The field of sociology is adopted in the examination of the patterns of social relations, social stratification, social interaction, and culture. Sociology is considered a branch of the social sciences.
The goals of sociology are to understand human behavior, to generalize about the causes of human behavior, to predict future human behavior, and to understand how society influences people.
Areas studied in sociology range from the analysis of brief social contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social interaction to understand why people do what they do. To do this, sociologists examine the "social location" of individuals and groups such as employment, gender, ethnicity, income, education, and class.
Numerous fields within the discipline concentrates on how and why people are organized in society, either as individuals or as members of structured or unstructured social groups such as associations, groups, and institutions.
Sociological research provides educators, planners, lawmakers, administrators, developers, business leaders, and people interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy with rationales for the actions they might take.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology