Sociology for Beginners Midterm
Exam
Course Introduction
Sociology for Beginners introduces students to the fundamental concepts, theories, and methods used to understand human society and social behavior. This course explores how individuals interact within groups, the influence of culture and social institutions, and the processes shaping identity, norms, and societal change. Through engaging discussions and real-world examples, students will gain insight into contemporary social issues, the structure of communities, and the factors that impact social cohesion and conflict. The course provides a strong foundation for further studies in sociology and related fields, emphasizing critical thinking and the application of sociological perspectives to everyday life.
Recommended Textbook
You May Ask Yourself An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist Core 4th Edition by Dalton Conley
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Chapter 1: The Sociological Imagination: An Introduction
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Q1) A white woman goes into an upscale shop to look at clothes.She is excited to see that there is a sale and gathers a huge pile of clothes to take into the dressing room.An African American woman goes into the store and is also excited about the sale but hesitates to take too many clothes into the dressing room because she is afraid the staff will think she might shoplift.
W.E.B.Du Bois would say that the African American woman has:
A) a racist agenda.
B) low self-esteem.
C) a double consciousness.
D) a negative self-image.
Answer: C
Q2) What do symbolic interactionists study?
A) midrange theory
B) postmodernism
C) functionalism
D) shared meaning
Answer: D
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Chapter 2: Methods
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Q1) A standard yardstick measures 36 inches,but Sarah is using a "faulty" yardstick (one that measures 40 inches long)to measure the campers in her youth group.Sarah will not get a(n)____________ indication of height,but she will have a(n)____________ measure of height.
A) reliable; valid
B) consistent; accurate
C) valid; reliable
D) accurate; generalizable
Answer: C
Q2) Which of the following describes the deductive approach to research?
A) A researcher makes some observations and develops a theory based on These observations.
B) A researcher develops some hypotheses to explain a correlation observed between two variables.
C) A researcher starts with a theory, forms hypotheses, makes observations, and then analyzes the data.
D) A researcher develops some hypotheses that lead to a theory about human behavior.
Answer: C
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4
Chapter 3: Culture and Media
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Q1) In the United States,six major companies,including Disney and Time Warner,own slightly more than ____________ percent of the media.
A) 30
B) 60
C) 75
D) 90
Answer: D
Q2) What is Jean Kilbourne's critique of an advertisement that shows a pair of women's legs with brand new,expensive shoes on them popping out of a trash can?
A) It demonstrates how consumerism makes it too easy to throw away functional items that aren't fashionable.
B) It promotes, even implicitly, violence against women.
C) It is a sexist strategy to promote recycling.
D) The legs are white, and the ad reflects the relative neglect of nonwhites in the media.
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Socialization and the Construction of Reality
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Q1) Ethnomethodology is an approach to studying human interaction that focuses on:
A) how we make sense of our world and convey this understanding to others in our effort to create mutually shared realities.
B) how we learn about the roles, scripts, and props we use in everyday life.
C) the influence of family, school, and media in constructing our social identities.
D) what we can learn by examining cross-cultural differences in behavior.
Q2) According to Goffman,the main goal of impression management is to:
A) create an alter ego.
B) save face.
C) fool others.
D) control our self.
Q3) Which of the following would be the best example of a total institution?
A) a Boy Scout troop
B) a political party
C) a sports team
D) a convent
Q4) What is role conflict and how does it differ from role strain? Compare and contrast the two concepts and give an example of each.
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Page 6
Chapter 5: Groups and Networks
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Q1) The characteristics of a formal structure and status differentiation are essential to which of Simmel's types of groups?
A) triads
B) small groups
C) parties
D) large groups
Q2) What appears to be the main reason for the success of Amish businesses when compared to other U.S.businesses?
A) The Amish live by prioritizing the community and its social capital rather than rugged individualism.
B) The Amish value rugged individualism over the community and its social capital.
C) The Amish hire outsourced labor from Mexico.
D) The Amish reject all use of modern technology.
Q3) Distinguish between the terms organizational culture and organizational structure.
Q4) Why might acquaintances prove to be more important in the job search process than our family and friends (as is argued in the "strength of weak ties" thesis)? Make sure you discuss how/why embeddedness matters.
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Chapter 6: Social Control and Deviance
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Q1) One of the major changes associated with the modern prison system is:
A) the shift from "violence against the body" to "reforming the soul."
B) the shift from private to public punishments.
C) reduced public spending on prisons.
D) the rise of the prison as a "total institution."
Q2) Devah Pager (2001)found,in her study of job applications and criminal records,that a negative social label affects people's chances in life.This label is called a ____________ by sociologists.
