Social Aspects of Health and Illness Study Guide Questions
Course Introduction
This course explores the complex interactions between society, culture, and health, examining how social factors influence patterns of health, illness, and healthcare delivery. Students will analyze the impact of factors such as socioeconomic status, race, gender, environment, and public policy on individual and community well-being. Through case studies and theoretical frameworks, the course encourages critical thinking about health inequalities, the social construction of illness, and the role of social structures and institutions in shaping health outcomes, with an emphasis on contemporary issues and global perspectives.
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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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Sociology of Health,Illness, and Health Care
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21 Verified Questions
21 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Those who frame their research questions in terms of public issues,rather than personal troubles,can be said to use
A) the sociological perspective.
B) functionalist theory.
C) psychoanalysis.
D) a public health perspective.
E) radical theory.
Answer: A
Q2) Which of the following research projects would someone who engages in the sociology of medicine be mostly likely to pursue?
A) how doctors' attitudes result in poorer persons receiving worse health care than wealthier persons
B) how poor people's attitudes toward doctors result in their receiving a lower quality of care than wealthier persons receive
C) why poor persons develop arthritis more often than wealthier persons
D) how individuals' attitudes toward risk-taking affect whether they follow medical advice
E) why wealthier persons live longer on average than poor persons
Answer: A
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3
Chapter 2: The Social Sources of Illness
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29 Verified Questions
29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Toxic agents
A) are especially dangerous to children.
B) are contributing to climate change.
C) can be prevented by developing a "risk society."
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Answer: E
Q2) Social stress
A) can cause mental as well as physical illness.
B) is most common among busy middle-class people.
C) can cause illness, but does not affect the immune system.
D) improves the immune system.
E) improves one's life choices.
Answer: A
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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) Paying for health care for the elderly will likely become more difficult in coming years because of
A) declining rates of infant mortality.
B) social class differences between whites and African Americans.
C) the Hispanic paradox.
D) the feminization of aging.
E) internal colonization.
Answer: D
Q2) Women have lower rates of heart disease in part because their bodies produce more estrogen than do men's bodies.This is an example of A) the feminization of aging.
B) the feminine mystique.
C) sex differences.
D) gender differences.
E) both sex and gender differences.
Answer: C
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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) What defines whether a country is more or less developed? Why should development be conceptualized as a scale rather than a dichotomy? Give two examples to illustrate your argument.
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) Of the following,which is the most important cause of infant mortality in less developed nations?
A) herpes
B) emphysema
C) accidents
D) illegal drug use
E) malnutrition and infection
Q4) Why should war and disasters be considered public health issues?
Q5) How is infant mortality linked to women's social status? How is maternal mortality linked to women's status?
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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) According to the sociological model of illness,illness is a A) form of deviance.
B) subjectively defined condition.
C) social construction.
D) moral status.
E) all of the above
Q2) Which of the following can be important supporters of medicalization?
A) doctors
B) lay groups
C) pharmaceutical companies
D) all of the above
E) none of the above
Q3) Across history,people have most commonly believed that illness was A) a deserved punishment for bad behavior.
B) caused by witchdoctors.
C) caused by bad genes.
D) caused by bad water.
E) caused by cholera.
Q4) What contribution does Parsons' concept of a sick role make to our understanding of sickness in society? What are the weaknesses of that concept?
Page 7
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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) Someone who wins wheelchair marathons to prove he is no different from others despite his disability is
A) passing.
B) engaging in deviance disavowal.
C) challenging stigma.
D) engaging in illness behavior.
E) engaging in sick role behavior.
Q2) Whether an individual will seek diagnosis once symptoms appear depends on A) the presence of alternative explanations for the symptoms.
B) the frequency of the symptoms.
C) the visibility of the symptoms.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Q3) Over the last few decades,the prevalence of disabilities has A) increased.
B) decreased.
C) stayed about the same.
Q4) Should people with disabilities be considered a minority group? Why or why not?
Page 8
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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) The medical model of mental illness assumes that
A) objectively measurable conditions define mental illness.
B) mental illness stems largely or solely from something within individual psychology or biology.
C) treatment sometimes can pose serious risks.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Q2) Critique the medical model of mental illness,using evidence from the textbook.
Q3) How do society's views on,and responses to,mental illness resemble those of past centuries? How do they differ?
Q4) Freud's ideas about human nature and mental illness
A) continue to permeate American culture.
B) have received strong support from recent research.
C) reflected a belief in the inherent superiority of females.
D) reflected his support for the nascent feminist movement.
E) have been repudiated by those who take a biological approach to psychiatry.
Q5) How are residential colleges similar to and different from total institutions?
Q6) Explain the link between stress and mental illness,and then use that explanation to explain class,gender,and race differences in mental illness.
Page 9
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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) When hospitals purchase more advanced technological equipment than they can readily use,the prices charged to consumers for using that technology typically
A) increase.
B) decrease.
C) remain unchanged.
D) are linked to the inflation rate.
E) are linked to the recession rate.
Q2) Which of the following countries spends the most per capita on health care?
A) Canada
B) United Kingdom
C) Mexico
D) United States
E) Japan
Q3) Why have health care costs risen in the United States?
Q4) Blue Cross and Blue Shield were founded to protect the financial security of A) hospitals.
B) doctors.
C) American citizens.
D) a and b only
E) all of the above
Page 10
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Chapter 9: Health Care Around the Globe
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29 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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.
Q2) 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.
Q3) Which nation's health care system would you prefer? Why?
Q4) In China,village doctors
A) were first used during the Cultural Revolution.
B) receive about two years of training.
C) work primarily in urban areas.
D) remain a major part of the Chinese health care system.
E) primarily work as midwives.
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Chapter 10: Health Care Settings and Technologies
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30 Verified Questions
30 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is true?
A) The majority of nursing homes are run on a for-profit basis.
B) Men are more likely than women to eventually need nursing home care.
C) Nursing homes now treat a healthier mix of patient than they did 20 years ago.
D) Since the passage of Medicare, the number of nursing homes has declined.
E) Nursing homes are staffed primarily by doctors.
Q2) Which of the following is a result of commodification?
A) keeping nursing home residents strapped to chairs during the day
B) purchasing gourmet foods for nursing home residents
C) requiring nursing home residents to shower daily
D) increased drug use among nursing home staff
E) increased drug use among nursing home administrators
Q3) Respite care refers to
A) board and care homes.
B) skilled nursing homes.
C) any system designed to give caregivers a break from their responsibilities.
D) care grounded in a spirit of charity.
E) care given respectfully.
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Chapter 11: The Profession of Medicine
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28 Verified Questions
28 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Respect for allopathic medicine had grown by the year 1900 because
A) Americans increasingly defined health care as complex matter requiring expert intervention.
B) Americans increasingly believed in the benefits of science.
C) of the impact of the Flexner Report.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Q2) Published guidelines that establish norms of care for particular medical conditions based on a review of clinical research are known as
A) managed care documents.
B) practice protocols.
C) utilization summaries.
D) RBRVS decrees.
E) socialization literature.
Q3) The American Medical Association
A) spends more than other competing interest groups on political lobbying.
B) has increased in power over recent decades.
C) is less powerful than the combined countervailing powers in health care.
D) has long supported a national health care system.
E) is more powerful than the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
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Chapter 12: Other Mainstream and Alternative Health Care
Providers
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26 Verified Questions
26 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Florence Nightingale
A) believed that men and women should occupy "separate spheres."
B) believed that nursing needed a hierarchical structure.
C) saw caring as inherently women's role.
D) all of the above
E) a and b only
Q2) The history of osteopathy suggests how difficult it is to
A) move from being a marginal occupation to being a limited occupation.
B) maintain an independent and unique identity while becoming a parallel profession.
C) improve the educational standards of a field.
D) gain legal recognition when a field has many female practitioners.
E) gain legal recognition when a field lacks a scientific basis.
Q3) Optometrists have obtained considerable social status by limiting their treatments to only one part of the body.This suggests that optometry is a
A) semi-profession.
B) limited but not marginal occupation.
C) parallel profession.
D) marginal but not limited occupation.
E) marginal profession.
Page 14
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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) Researchers in the Willowbrook study obtained
A) fully voluntary consent from the parents of their subjects.
B) fully informed consent from the parents of their subjects.
C) consent from the parents of their subjects, but that consent was neither informed nor voluntary.
D) no consent of any sort from the parents of their subjects.
E) consent from their subjects directly.
Q3) The Tuskegee Syphilis Study lasted for about
A) three years.
B) five years.
C) ten years.
D) forty years.
E) seventy years.
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