Social Problems
Test Questions
Course Introduction
This course examines the major social problems affecting contemporary society, exploring issues such as poverty, inequality, crime, racism, and environmental challenges. Students will analyze the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to these problems through sociological theories and research. The course encourages critical thinking about how society defines, understands, and addresses social issues, and considers the roles of individuals, groups, and institutions in creating and responding to these problems. Case studies and current events will be used to foster engagement and connect theoretical concepts to real-world scenarios.
Recommended Textbook
Sociology 14th Edition by John J. Macionis
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24 Chapters
3010 Verified Questions
3010 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Sociological Perspective
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186 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements reflects a social-exchange analysis?
A)People typically seek mates who offer as much as they do
B)Class differences are reflected in favored sports
C)People build reality as they introduce themselves
D)People who do more important work usually earn more pay
Answer: A
Q2) Sociological research may be interesting, but it is of little use in shaping public policy, including legislation.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) Which theoretical approach was used by the early sociologists Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim?
A)the structural-functional approach
B)the social-conflict approach
C)the symbolic-interaction approach
D)no theoretical approach was used
Answer: A
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3
Chapter 2: Sociological Investigation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Qualitative research appeals to investigators who favor which theoretical approach?
A)the structural-functional approach
B)the symbolic-interaction approach
C)the social-conflict approach
D)All of these are correct.
Answer: B
Q2) You wish to conduct an exploratory and descriptive study of people in a particular neighborhood.You have plenty of time, but you have little money or other resources.What research method should you use?
A)an experiment
B)a survey
C)participant observation
D)secondary analysis
Answer: C
Q3) When two variables are statistically related, a cause-and-effect relationship exists.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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4
Chapter 3: Culture
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Sample Questions
Q1) Elements of social control in everyday life include A)shame.
B)guilt.
C)sanctions, including the response of other people.
D)All of these are correct.
Answer: D
Q2) _____ distinguish between right and wrong; _____ distinguish between right and rude.
A)Mores; folkways
B)Taboos; mores
C)Folkways; mores
D)Prescriptive norms; proscriptive norms
Answer: A
Q3) Compared to college students of the late 1960s, more of today's college students are concerned with
A)developing a philosophy of life.
B)making money.
C)seeking justice in the world.
D)being involved in political affairs.
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Society
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Sample
Questions
Q1) Looking over the long course of history, Durkheim claimed that societies change as _____ gives way to _____.
A)Gesellschaft; Gemeinschaft
B)individualism; collective conscience
C)mechanical solidarity; organic solidarity
D)organic solidarity; mechanical solidarity
Q2) Hunting and gathering societies generate a productive surplus.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Karl Marx considered capitalism to be _____, but Max Weber argued that capitalism was very _____.
A)irrational; rational
B)rational; irrational
C)unproductive; productive
D)productive; unproductive
Q4) The driving force of social change, according to Marx, is A)advancing technology.
B)social conflict between classes.
C)dominant ideas.
D)the way in which society is held together.
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Socialization
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why did Sigmund Freud see human culture
Q2) Psychologist John B.Watson claimed that specific patterns of human behavior are not instinctive, but learned.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A cohort is a category of people who have something important in common, usually their age.
A)True
B)False
Q4) The period of life called "middle adulthood" typically involves
A)life circumstances becoming more or less set.
B)an increased awareness of health issues.
C)children growing up and requiring less attention.
D)All of these are correct.
Q5) In the nature versus nurture debate, sociologists claim that A)nature is far more important than nurture.
B)nurture is far more important than nature.
C)nature and nurture have equal importance.
D)neither nature nor nurture creates the essence of our humanity.
Q6) Explain Erik Erikson's theory of socialization as a lifelong process.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Social Interaction in Everyday Life
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125 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What concept refers to a social position that is received at birth or involuntarily assumed later in life?
A)passive role
B)master status
C)ascribed status
D)achieved status
Q2) The idea of "getting" a joke, according to the text, depends on
A)knowing the joke teller well.
B)having a different social background than the joke teller.
C)understanding the two realities involved and appreciating their difference.
D)understanding exactly why someone is telling a joke.
Q3) Which of the following is likely to play a part in the reality that we construct through social interaction?
