Contemporary Social Issues
Practice Questions
Course Introduction
Contemporary Social Issues examines the pressing challenges and debates shaping societies today, including topics such as inequality, globalization, environmental sustainability, gender and race relations, media influence, and the impact of technology on daily life. The course encourages critical thinking and the application of sociological concepts to understand the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to these issues. Students will explore diverse perspectives, analyze policy approaches, and develop informed arguments while considering both local and global contexts.
Recommended Textbook
Sociology 14th Edition by John J. Macionis
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Chapter 1: The Sociological Perspective
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Sample Questions
Q1) Like the gender-conflict approach, the race-conflict approach is concerned with social inequality.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) C.Wright Mills claimed that the "sociological imagination" transformed
A)common sense into laws of society.
B)people into supporters of the status quo.
C)personal problems into public issues.
D)scientific research into common sense.
Answer: C
Q3) People with lower social standing are usually more likely to see the world from a sociological perspective than people who are well off.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q4) Sociologists focus only on unusual patterns of behavior.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Sociological Investigation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements about critical sociology is true?
A)Critical sociology focuses on the meaning people attach to behavior.
B)Critical sociology seeks to bring about desirable social change.
C)Critical sociology endorses the principle of being value-free.
D)Critical sociology is based on Weber's principle of verstehen.
Answer: B
Q2) Replication is one way to assess the accuracy of existing research.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) What term refers to the arithmetic average of a series of numbers?
A)the mean
B)the mode
C)the median
D)the correlation
Answer: A
Q4) Critical sociology studies society and tries to bring about social change.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 3: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) Standards by which people who share culture define what is desirable, good, and beautiful are called A)folkways. B)norms.
C)mores.
D)values.
Answer: D
Q2) Cultural lag refers to the fact that some cultural elements change more quickly than others.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q3) Afrocentrism refers to the dominance of European cultural patterns. A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) Cultural transmission cannot take place unless people have a written language. A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 4: Society
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Sample Questions
Q1) Hunting and gathering societies were the only human species on the Earth from the origins of man some 3 million years ago until about
A)250,000 years ago.
B)100,000 years ago.
C)12,000 years ago.
D)2,500 years ago.
Q2) Marx described the widespread beliefs that supported the capitalist economic system as
A)false consciousness.
B)class consciousness.
C)cultural awareness.
D)revolutionary politics.
Q3) How would Durkheim describe the importance of a social structure such as family?
A)Family is one important source of inequality.
B)Family exists only in the meaning it has for a particular person.
C)Family plays a part in the operation of society.
D)Family is the result of humanity's biological evolution.
Q4) According to Weber, rational, modern societies were becoming more personal.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 5: Socialization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why is defining adulthood difficult for people living in the United States?
Q2) Mead would agree with only one of the following statements.Which one is it?
A)Socialization ends with the development of self in childhood.
B)If you win $100 million in a lottery, your self might change.
C)People are puppets with little control over their lives.
D)Human behavior reflects both nature and nurture.
Q3) If you were to put together the lesson learned from the cases of Anna, Isabelle, and Genie, you would correctly conclude that
A)social experience plays a crucial part in forming human personality.
B)both social experience and the presence of the birth mother are crucial to early development.
C)the effect of long-term social isolation can be overcome in a relatively short time.
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Total institutions operate with the goal of resocializing inmates.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Of all social institutions, the family has the greatest impact on socialization.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 6: Social Interaction in Everyday Life
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Sample Questions
Q1) The process by which people act and react in relation to others is called
A)social connectedness.
B)social construction.
C)social dynamics.
D)social interaction.
Q2) Garfinkel's research, an approach called ethnomethodology, involves
A)studying the way people make sense of their everyday surroundings.
B)tracking people's roles over the life course.
C)the study of interaction in terms of theatrical performance.
D)studying unfamiliar cultural systems.
Q3) "Role conflict" refers to the conflict or incompatibility among the roles linked to two or more statuses.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Which sociologist developed the approach called dramaturgical analysis?
A)George Herbert Mead
B)Harold Garfinkel
C)Erving Goffman
D)W.I.Thomas
Q5) Explain how emotions are guided by both biology and culture.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Groups and Organizations
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why do many analysts claim that the spread of formal organizations threatens personal privacy? What do you think can be done about the erosion of personal privacy?
