Social Problems
Midterm Exam
Course Introduction
This course explores major social problems facing contemporary society, including issues related to inequality, poverty, crime, racism, sexism, substance abuse, and environmental challenges. Students will examine the root causes and consequences of these problems through sociological theories and research, and consider the role of social institutions such as the family, education, government, and media. The course also encourages critical thinking about proposed solutions and public policies designed to address social issues, fostering a deeper understanding of both local and global perspectives.
Recommended Textbook
Essentials of Sociology 6th Edition by Richard P. Appelbaum
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16 Chapters
1118 Verified Questions
1118 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Sociology: Theory and Method
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78 Verified Questions
78 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Émile Durkheim believed that for a society to function and persist over time, its specialized institutions must work in harmony with each other and function as an integrated whole. He referred to this as:
A) democratic centralism.
B) consensus.
C) class consciousness.
D) organic solidarity.
Answer: D
Q2) The German sociologist Max Weber was highly influential in sociology for his studies of:
A) the French Constituent Assembly.
B) hunter-gatherer societies.
C) bureaucracy.
D) urban planning.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: Culture and Society
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70 Verified Questions
70 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Shannon notes that women in some cultures voluntarily alter their bodies with sometimes painful piercings that, in her opinion, look weird. Based on this, Shannon decides that women in those cultures must be horribly oppressed compared with women in her own culture. Shannon's position might be best interpreted as:
A) social psychological.
B) ethnocentrism.
C) cultural relativism.
D) historical materialism.
Answer: B
Q2) In two to three sentences, please define the concept of cultural universals and describe what they can tell us about human societies.
Answer: Student responses should highlight cultural features of all human societies. The book lists many of them, including language, marriage, religious rituals, and property rights. Responses about what they tell us about human societies will likely differ depending on the answers given, but students should note that because these are cultural universals, they show some of the things that define us as human beings.
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Chapter 3: Socialization, the Life Course, and Aging
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67 Verified Questions
67 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) When Jorge was young, he liked to paint his toenails pink with his sister. On the first day he started kindergarten, the other kids laughed at him and told him that he was acting like a girl with his toenails painted pink. Once he got home he took the nail polish off so that the kids would no longer make fun of him. According to George Herbert Mead's theory of socialization, Jorge now saw himself through the eyes of others who thought that boys are not supposed to wear nail polish. In other words, Jorge developed: A) an "I."
B) his concrete operational stage.
C) a social consciousness.
D) an ego.
Answer: C
Q2) Elderly people in the United States are likely to be stereotyped as:
A) lonely.
B) intelligent.
C) aggressive.
D) financially savvy.
Answer: A
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Chapter 4: Social Interaction and Everyday Life in the Age
of the Internet
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68 Verified Questions
68 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Gestures and body postures that are an important part of nonverbal communication are:
A) universal and the same in all cultures.
B) neither universal nor the same in all cultures.
C) unique to each person.
D) embedded in our DNA.
Q2) Unfocused interaction is when people:
A) ignore each other completely in a small space.
B) exhibit mutual awareness but do not engage in face-to-face interaction.
C) demonstrate how they perceive others through body language.
D) communicate over e-mail or text message.
Q3) According to Harold Garfinkel, people use ________ to organize everyday conversations.
A) formal grammar
B) background expectancies
C) deceptive tactics
D) facial expressions
Q4) What is impression management? Give an example of how a college student engages in impression management when interacting with professors.
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Chapter 5: Groups, Networks, and Organizations
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68 Verified Questions
68 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The members of the drama club at Suzie's high school had a disagreement about who should play the lead in the upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, five of the twenty-five drama club members decided to leave the group, but this had little impact on the stability of the drama club. The rest of the club was able to go forward with the production, according to the textbook, because:
A) the drama club had a good leader who was able to address the instability in the group.
B) larger groups are less exclusive, and it was easy to get new members.
C) the five members who left were troublemakers.
D) the withdrawal of members from larger groups has little impact on the survival of the group.
Q2) The widespread participation of people from various backgrounds in the Black Lives Matter movement might challenge which idea of Robert Putnam?
A) violence is increasing
B) voter turnout is increasing
C) civic participation is declining
D) attention span among young people is declining
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Page 7
Chapter 6: Conformity, Deviance, and Crime
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73 Verified Questions
73 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is an example of the organized crime Manuel Castells described?
A) Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme
B) heroin networks that stretch across Asia
C) prison gangs
D) inner-city youth gangs
Q2) Joe is a straight-A student and wants to go to a four-year college after high school. When his friends encourage him to skip class and hang out with them, he refuses to do so because he doesn't want to jeopardize his GPA. This is an example of:
A) conflict theory.
B) control theory.
C) functionalist theory.
D) strain theory.
Q3) Compare the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) with victimization surveys, such as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Which method gives a better indication of the level of crime in the United States? Please explain in three to five sentences.
Q4) What is the biological view of deviance? What are some of the weaknesses of this approach? Please explain in three to four sentences.
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Page 8
Chapter 7: Stratification, Class, and Inequality
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66 Verified Questions
66 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) One of the main differences between Marx's and Weber's understanding of social class is that:
A) Marx emphasized one's life chances in his understanding of social class.
B) Weber recognized that social classes also differ with respect to their power.
C) Marx put more emphasis on how race and gender intersected with class.
D) Weber argued that social discrimination can lead to class inequality.
Q2) Dr. Smith is an open-heart surgeon who was trained at a top-tier medical school. Which of the following theorists would be most likely to argue that Dr. Smith achieved the position solely based on her own talent and efforts?
A) Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore
B) Max Weber
C) Karl Marx
D) Charles Murray
Q3) One of the most distressing signs of the growing stratification in the United States is the growth in the number of:
A) substance abusers.
B) mentally ill individuals.
C) women with college degrees.
D) homeless people.
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Global Inequality
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68 Verified Questions
68 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Sociologists are interested in how fertility rates in low-income countries may contribute to higher poverty rates in the long term. They would argue that education affects global poverty by:
A) decreasing population growth.
B) increasing high-wage industries.
C) reducing harsh working conditions.
D) decreasing marriage rates among more educated people.
Q2) Carolina is using world-systems theory to research resource-rich countries that tend to send resources to the wealthiest nations, which then sell them back to those countries for a profit. She is studying what kind of countries?
A) core
B) peripheral
C) semiperipheral
D) futuristic
Q3) Identify and discuss the three key ways that education can reduce global poverty, as outlined in your textbook, and give an example of each. In your answer, please link the effect of education on global poverty, fertility rates, and child labor in low-income countries.
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Chapter 9: Gender Inequality
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68 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to the textbook, which answer best explains why women are so often the target of sexual violence?
A) Women rarely fight back.
B) Women wear revealing clothing to provoke men.
C) The entertainment media produces and distributes highly sexualized content that causes men to become violent.
D) Many men believe that they are entitled to have sexual access if they already know the woman.
Q2) Straight couples tend to revert to traditional gender roles, with women as lower earners, bearing the brunt of stereotypical female chores. How do same-sex couples tend to compare?
A) They tend to reverse gender roles.
B) Couples assign chores based on personal preference.
C) Lesbian couples tend to equally split chores, while gay couples do not.
D) Gay couples are more likely to split chores based on income.
Q3) In a short paragraph, discuss the influence of nature and nurture in the formation of gender identity. How do arguments that biology primarily influences gender differ from sociological views of gender socialization?
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Chapter 10: Ethnicity and Race
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64 Verified Questions
64 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Blaming immigrants for high unemployment rates is an example of:
A) scapegoating.
B) racializing.
C) institutional racism.
D) discrimination.
Q2) Which group of Americans has the highest college graduation rate?
A) non-Hispanic whites
B) African Americans
C) Asian Americans
D) Hispanics
Q3) In a couple of sentences, please describe three factors the textbook authors mention in explaining the historical rise of racism. In your answer, discuss Joseph Arthur de Gobineau's classification of races.
Q4) Which model best fits the experience of Switzerland?
A) assimilation
B) melting pot
C) segregation
D) multiculturalism
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Page 12
Chapter 11: Families and Intimate Relationships
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66 Verified Questions
66 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is a change related to the creation of a worldwide movement toward the predominance of the nuclear family and the breakdown of extended-family systems and other types of kinship groups?
A) the spread of the idea of romantic love
B) the power and influence of the antiabortion movement
C) large-scale migration from urban to rural areas
D) the resurgence of fundamentalist religious groups
Q2) Which of the following statements concerning divorce is true?
A) About one-half of children born in 1980 became members of a one-parent family at some stage in their lives.
B) Most men and women who are divorced never remarry.
C) Most children are traumatized by divorce even decades after their parents separate.