A)social class background
B)the country we live in
C)our ethnicity
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Read through the box titled "Managing Feelings: Women's Abortion Experiences" on
Q5) What makes something funny? Explain the foundation of humor and what is involved in "getting" a joke.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: Groups and Organizations
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Sample Questions
Q1) You are part of a task force with a group leader who has a distant relationship with the group members and who is concerned with getting the job done.Which type of leader does your task force have?
A)a laissez-fair group leader
B)a democratic leader
C)an expressive leader
D)an instrumental leader
Q2) Asch's experiment in group conformity showed that most people would not compromise their personal judgment in order to avoid being seen as different.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The success story of the McDonald's organization explains
A)that "fast food" is really not served very efficiently.
B)that the McDonald's idea never caught on abroad.
C)why so many small businesses do not succeed.
D)that the organizational principles of McDonald's have come to dominate our social life.
Q4) Based on your understanding of this chapter, discuss
Q5) What are the important differences between primary and secondary groups?
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Page 9
Chapter 8: Sexuality and Society
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to national survey data, what percentage of adults in the United States state that a woman should be able to obtain an abortion for any reason?
A)92 percent
B)72 percent
C)42 percent
D)22 percent
Q2) The region of the world where people use birth control the least is North America.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the basic assertion of queer theory? Using this approach, what criticism would you make of our society?
Q4) The more global our view of sexuality
A)the more variety we see in the meanings people attach to sexuality.
B)the greater the evidence that biology defines sexuality.
C)the clearer we see that sexual practices are mostly the same all around the world.
D)All of these are correct.
Q5) What are the traits of the campus culture of "hooking up"?
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Chapter 9: Deviance
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are several criticisms made by feminism of the way our society understands deviance?
Q2) Because there are several hundred people in the United States for every police officer, police
A)ignore most crimes they learn about.
B)work, on average, many more hours than other workers.
C)cannot take time to ensure due process for most suspects.
D)use discretion in deciding which situations warrant their attention.
Q3) In terms of racial categories, most people arrested for a violent crime in the United States are
A)white.
B)African American.
C)people of mixed race.
D)of Hispanic ancestry.
Q4) Identify four justifications for punishment.Do you think punishment accomplishes each of these goals? Why or why not?
Q5) Define each of the following: white-collar crime, corporate crime, organized crime, and hate crime.
Q6) Define due process, plea bargaining, and community-based corrections.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Social Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) At the top of the system of inequality in the former Soviet Union were the
A)industrial capitalists.
B)intelligentsia, or educated professionals.
C)apparatchiks, or high government officials.
D)hereditary nobility.
Q2) Read the four statements below.Which is NOT a reason given in the text that a socialist revolution never took place in capitalist societies as Marx predicted?
A)Stock places ownership of companies in the hands of tens of millions of people.
B)Living standards for the majority have gone up.
C)Wealth is no longer concentrated in the hands of a few.
D)The law affords workers far more legal protections.
Q3) Ideology refers to ideas that support social stratification.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Social stratification is a concept that refers to
A)specialization in productive work.
B)ranking categories of people in a hierarchy.
C)the idea that some people are more talented than others.
D)All of these are correct.
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Chapter 11: Social Class in the United States
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Sample Questions
Q1) Recent welfare reform has greatly reduced the poverty rate in the United States.
A)True
B)False
Q2) People in the lower-upper class are sometimes said to have "old money."
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following concepts refers to earnings from work or any investments?
A)income
B)personal property
C)wealth
D)power
Q4) People who marry and stay married accumulate only half as much wealth as people who remain single.
A)True
B)False
Q5) The age category of the U.S.population most likely to be poor is children and young adults under age twenty-four.
A)True
B)False
Q6) Who are the working poor?
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Global Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) In 2010, the world's three richest individuals each had more wealth than the total economic output of the world's poorest 100 countries.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which theoretical approach claims that rich nations of the world are "overdeveloped" while poor nations are "underdeveloped"?
A)modernization theory
B)dependency theory
C)both modernization theory and dependency theory
D)neither modernization theory nor dependency theory
Q3) Some critics claim that modernization theory
A)ignores how rich nations prevent the economic development of poor nations.