Q2) Imagine you are watching several dozen passengers sitting in an airport gate area waiting to board a plane.These people are an example of a A)crowd. B)group.
C)category. D)network.
Q3) List the traits that Max Weber used to describe bureaucratic social organizations.How do these traits promote organizational efficiency? What do these traits have in common?
Q4) Frederick Taylor, the creator of "scientific management," would have favored a flatter organizational shape with more organizational flexibility. A)True
B)False
Q5) Expressive leadership emphasizes the completion of tasks. A)True
B)False
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Chapter 8: Sexuality and Society
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Sample Questions
Q1) How does sexuality play a part in social inequality? Consider factors including prostitution and pornography and their effects on women.Also, consider heterosexism and its effects on the social standing of gay and intersexual people.
Q2) Which theoretical approach rests on the idea that society needs to regulate human sexuality?
A)the structural-functional approach
B)the symbolic-interaction approach
C)the social-conflict approach
D)queer theory
Q3) About what share of the states in this country have laws that permit marriage between first cousins?
A)10 percent of the states
B)none of the states
C)all of the states
D)half of the states
Q4) A majority of adults in the United States report engaging in homosexual activity at some point in their lives.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Deviance
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Sample Questions
Q1) The concept "retrospective labeling" refers to the process of
A)interpreting someone's past consistent with present deviance.
B)defining someone as deviant for things done long before.
C)criminal adults encouraging their children to become deviant.
D)All of these are correct.
Q2) The likelihood a person will be arrested for a street crime rises sharply
A)during the late teenage years.
B)in the late twenties.
C)during the middle thirties.
D)over age forty.
Q3) Gender figures into the study of deviance because
A)women account for most of the arrests for serious crimes in the United States.
B)every society in the world applies stronger normative controls to females than to males.
C)most researchers in this area are women.
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Explain how age, gender, and social class are correlated with official arrest data.
Q5) List the crimes against the person and crimes against property tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Which type of crime is more common?
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Chapter 10: Social Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to Karl Marx, social stratification in a capitalist society always involves A)class conflict.
B)negotiation and compromise leading to stability.
C)the abolition of work itself.
D)All of these are correct.
Q2) Comparing societies in history and around the world, we see that social stratification may involve differences in A)what is unequal.
B)how unequal people are.
C)why people are unequal.
D)All of these are correct.
Q3) When Marx argued that capitalism "reproduces the class structure," he meant that A)it is really ordinary people who create social inequality.
B)society operates and carries class differences from one generation to the next.
C)class differences are the same throughout human history.
D)society could never abolish class inequality.
Q4) Define structural social mobility.How does it differ from individual social mobility?
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Chapter 11: Social Class in the United States
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Sample Questions
Q1) The wealth of rich people is not only greater, but more of it is in the form of investments that typically increase in value and generate income.
A)True
B)False
Q2) About 40 percent of U.S.families have little or no wealth.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the difference between income and wealth?
Q4) According to Karl Marx, which class forms the core of the industrial proletariat?
A)the upper-middle class
B)the middle class
C)the upper class
D)the working class
Q5) Applying the sociological perspective to poverty, what can we say about the categories of people at highest risk of being poor?
Q6) Discuss poverty trends in the United States in recent decades with regard to Q7) Who are the working poor?
Q8) Look at the "Seeing Sociology in Everyday Life" photo essay on
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Chapter 12: Global Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) In middle-income nations, average personal income is in the range of
A)$250 and $1,000.
B)$1,000 and $2,500.
C)$2,500 and $10,000.
D)$10,000 and $25,000.
Q2) What do you find to be the strengths of modernization theory? What about dependency theory? Also point to what are, in your opinion, the two biggest weaknesses of each theory.
Q3) Describe the distribution of income for the world as a whole.
Q4) According to Anti-Slavery International, about how many men, women, and children live today in conditions that amount to slavery?
A)20,000
B)200,000
C)200 million
D)2 billion
Q5) Compared to poverty in the United States, poverty throughout the world as a whole is more widespread and more severe.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: Gender Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) Feminists support all but one of the following.Which is the one statement that feminists do not support?
A)ending gender stratification
B)ending sexual violence
C)weakening the importance of gender in people's lives
D)limiting sexual freedom
Q2) Evidence from the Israeli kibbutzim suggests that cultures have the ability to define what is masculine and feminine in various ways.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Today in the United States, only about 10 percent of women with young children work for income.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Structural-functional analysis points out that industrialization encourages
A)men to take control of the workplace.
