Structural explanations -- Marxist accounts, and Townsend's work -- locate the causes in the organisation of the economy, the labour market and the welfare system rather than in the poor themselves. The distinction maps neatly onto the wider consensus--conflict and structure--action debates, which makes it ideal for synoptic evaluation.

Welfare and Work

Perspectives on welfare range from the social-democratic/Fabian defence of universal provision (rooted in Beveridge's attack on the "five giants"), through the New Right critique of welfare dependency (Marsland), to Marxist and feminist analyses of who the welfare state really serves, and Giddens' Third Way. On work, Marx's concept of alienation and Braverman's account of deskilling remain central, while Ritzer's "McDonaldization" updates Weber's rationalisation thesis for the service economy. Standing's notion of the precariat frames contemporary debates about insecure and gig-economy work.

Global Development

A Section B option, Global Development asks how "development" should be understood and what explains global inequalities between societies.

Defining and Theorising Development

Development can be measured economically (GDP/GNI) or more broadly through human development -- the Human Development Index, and Amartya Sen's influential idea of development as the expansion of human freedoms. The major theories are best learned as a debate:

Modernisation theory (Rostow's five stages of economic growth; Parsons on traditional versus modern values) argues that less-developed societies must follow the path taken by the West, overcoming internal cultural barriers. Dependency theory (Andre Gunder Frank's "development of underdevelopment"; Walter Rodney) reverses this, arguing that the wealth of rich nations was built on the active underdevelopment of poorer ones through colonialism and neo-colonial trade. World-systems theory (Wallerstein) refines dependency into a single capitalist world-economy of core, semi-periphery and periphery, while neoliberal approaches champion free markets and structural adjustment.

Aid, Trade, and the Agents of Development

The specification expects you to evaluate the role of aid and debt (bilateral versus multilateral, tied aid, and critics such as Hayter and Moyo), trade and transnational corporations (Sklair's transnational capitalist class; debates over free versus fair trade), industrialisation, urbanisation and the environment, gender and development (Boserup; the shift from Women in Development to Gender and Development), demographic and health change, and the role of war and conflict as a barrier to development (Collier's "bottom billion").

Exam Technique for Paper 2

The question structure is identical across every option, so technique transfers directly. Paper 2 is 2 hours and 80 marks -- 40 per section, so roughly 60 minutes each.

For the 10-mark "analyse" question, you must use the Item: underline its key phrases and refer to them explicitly as you develop two well-supported analytical points.

For the 20-mark "evaluate" essay, remember the assessment-objective balance: AO1 8 marks (knowledge), AO2 6 marks (application to the question and Item), AO3 6 marks (analysis and evaluation). A top-band answer is not a data-dump -- it builds an argument, applies named studies precisely to the question set, weaves evaluation through each paragraph using contrasting perspectives, and reaches a justified conclusion rather than sitting on the fence.

One note on accuracy that students often get wrong: across the whole qualification the assessment objectives are weighted approximately AO1 44%, AO2 31%, AO3 25% -- AO1, knowledge and understanding, carries the greatest overall weighting. Evaluation still matters enormously because it is what separates the top bands in the essays, but the route to a high grade is detailed knowledge applied with precision and evaluated, not evaluation alone.

Related Reading

• AQA A-Level Sociology Revision Guide -- an overview of the whole specification and general exam technique.
• AQA A-Level Sociology: Families and Households & Beliefs in Society Revision Guide -- the most commonly taught Paper 2 pairing.
• A-Level Revision Strategy: From Mocks to Finals -- a week-by-week revision plan.

Prepare with LearningBro

These three options reward students who combine precise factual knowledge with disciplined, evaluative writing. LearningBro offers a dedicated course for each, with lessons mapped to the specification and practice questions that mirror the demand of the real Paper 2:

• AQA A-Level Sociology: Health -- the medical and social models, inequalities in health by class, gender, ethnicity and region, mental health, the body, disability, and the medical professions.
• AQA A-Level Sociology: Work, Poverty and Welfare -- defining and measuring poverty, cultural and structural explanations, the welfare state and perspectives on welfare, and the nature, organisation and control of work.
• AQA A-Level Sociology: Global Development -- modernisation, dependency and world-systems theory, aid, debt, trade and transnational corporations, gender, demographic change, and conflict.

Each course builds knowledge and exam technique together, so you are not just learning content -- you are learning how to turn it into marks. Try a free lesson and see how it works.

Good luck with your revision.