Jim Yocom

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Bio

I am an applied social scientist who helps organizations and the people serving them to ask and answer questions that make a difference. My mission as an NCSU instructor is to use social science to prepare students for life in organizations fraught with uncertainty and human folly.

During graduate school and after graduating with my PhD in sociology, I helped organizations frame research questions and collect and analyze data. As an attorney, my passion was helping nonprofits and small, community-oriented businesses organizations. Sometimes this was good legal engineering. But my academic background helped me offer scientifically informed advice as well.

At NCSU have taught undergraduate courses on Sociology of Law, Sociology of Medicine, Quantitative Data Analysis, Research Methods, Human Behavior, and Survey Design.

I have a 2018 Certificate for the NCSU Accessibility in the Classroom Course and a 2020 Inclusive Teaching Certification from the Office of Faculty Development.

Projects

I am currently doing empirical research on trends in federal litigation and on punitive attitudes.

Area(s) of Expertise

Research methods & statistics; small groups; laws and norms; the social determinants of health; microsociology and social psychology; attitudes; organizations; survey design and administration; crime, law & deviance; health and mental illness.