B)amounts to an attack on capitalism.
C)treats rich and poor societies as linked.
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Explain Rostow's stages of modernization theory.Explain the history of the United States in these terms, being as specific as you can about when this country entered each stage of development.
Q5) Identify and define four types of slavery found in today's world.
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Chapter 13: Gender Stratification
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120 Verified Questions
120 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) In her famous study, Margaret Mead investigated gender in three African societies.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Why is "earning an income" no longer a man's role in the United States? Provide some specific data in support of your claims.
Q3) 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.
Q4) Research shows that young males have less mathematical ability, but greater verbal ability than young females.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What does the research by Margaret Mead in New Guinea lead us to conclude about gender?
Q6) What is the importance of the term "glass ceiling"?
Q7) What criticism would feminists make of the current membership of our Congress?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: Race and Ethnicity
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130 Verified Questions
130 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are WASPs? How do they differ from "white ethnics"?
Q2) All members of a minority category are poor.
A)True
B)False
Q3) What is the scapegoat theory of prejudice? What is the conflict theory of prejudice?
Q4) The claim that defining members of some minority as inferior will make them inferior is one application of A)social distance research.
B)the iron law of oligarchy.
C)the Thomas theorem.
D)authoritarian personality theory.
Q5) Sociologists define the concept of "race" as A)people who fall into any minority category.
B)a person's skin color.
C)a cultural heritage shared by a category of people.
D)a socially constructed category composed of people who share biologically transmitted traits that members of a society consider important.
Q6) What is the "trend toward mixture" in terms of race in the United States?
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Chapter 15: Aging and the Elderly
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Sample Questions
Q1) In general, seniors with higher incomes
A)have more health problems than people with lower incomes.
B)assess their health in better terms than people with lower incomes.
C)have the same level of health as people with lower incomes.
D)die earlier due to high consumption of rich foods.
Q2) The poverty rate among people over the age of sixty-five is
A)above the national average.
B)the same as the national average.
C)below the national average.
D)almost zero, since people receive Social Security.
Q3) How do modern societies separate death from life?
Q4) By the year 2050 in the United States
A)the elderly population will exceed the population of the entire country in 1900.
B)one-fourth of all seniors will be over the age of eighty-five.
C)seniors will have a greater voice in U.S.society.
D)All of these are correct.
Q5) Increasing longevity is a major factor driving up the elderly population.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 16: The Economy and Work
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Sample Questions
Q1) Socialist economies create greater economic equality than capitalist economies, but with a lower overall living standard.
A)True
B)False
Q2) An example of a European country with a mostly private economy and extensive social welfare programs is
A)Germany.
B)Sweden.
C)Spain.
D)All of these are correct.
Q3) How do capitalism and socialism differ in overall productivity? What about economic inequality?
Q4) The social thinker whose ideas supported the operation of a free-market economy most was
A)Thorstein Veblen.
B)Adam Smith.
C)Karl Marx.
D)Max Weber.
Q5) What are the three defining traits of socialism?
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Chapter 17: Politics and Government
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of Weber's types of authority rests on extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion in followers?
A)traditional authority
B)rational-legal authority
C)charismatic authority
D)None of these is correct.
Q2) What is the military-industrial complex?
Q3) Just as the economy is becoming more and more global, so is the world developing a single global political system.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the difference between power and authority?
Q5) A power-elite model of the U.S.political system suggests that A)power is concentrated in the hands of a few.
B)an anti-democratic bias exists in the capitalist system.
C)power is widely dispersed throughout society.
D)many people do not vote because they are alienated from the political system.
Q6) What is nuclear proliferation? Do you consider this process a concern? Why or why not?
Q7) What is the welfare state?
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Chapter 18: Families
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Sample Questions
Q1) Why do some analysts analysts (especially those guided by the social-conflict approach) describe the family as a system that perpetuates social inequality? Consider (a) class stratification, (b) gender stratification, and (c) racial and ethnic stratification. Does the family system encourage or discourage meritocracy? Why? Can you imagine a family form that would not play a part in supporting social inequality? Explain.
Q2) Today's baby boomers are often called the "sandwich generation" because A)of their love of fast food.