B)growing gender equality.
C)women to have more children.
D)All of these are correct.
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Chapter 14: Race and Ethnicity
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the Bogardus social distance scale? What does research using the scale tell us about changing attitudes of college students towards racial and ethnic minorities?
Q2) What Gunnar Myrdal called the "American dilemma" was
A)the denial of basic rights to African Americans by a so-called "democratic society."
B)the placing of Native Americans on reservations.
C)the restriction of immigration by a nation that was built by immigrants.
D)the refusal of many minorities to improve their social standing.
Q3) Which of the following categories of the U.S.population is most likely to own and operate a small business?
A)Native Americans
B)African Americans
C)Korean Americans
D)Mexican Americans
Q4) Prejudice is a rigid and unfair generalization about an entire category of people.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Describe the social standing of several major categories of Hispanic Americans.
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Chapter 15: Aging and the Elderly
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Sample Questions
Q1) Are the elderly in the United States disadvantaged? Provide data on income that answers this question.Also consider cultural patterns that contribute to ageism.In this discussion, state the points of view that suggest the elderly should or should not be considered a minority.
Q2) How is the increasing share of our population over the age of sixty-five likely to change our way of life?
Q3) The concept of "ageism" refers to
A)failing to provide necessary care for the elderly.
B)the reality that we all grow old.
C)prejudice and discrimination against the elderly.
D)forcing elderly people to retire from paid work.
Q4) Assume you have a business that provides products to older people.Looking ahead, you have reason to expect
A)increasing sales, because your target population is increasing in size.
B)decreasing sales, because your target population is getting smaller.
C)little change in sales, because your target population will remain stable.
D)that your target population will increasingly be men.
Q5) How do modern societies separate death from life?
Q6) What is age stratification? What is a gerontocracy?
Page 17
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Chapter 16: The Economy and Work
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Sample Questions
Q1) Globalization of the economy means that
A)world regions specialize in one sector of economic activity.
B)more and more products pass through several nations.
C)a small number of businesses represent a huge share of global economic output.
D)All of these are correct.
Q2) What is a social institution? What is the economy?
Q3) In recent decades, union membership
A)has risen in the United States and other high-income nations.
B)has risen in the United States, but not in other high-income nations.
C)has declined in the United States, but not in other high-income nations.
D)has declined in the United States and other high-income nations.
Q4) What is welfare capitalism? How does Denmark illustrate the operation of this system?
Q5) Define the concepts of "monopoly" and "oligopoly." Why are these economic patterns controversial?
Q6) Dependency theorists see large corporations as
A)the key to meeting the needs of people in poor nations.
B)helping poor nations to develop local industries.
C)a major source of foreign investment for poor nations.
D)intensifying global inequality.
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Politics and Government
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Q1) Define authoritarianism and totalitarianism.Provide an example of each system in the world today.
Q2) What is the difference between power and authority?
Q3) How are social issues different from economic issues in the political spectrum? Provide an example of each type of issue.
Q4) What are the key differences between monarchy and democracy? Why does industrialization encourage the transition from one to the other?
Q5) In 2006, about what percentage of the world's people lived in countries that can be considered politically "free"?
A)6 percent
B)26 percent
C)46 percent
D)66 percent
Q6) Terrorism is considered to be a new form of asymmetrical warfare.
A)True
B)False
Q7) What is terrorism? What is state terrorism?
Q8) What is nuclear proliferation? Do you consider this process a concern? Why or why not?
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Chapter 18: Families
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Q1) A social-exchange analysis of family life is likely to consider
A)how families keep society as a whole operating.
B)how families perpetuate social inequality.
C)how individuals select partners who offer about as much as they do to the relationship.
D)how families regulate sexual activity.
Q2) Mounting research suggests that cohabitation
A)strengthens a couple's commitment to one another.
B)may actually discourage marriage.
C)increases the financial security of children.
D)All of these are correct.
Q3) Describing the lives of working-class women, Lillian Rubin reported that the typical woman said she wanted a husband who
A)would confide in her.
B)was handsome.
C)had a steady job and was not violent.
D)was rich.