A) crime
B) bias
C) stigma
D) primary deviance
Q3) Which theory developed by Cloward and Ohlin (1960)explains that street crime rises and falls in relation to the availability of legitimate economic opportunities?
A) differential opportunity theory
B) strain theory
C) deterrence theory
D) broken windows theory
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8
Chapter 7: Stratification
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Sample Questions
Q1) Thomas Malthus had a positive view of inequality.He defended disease,slavery,and child murder.Why?
A) He was mentally ill.
B) He was the forerunner to Gandhi.
C) He felt this would allow the population to thin itself out naturally.
D) He felt this would create more jobs for medical personnel and morticians.
Q2) Explain social mobility,horizontal social mobility,vertical social mobility,and structural mobility.Use examples in your answers.
Q3) The process in India whereby an entire caste can leapfrog over another and obtain a higher position in the hierarchy is called:
A) sanskritization.
B) vaishya caste.
C) Brahminization.
D) Upanayanam.
Q4) Connect C.Wright Mills's view on capitalist society with Karl Marx's view.Give an example of the three decision-making institutions,as discussed by Mills.Which one of these institutions would Karl Marx see as the major contributor to a capitalist society's ills?
Q5) How does the status-attainment model help us understand social mobility?
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT a reason why sociologists view gender as a social construction rather than a biological given?
A) Our understandings of, categorizations of, and behaviors toward what it means to be a man or woman have changed throughout history.
B) Cross-cultural studies show us that there is enormous variation in how people "do gender."
C) Societies in various historical periods have made sense of the "plumbing" in very different ways.
D) Contemporary studies show us that men and women have different personality structures, the innate by-product of existing social structural relations.
Q2) Race,birth order,generational cohort,sex,and parental wealth are key sociological variables that are said to resist fixed effects because they:
A) can't be changed.
B) are relatively stable characteristics of an individual.
C) are constantly changing.
D) are impervious to inspection.
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Chapter 9: Race
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Q1) What allows one to identify with a nationality without the rights and duties of a citizen?
A) genetic identity
B) race
C) ethnicity
D) heritage
Q2) Based on measurements of skull bumps,Blumenbach came up with five principal varieties of:
A) humans.
B) intelligence.
C) athletic ability.
D) ethnicity.
Q3) Ethnocentrism classified nonwhites as abnormal and inferior to help justify:
A) ideas of ontological equality.
B) unequal treatment and conquest.
C) cultural relativism.
D) the benevolence of the Europeans.
Q4) Describe the definitions of race in ancient Egypt,Greece,Rome,and early Christendom.How do they compare to modern racial thinking among the European colonizers up to the present day?
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Chapter 10: Poverty
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Q1) How was the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program named,and what were the methodological problems surrounding the study? What study attempted to address these issues and how?
Q2) What was the problem with the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program?
A) There weren't enough houses for all the families.
B) It produced no improvement or changes.
C) Families brought destructive behaviors from the ghetto to the new neighborhood.
D) Participants were self-selected.
Q3) In the 1980s,journalist Ken Auletta coined the term "underclass." He said that the underclass was different from the "rest of us" in that they:
A) tended to be more dangerous than the rest of us.
B) tended to have higher levels of education but did not use this to their advantage.
C) tended to like spending their time waiting in the welfare line talking to their Friends all day.
D) had lower IQs than the rest of us.
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Chapter 11: Health and Society
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Q1) The researchers in the Whitehall Study examined what occupational sector?
A) doctors
B) factory workers
C) civil servants
D) lawyers
Q2) ____________ results from inadequate growth during gestation or a curtailed period of gestation.
A) Racial inequality
B) Low birth weight
C) Birth order
D) Gender inequality
Q3) Physicians in ancient Rome tended to have lower prestige.This was because:
A) only lower-status people got ill.
B) most were men.
C) the surgeons evolved from barbers.
D) they were seen as evildoers by the nobility.
Q4) What are supplier-induced demand and prescription authority? What are the problems associated with each?
Q5) Explain in detail the Whitehall Study.What is the significance of this study? What are the criticisms of this study?
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Family (in Core edition)
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Q1) Most Latino families in the United States are shaped by which of the following?
A) a devout tradition of Catholicism
B) a devout tradition of Protestantism
C) U.S. history books
D) the U.S. media
Q2) It is commonly perceived that the divorce rate has skyrocketed since the 1950s,but actually divorce rates in the United States have been:
A) decreasing since an all-time high in the 1970s.
B) holding steady.
C) at a relatively constant level since 1900.
D) increasing steadily since 1900.
Q3) In terms of cross-cultural family forms,which of the following statements is true?
A) The traditional family is only dominant in the United States.
B) The traditional family is universal cross-culturally.