B)they do not easily mix family and work responsibilities.
C)their families rarely eat meals together.
D)they spend time caring for both children and aging parents.
Q3) Following the structural-functional approach, the family
A)operates to perpetuate social inequality.
B)is important enough to be called the backbone of society.
C)encourages patriarchy.
D)All of these are correct.
Q4) Before they reach the age of eighteen, half of U.S.children live with only one parent for some period of time.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 19: Religion
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are three societal functions of religion pointed out by Emile Durkheim?
Q2) The world's largest concentration of Jews
A)Europe.
B)North America.
C)Africa.
D)Asia.
Q3) What is secularization? Is secularization a reality in the United States? That is, is religion getting weaker, stronger, or simply changing its character? Provide evidence to support your arguments.
Q4) Guided by the symbolic-interaction approach, sociologists examine A)how daily rituals sharpen the boundary between the sacred and profane. B)how religion gives our existence a measure of security and meaning.
C)the use of ritual and religious meaning to strengthen social ties such as marriage.
D)All of these are correct.
Q5) Faith refers to what we know to be true based on what our five senses tell us.
A)True
B)False
Q6) How are each of these types of religious organizations distinctive:
Q7) Discuss the various types of religious organizations: church
Page 21
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Chapter 20: Education
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Sample Questions
Q1) Schooling in the United States has always favored theoretical learning over practical learning.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following categories of the U.S.population has the highest dropout rate?
A)Asian Americans
B)African Americans
C)Hispanics
D)non-Hispanic whites
Q3) Following a social-conflict approach, schooling in the United States helps to eliminate social inequality.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Getting into college in Japan, compared to the United States, is more a matter of A)athletic ability.
B)performance on achievement tests.
C)family ties.
D)being rich.
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Page 22
Chapter 21: Health and Medicine
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Sample Questions
Q1) One criticism of the social-conflict analysis is that it minimizes the improvements in health care brought about by scientific medicine.
A)True
B)False
Q2) What is the contribution to understanding health and medicine made by each of sociology's three major theoretical approaches? Apply the structural-functional, symbolic-interaction, and social-conflict approaches in turn.Do they agree on any points?
Q3) From a sociological point of view, health is sometimes a matter of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Which of the following world regions is experiencing the most severe epidemic of AIDS?
A)Latin America
B)sub-Saharan Africa
C)the Middle East
D)eastern Asia
Q5) Describe several reasons for the shortage of nurses in the United States.
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Chapter 22: Population, Urbanization, and Environment
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following nations would you expect to be most concerned about declining population?
A)a landlocked country such as Chad
B)a large country such as Brazil
C)a high-income country such as Japan
D)a low-income country such as Bangladesh
Q2) In most poor nations of the world today, what is the average number of children born to a woman?
A)ten
B)eight
C)six
D)three
Q3) If you were studying countries with very low infant mortality, in which of the following global regions would you be most likely to look?
A)Latin America
B)Africa
C)Europe
D)Asia
Q4) What three urban revolutions have reshaped human societies?
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Chapter 23: Collective Behavior and Social Movements
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Sample Questions
Q1) In preindustrial societies, social movements
A)were quite rare.
B)were typically about economic issues.
C)commonly took the form of rioting.
D)were more common than they are today.
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) Of all U.S.adults, about what percentage say they have taken part in a protest march or political demonstration?
A)1 percent
B)9 percent
C)31 percent
D)69 percent
Q4) In recent decades, many fashions born among the poor have become popular among people who are more affluent.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 24: Social Change: Traditional
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Sample Questions
Q1) Social change is almost always
A)controversial.
B)planned.
C)good for everyone in a society.
D)All of these are correct.
Q2) Karl Marx highlighted which of the following in the process of social change?
A)invention
B)ideas
C)class conflict
D)cultural diffusion
Q3) What is modernity? How are modern societies different from traditional societies? Discuss the defining traits of modernity by applying the theories of Tönnies, Durkheim, Weber, and Marx.
Q4) Durkheim's concept of organic solidarity is roughly the same as Tönnies's concept of A)Gemeinschaft.
B)Gesellschaft.
C)blasé urbanite.
D)specialization.
Q5) What are the three important causes of cultural change?
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