Public Health Sociology
Practice Questions
Course Introduction
Public Health Sociology examines the complex interactions between society, culture, and health, exploring how social structures, group behaviors, and societal norms influence health outcomes and public health policies. The course covers key sociological theories, the social determinants of health, health disparities, and the role of institutions in shaping health behaviors and access to care. Students will analyze the impact of factors such as race, class, gender, and environment on population health, and critically assess public health interventions from a sociological perspective. Through case studies and current research, learners gain an understanding of how social context and public health are fundamentally interconnected.
Recommended Textbook
The Sociology of Health Healing and Illness 7th Edition by Gregory L. Weiss
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13 Chapters
357 Verified Questions
357 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: The Sociology of Health,Illness, and Health Care
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21 Verified Questions
21 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/40286
Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following research topics best reflects the sociological perspective?
A) how women's traditional role can foster depression
B) how women's hormonal swings can foster depression
C) how best to use mood-altering drugs in treating depressed women
D) how best to use psychotherapy in treating depressed women
E) how women's relationships with their mothers can foster depression
Answer: A
Q2) According to most scholars,life expectancy in the United States increased dramatically after 1900 because of
A) the introduction of smallpox inoculation.
B) the development of new medical treatments.
C) changes in nutrition and living conditions.
D) the natural evolution of epidemics.
E) the natural evolution of microorganisms into less dangerous forms.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: The Social Sources of Illness
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29 Verified Questions
29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to McGinnis and Foege,the most common cause of premature deaths is A) illegal drugs.
B) diet and exercise.
C) AIDS.
D) tobacco.
E) microbial agents.
Answer: D
Q2) A man who works out daily at the gym and who regards his regular exercise as part of his identify can be said to have a A) psychosis.
B) life chance.
C) health project.
D) health fixation.
E) life choice.
Answer: C
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Chapter 3: The Social Distribution of Illness in the United States
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24 Verified Questions
24 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The infant mortality rate among African Americans
A) is similar to the rate among whites.
B) is similar to the rate among Western Europeans.
C) is higher than among whites primarily due to biological differences.
D) primarily reflects high rates of drug use.
E) is higher than among whites even if we look only at the middle and upper classes.
Answer: E
Q2) The idea that illness leads to poverty more often than poverty leads to illness is known as
A) epidemiological theory.
B) sick role theory.
C) social class theory.
D) social drift theory.
E) fundamental-cause theory.
Answer: D
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Illness and Death in the Less Developed Nations
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29 Verified Questions
29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) How is infant mortality linked to women's social status? How is maternal mortality linked to women's status?
Q2) The impact of HIV/AIDS is magnified by the fact that the disease typically A) hits at midlife.
B) results in water pollution.
C) increases air pollution.
D) kills many street cleaners.
E) leads to overpopulation.
Q3) HIV/AIDS is especially common in Africa in part because of high rates of A) infertility.
B) concurrent sexual partners.
C) serial sexual partners.
D) high cereal diets.
E) gluten free diets.
Q4) The best way to reduce infant mortality is to A) increase support for genetic engineering of high-yield rice and flour. B) develop better treatments for measles.
C) increase women's social status.
D) increase access to medical care for pregnant women.
E) increase access to medical care for babies.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: The Social Meanings of Illness
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27 Verified Questions
27 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Those who use the concept of "fetal rights" typically
A) believe that mothers can best determine their babies' best interests.
B) place the welfare of the fetus above the civil rights of the childbearing woman.
C) question whether a father's behavior might have endangered his pregnant wife's fetus.
D) investigate why pregnant women use illegal drugs.
E) are Jewish.
Q2) The concept of an epigenetic effect suggests that genes
A) outweigh the potential impact of socialization.
B) interact with the environment to cause or avoid causing an illness.
C) mutate at different rates in different populations.
D) Mutate in different ways in different populations.
E) Can be modified in laboratories to prevent disease.
Q3) Treating behavior problems among children as an illness is an example of A) medicalization.
B) demedicalization.
C) depoliticization.
D) medical collaboration.
E) reductionistic treatment.
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Page 7
Chapter 6: The Experience of Disability, Chronic Pain, and Chronic Illness
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28 Verified Questions
28 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The process of responding to symptoms and deciding whether to seek diagnosis and treatment is referred to as
A) health behavior.
B) illness behavior.
C) immersion.
D) intrusion.
E) the health belief model.
Q2) Should people with disabilities be considered a minority group? Why or why not?
Q3) The Americans with Disabilities Act
A) applies only to civil service employment.
B) required cities to establish special schools for handicapped children.
C) uses a very broad definition of who has a disability.
D) outlaws discrimination in employment, public services, and public accommodations.
E) has made it easy for individuals who believe they have experienced discrimination to win law suits.
Q4) Over the last few decades,the prevalence of disabilities has A) increased.
B) decreased.
C) stayed about the same.
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Chapter 7: The Sociology of Mental Illness
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29 Verified Questions
29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Critique the medical model of mental illness,using evidence from the textbook.
Q2) How are residential colleges similar to and different from total institutions?
Q3) How do society's views on,and responses to,mental illness resemble those of past centuries? How do they differ?
Q4) Research using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)suggests that
A) the DSM has a high degree of reliability.
B) clinicians are able to arrive at consistent diagnoses.
C) different clinicians may diagnose the same patient differently.
D) politics are not involved in the construction of diagnostic categories. E) diagnostic categories are stable over time.