D) The economic well-being of women increases after divorce due to liberal alimony laws.
Q3) Describe Talcott Parsons's view of the family in one to three sentences. What are two criticisms of his approach?
Q4) In a short paragraph, explain the feminist critique of the "conventional" family.
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Chapter 12: Education and Religion
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76 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to the textbook, how do Marxist sociologists explain why education expanded so rapidly with the development of capitalism?
A) Working people fought for universal education to improve their conditions.
B) Employers needed certain personality characteristics in their workers-self-discipline, dependability, punctuality, obedience, and the like-and these are all taught in schools.
C) The state came to compete with the church as the agent of education.
D) Enlightenment values demanded equal access to a good and stable education.
Q2) Martita thinks that public schools in poorer areas of the United States suffer from a lack of resources compared with those in wealthy areas. She believes that this has a major impact on learning and educational achievement. Her views most closely mirror which of the following studies?
A) sociological studies of tracking and "within school effects"
B) Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities
C) James Coleman's studies on "between school effects"
D) Randall Collins's studies of credentialism
Q3) How do religion and education act as socializing agents? Please explain your answer in three to five sentences.
Q4) What is religious nationalism? Please explain your answer in a short paragraph.
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Page 14
Chapter 13: Politics and Economic Life
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Sample Questions
Q1) Who would primarily benefit from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour?
A) white-collar workers
B) women nurses
C) landowners
D) black and Latino workers
Q2) Miriam is a sociologist who has great faith in the U.S. political system. She subscribes to the theory that continual processes of bargaining among numerous groups representing different interests influence government policies in a democracy. Miriam's ideas could best be described as:
A) libertarian communist.
B) pluralist.
C) power elitist.
D) multicultural.
Q3) In a short paragraph, compare and contrast pluralist theories of modern democracy and the power elite model.
Q4) In a short paragraph, compare and contrast two of the three forms of democracy discussed in the text.
Q5) What are the main features of capitalism? Answer in two to four sentences.
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Chapter 14: The Sociology of the Body: Health, Illness, and Sexuality
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73 Verified Questions
73 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) One of the major barriers to the treatment of the HIV and AIDS epidemic worldwide is:
A) the increasing number of intravenous drug users.
B) the increasing percentage of homosexuals who practice unsafe sex.
C) the increasing percentage of heterosexuals who practice unsafe sex.
D) discrimination against people living with these infections.
Q2) What are some of the important contributions of Alfred Kinsey's research on sexuality? Please explain your answer in a short paragraph.
Q3) Tiffany was assigned male at birth and now identifies as a woman. According to the textbook, Tiffany is:
A) a bisexual.
B) a transvestite man.
C) a transvestite woman.
D) a transsexual woman.
Q4) In three to five sentences, explain what sexual orientation is.
Q5) How do social class and race affect health? Please explain your answer in a short paragraph.
Q6) In three to five sentences, compare complementary and alternative medicine.
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Urbanization, Population, and the Environment
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64 Verified Questions
64 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Demographers study population patterns. If a demographer were going to study the population changes in a country such as China, which of the following would he or she examine?
A) political party affiliation
B) deaths
C) job growth
D) pollution
Q2) In your opinion, which strand of urban studies developed by the Chicago School-urban ecology or urbanism-is more convincing to you, and why? Explain your answer in three to five sentences.
Q3) Which of the following countries has a higher crude birth rate than the United States?
A) Russia
B) India
C) Germany
D) Italy
Q4) In a short paragraph, use China as an example to explain some of the issues that countries face today regarding population growth, economic growth, and environmental issues. How are these issues intertwined?
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Chapter 16: Globalization in a Changing World
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81 Verified Questions
81 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Consider a community that has elected a leader who has promised the revitalization of a declining employment sector. At first, there are some improvements in living conditions, and the citizens have been inspired and expect improvements in their lives. However, if those improvements slow down, the community may become frustrated and begin to revolt against this new leader. This dynamic is referred to as:
A) relative deprivation.
B) absolute deprivation.
C) economic deprivation.
D) political deprivation.
Q2) The increased risk of skin cancer is a manufactured risk that likely relates to: A) people not wearing enough sunscreen.
B) chemicals in common household products.
C) the depletion of the ozone layer.
D) changing beauty norms.
Q3) According to Daniel Bell, we are entering a phase of development beyond the industrial era called the postindustrial society. Discuss the changes that have brought about a postindustrial society and what characterizes such a society.
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