C) The traditional family is not the dominant form anywhere.
D) The traditional family has never existed anywhere.
Q4) Define nuclear family and elaborate on its evolution.Is this still the traditional family form in the United States?
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Page 14
Chapter 13: Education
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Q1) Taking into account students' family backgrounds,____________ schools tend to outperform ____________ schools in preparing children academically.
A) less-expensive private; very expensive private
B) public; Catholic
C) non-Catholic private; Catholic
D) Catholic; non-Catholic private
Q2) Discuss at least three criticisms of the SAT as a criterion for college admission.
Q3) Explain how sex and social class intersect and may account for educational differences between males and females.
Q4) Provide definitions of social capital and cultural capital.Then discuss how these combine to influence educational outcomes.
Q5) According to your text,approximately what percentage of the nation's population age 16 years and older is innumerate?
A) 3 percent
B) 14 percent
C) 22 percent
D) 46 percent
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Chapter 14: Capitalism and the Economy
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Q1) Attitudes about gender and work became self-confirming myths and enforced women's dependence.The unfair family wage pushed an incentive on women to:
A) rebel against men.
B) marry and stay married.
C) have many children.
D) become witches.
Q2) How did the enclosure movement change the economy in the early Tudor period in England?
A) It caused the price of land to rise.
B) It undermined the lords' source of authority.
C) It created a large, new pool of urban labor.
D) It made agriculture untenable in England.
Q3) You are the lord of an estate.During the enclosure movement in Tudor England,what did you likely do with some of your common land?
A) built a factory on it
B) kicked off the commoners who had used the land for grazing
C) divided it up among more serfs
D) started to grow crops on it
Q4) Corporations have what is called limited liability.What does this mean?
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Chapter 15: Authority and the State
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Q1) Which of the following is an example of a legal-rational institution?
A) a family
B) a prison
C) a group of sports fans
D) a local church
Q2) In the grocery store one day you spy a mother and her two unruly children.She consistently threatens that she is going to spank them when she gets them home.They ignore her threats.Finally,she swats one of them on the butt,making the other child laugh,suggesting that she has lost control of the situation.This could be called:
A) coercion.
B) idle threat.
C) the paradox of authority.
D) Keynesian authority.
Q3) Weber used the term charisma to describe a person's:
A) good looks.
B) superhuman aura.
C) legitimization.
D) character.
Q4) Explain why Weber's definition of state does not fit many African states.
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Chapter 16: Religion
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Q1) Rather than trying to discover the truth in religion,sociologists tend to study religion.Why?
Q2) For some followers of religion,embodied practices make the religious experience feel more authentic and real.Which of the following is NOT an embodied practice?
A) dancing
B) breathing
C) shaking hands
D) beliefs
Q3) Explain how,according to Max Weber,Protestantism was central to the development of modern capitalism.
Q4) What is the sect-church cycle? How can this help us understand social change?
Q5) What are some criticisms of Karl Marx's view of religion?
Q6) Durkheim felt that one of the major functions of religion was that it perpetuates: A) sexism.
B) racism.
C) solidarity.
D) inequality.
Q7) Religion in the United States has been found to be more broad than deep.Explain.
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Chapter 17: Science, the Environment, and Society
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Q1) The green revolution has made it expensive for individual farms to survive on their own,so new collectives and cooperatives have emerged to bring together household farmers.Durkheim might call this a type of:
A) rebellion.
B) social solidarity.
C) genetic manipulation.
D) Verstehen.
Q2) Sociologists worry that the Human Genome Project could position people positively or negatively based on their genetic codes and thus lead to greater:
A) stratification in society.
B) stigmatization in society.
C) labeling in society.
D) reproductive sacrifices in society.
Q3) Which of the following is NOT on the checklist that government inspectors use when certifying organic farms?
A) pesticide-free soils
B) synthetic fertilizers
C) percentage of organic ingredients
D) storage of organic products
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Page 19
Chapter 18: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Social Change
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Q1) You are a hunter and like to serve venison during deer season.Even though you enjoy your guns and the sport of hunting,you have rejected joining the National Rifle Association (NRA)because the association is known for its conservative voice.This is an example of:
A) static identity.
B) multiple identities.
C) dynamic identity.
D) multiple personalities.
Q2) Which of the following is a reason why some social movements fade away during the coalescence stage?
A) lack of funds and time commitment
B) not enough members
C) lack of political support
D) no interest by the general population
Q3) Social change:
A) is usually caused by social movements.
B) can be caused by a variety of factors, like new ideas and technologies.
C) usually takes centuries to happen.
D) arises only through conflict.
Q4) What are the two types of collective action? Give examples of membership.
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