Q5) Most psychiatrists now primarily treat patients with A) drugs.
B) psychotherapy.
C) psychoanalysis.
D) electroshock therapy.
E) none of the above
Q6) Explain the link between stress and mental illness,and then use that explanation to explain class,gender,and race differences in mental illness.
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Chapter 8: Health Care in the United States
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30 Verified Questions
30 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) How has the public's health benefited from access to high technology medical interventions? Would the health of the public be better or worse if we spent less on high technology and more on primary care-lessening access to high technology while increasing access to primary care?
Q2) The original health maintenance organizations
A) used retrospective reimbursement.
B) considered it less expensive to treat illness than to prevent it.
C) paid doctors on salary rather than on a fee-for-service basis.
D) were less cost-efficient than traditional fee-for-service insurers.
E) allowed patients to choose their own doctors.
Q3) Prices for prescription drugs have soared because of A) increased use of direct to consumer marketing.
B) increased marketing of "me too" drugs.
C) changes in US patent laws.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Q4) What kinds of health care reforms do you think are necessary? What stakeholders would be likely to oppose those reforms?
Q5) Why have health care costs risen in the United States?
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Chapter 9: Health Care Around the Globe
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29 Verified Questions
29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Life expectancy in Mexico is
A) only slightly lower than in the United States.
B) slightly higher than the United States.
C) similar to average life expectancies in the less developed nations.
D) low to decreases in the health of the population.
E) declining due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Q2) You have been appointed to the President's new commission on health care reform.Which measures for evaluating health care reform do you consider most important? Why? Choose two policies you would want to implement and explain how those two policies link to the measures of health care reform that you consider most important.
Q3) Infant mortality and life expectancy in China are now
A) on a par with those of other developing countries.
B) only slightly below those of the industrialized nations.
C) a major cause of economic losses.
D) rising at the same rate.
E) rising steadily but slowly.
Q4) Which nation's health care system would you prefer? Why?
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Page 11
Chapter 10: Health Care Settings and Technologies
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30 Verified Questions
30 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) By the late nineteenth century,
A) doctors began pushing for access to hospital facilities for medical technology and surgery.
B) voluntary hospitals increasingly emphasized their commitment to serving the poor.
C) demographic changes had reduced the need for hospitals.
D) hospitals had become chaotic and dirty places.
E) most hospitals were owned by only a handful of corporations.
Q2) Paid home health services are
A) most often used by poor persons.
B) generally provided by new doctors.
C) often provided by home health aides.
D) less common than in the past.
E) readily available at low cost.
Q3) The history of CPR illustrates
A) the scientific nature of medical practice.
B) Americans' discomfort with the inevitability of sudden death.
C) why doctors adopt cost-effective treatments.
D) Americans' preference for a quick and painless death.
E) the social construction of mediocrity.
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Page 12
Chapter 11: The Profession of Medicine
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28 Verified Questions
28 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Those who support practice protocols are most likely also to support
A) primary practice.
B) medical paternalism.
C) RBRVS.
D) evidence-based medicine.
E) the AMA.
Q2) Until recently,doctors overwhelmingly were white,male,and middle- or upper-class.How has this affected medical dominance over other occupations? How has it affected the treatment of patients who are not white,male,or affluent? How might this be changing?
Q3) Compared to conditions in 1900,by the late 1920s
A) considerably more medical schools existed.
B) women and blacks found it easier to obtain medical training.
C) immigrants and poor whites found it easier to obtain medical training.
D) the quality of medical training had improved considerably.
E) medical training had become less expensive.
Q4) What is cultural health capital? Which populations are least likely to have cultural health capital? How does low cultural health capital affect doctor-patient relationships?
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Page 13
Chapter 12: Other Mainstream and Alternative Health Care
Providers
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26 Verified Questions
26 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/40297
Sample Questions
Q1) Sociologists consider nurses semi-professionals,rather than professionals,because A) nurses have considerable autonomy, status, and training, but remain subordinate to doctors.
B) most nurses have not attended college.
C) the ethic of caring has kept nurses from pushing for professional status.
D) women with high social status no longer typically enter nursing.
E) nursing lacks a code of ethics.
Q2) Which of the following is true?
A) Dentists often work with acupuncturists.
B) At the time when Medicare and Medicaid were first developed, the American Dental Association supported including dental coverage in those programs.
C) Because insurance rarely covers dental care, dentists must spend even more time than doctors on paperwork.
D) Dentists are considered by sociologists to be alternative practitioners.
E) At the time when Medicare and Medicaid were first developed, the American Dental Association opposed including dental coverage in those programs.
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14
Chapter 13: Issues in Bioethics
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27 Verified Questions
27 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The adoption of bioethical guidelines has led to which of the following?
A) Clinicians who focus more on documenting their compliance with guidelines than on following the spirit of those guidelines.
B) Ethics review boards that focus primarily on reducing law suits.
C) Significant reduction in the worst sorts of abuses of human subjects.
D) all of the above
E) none of the above
Q2) The effectiveness of commercial Institutional Review Boards is limited by A) conflicts of interest.
B) insufficient federal oversight.
C) managed care regulations.
D) their reliance on career bureaucrats.
E) heavy-handed federal oversight committees.
Q3) The Karen Quinlan case demonstrated the problems caused when doctors
A) extend life without regard to the quality of that life.
B) perform organ transplants.
C) perform kidney dialysis.
D) genetically alter fetuses.
E) transfer patients from hospitals to nursing homes.
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Page 15