Q4) Define patrilineal descent, matrilineal descent, and bilateral descent.Which pattern is favored in the United States? Why?
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Chapter 19: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the distinction between the sacred and the profane?
Q2) A charismatic leader is most likely to be found in which of the following?
A)church
B)cult
C)denomination
D)state church
Q3) All through the South, the largest number of Protestants are of which denomination?
A)Lutheran
B)Baptist
C)Methodist
D)Episcopalian
Q4) Which of the following concepts refers to a religious organization that is largely outside a society's cultural traditions?
A)church
B)sect
C)cult
D)denomination
Q5) How do spiritual "seekers" differ from members of established churches?
Q6) Why do researchers have difficulty measuring religiosity?
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Chapter 20: Education
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are four societal functions of schooling?
Q2) How does schooling advance the goal of socially integrating a large, diverse population?
Q3) The extent of schooling in a society is closely tied to its level of economic development.
A)True
B)False
Q4) According to Theodore Sizer, rigid bureaucracy harms schooling by
A)imposing uniformity on culturally diverse schools.
B)emphasizing test scores and other numerical ratings.
C)expecting all students to progress at the same rate.
D)All of these are correct.
Q5) Research suggests that the level of functional illiteracy in the United States may be about what share of young people who leave secondary school?
A)about one in eight
B)about one in twenty
C)about one in fifty
D)about one in one hundred
Q6) Write an essay in which you demonstrate that schooling
Page 22
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Chapter 21: Health and Medicine
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Q1) Define euthanasia.What is active euthanasia? What arguments can you make in support of and in opposition to this practice?
Q2) From a social-conflict point of view, capitalism fails to support human health because
A)it does not encourage development of new medical techniques and technologies. B)physicians have little financial incentive to work.
C)it makes quality of care dependent on income.
D)All of these are correct.
Q3) Which of the following is an example of a chronic illness?
A)influenza
B)cancer
C)accidents
D)pneumonia
Q4) The U.S.health care system is one example of the model called socialized medicine.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the most common method of HIV transmission in the United States? In the world as a whole?
Q6) Describe several reasons for the shortage of nurses in the United States.
Page 23
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Chapter 22: Population, Urbanization, and Environment
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Q1) Currently, about how many people are added to the world's population each year?
A)830,000
B)8.3 million
C)83 million
D)830 million
Q2) Fertility refers to
A)life expectancy for a nation's population.
B)norms that encourages people to have children.
C)the maximum number of children a woman can have.
D)the incidence of childbearing in a nation's population.
Q3) An age-sex pyramid is useful, in part, because it helps predict the demographic future of a society.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Write an essay in which you sketch out principles that would lead to an environmentally sustainable way of life for the planet.Would our attitudes towards consumption change? If so, how? How would this be affected by the current level of global stratification?
Q5) State the basic idea of the "logic of growth" thesis.Provide a critical assessment of this thesis.
Page 24
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Chapter 23: Collective Behavior and Social Movements
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Q1) Women have been at the forefront of most social movements.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Deprivation theory states that social movements arise among people who
A)feel adrift in society.
B)have plenty of money and other resources.
C)feel they lack enough income, basic rights, or human dignity.
D)mobilize around cultural symbols.
Q3) Collective behavior is difficult to study because
A)it involves only one particular kind of behavior.
B)it is often transitory-that is, it is brief and passing.
C)it is always violent.
D)people object to being watched.
Q4) Collective behavior is difficult to study because
A)it involves only one particular kind of behavior.
B)it is often transitory-that is, it is brief and C)it is always violent.
D)people object to being watched. passing.
Q5) Name and define four types of social movements.How are they different?
Q6) How do "new social movements" differ from older social movements?
Page 25
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Chapter 24: Social Change: Traditional
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Q1) Define the concepts Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in ways that make their difference clear.Apply these concepts to social life in the United States.
Q2) Max Weber declared modern society to be "disenchanted."
A)True
B)False
Q3) A mass society is one that
A)has expanding bureaucracy.
B)is affluent in terms of economic production.
C)has lost much of its traditional social ties.
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Max Weber worried that modern societies were prone to a condition he called "anomie."
A)True
B)False
Q5) According to mass-society theory, what problems do modern individuals face? What does class-society theory have to say about the personal problems of modern people?
Q6) Social change is usually controversial.
A)True
B)False
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