Understanding Society Study Guide Questions
Course Introduction
Understanding Society is an interdisciplinary course that explores the core concepts, theories, and methods used by sociologists to analyze the structure and dynamics of society. Students will examine how social institutions, cultural norms, economic systems, and political frameworks shape human behavior and influence interactions within communities. Through case studies and real-world examples, the course investigates issues such as social inequality, identity, globalization, and social change. By fostering critical thinking and encouraging discussions, the course aims to equip students with the analytical tools necessary to better comprehend the complexities of contemporary social 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) Which early U.S.sociologist told other sociologists in the Chicago School to "go out and get the seats of [their] pants dirty in real research"?
A) Charles H. Cooley
B) George H. Mead
C) Robert Park
D) Louis Wirth
Answer: C
Q2) 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
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Chapter 2: Methods
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Q1) A testable statement about the relationship between two or more variables is called a(n):
A) operationalization.
B) reliability.
C) hypothesis.
D) natural experiment.
Answer: C
Q2) Jackson is using newspaper articles dating from the early 1950s to study unofficial attitudes toward working women post-World War II.Jackson is using what research method?
A) experimental
B) content analysis
C) comparative research
D) historical methods
Answer: D
Q3) Define the terms validity and reliability.
Answer: Validity means that a researcher must measure what he or she intends to measure.Reliability means that a researcher is able to obtain the same result using the same measures more than once.
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Chapter 3: Culture and Media
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Q1) An element of nonmaterial culture known as ____________ is a system of concepts and relationships sometimes used to understand cause and effect.
A) high art
B) ideology
C) cultural relativism
D) concentric framing
Answer: B
Q2) What are media and how do they affect our values and norms in the United States? Answer: Media are the many formats and vehicles that carry,present,and communicate information,such as newspapers,books,television,movies,the Internet,and the radio.Our values are our moral beliefs about what is right and what is wrong,and norms are how we put our values into action in the real world.We learn our values and norms throughout our lives via socialization into our environments,and the media is a major way in which most of the population of the Western world gets socialized.
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Chapter 4: Socialization and the Construction of Reality
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Q1) Which of the following scenarios provides an example of front-stage behavior?
A) Sally discovers her mother-in-law is dropping by shortly, so Sally rushes to tidy up the house.
B) Sam is angry at his little brother for embarrassing him in front of his girlfriend, so he refuses to take him to get ice cream.
C) Cinderella smokes a cigarette in the employee break room before going to sign autographs at the castle.
D) While eating at Denny's last night, Debbie saw a little boy pocket some money from one of the tables. The boy was not aware anyone saw him.
Q2) A recognizable social position that an individual occupies,such as student or professor,is known as a:
A) status.
B) role.
C) face.
D) total institution.
Q3) Define socialization and provide two examples of agents of socialization and why they are considered important in the socialization process.
Q4) List and give an example of each of the four main agents of socialization.
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Page 6
Chapter 5: Groups and Networks
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Q1) Juan and Sylvester are collaborating on a project at work,but are having trouble agreeing on objectives and goals.Henry senses the trouble they are having and steps in to help them refine their goals and come to an agreement.The manager is pleased with Henry's success in diffusing a potentially problematic situation and promotes Henry to project leader.Henry assumed which of Simmel's roles?
A) mediator
B) team leader
C) divide et impera
D) tertius gaudens
Q2) Which of the following types of groups do people compare themselves to,even if they don't know each other personally?
A) in-groups
B) out-groups
C) reference groups
D) primary groups
Q3) Define in-groups and out-groups,and give one example of each.
Q4) Describe the Asch experiments conducted on group conformity.
Q5) What is isomorphism? Give one example.
Q6) Define social capital and give two examples of it.
Page 7
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Chapter 6: Social Control and Deviance
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Q1) What is social control? Distinguish between formal social sanctions and informal social sanctions.For what types of deviance are each sanction most effective,and why?
Q2) Briefly discuss the effect of the mass incarceration that has resulted from the War on Drugs.
Q3) Bentham's term for circular buildings in which prisoners are watched by guards or others at all times is:
A) prisons.
B) jails.
C) panopticons.
D) total institutions.
Q4) Prisons and military boot camps are examples of what Goffman calls:
A) the Rockefeller drug laws.
B) specific deterrence.
C) total institutions.
D) panopticons.
Q5) Using Durkheim's work on social cohesion,describe the ways in which punishments for deviance are administered within mechanical and organic solidarity.
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Chapter 7: Stratification
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Q1) Which term refers to everything you own minus debts (such as a mortgage on your home and credit card debt)?
A) income
B) wealth
C) investments
D) stocks
Q2) The prestige of a person's first job out of school factors into his or her position on the ____________ model.
A) status-attainment
B) structural
C) vertical
D) horizontal
Q3) The effect of globalization has been to bifurcate labor into:
A) upper class and middle class.
B) technical and support.
C) high skilled and low skilled.
D) middle class and working class.
Q4) The German philosopher Georg Hegel explained inequality from a master-slave perspective.Describe and explain the interdependence of the master-slave analogy for inequality.
Page 9
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Chapter 8: Gender
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Q1) It is argued in your text that gender structures social relationships by giving men the advantage in society.As a result,which of the following is LEAST likely to happen?
A) When women enter male-dominated occupations, they may hit a glass ceiling.
B) When men enter female-dominated occupations, they are encouraged to advance on the glass escalator.
C) When men enter female-dominated occupations, they often become victims of sexual harassment.
D) When women enter male-dominated occupations, they often become victims of sexual harassment.
Q2) In our society,we take for granted that sex has only two categories and tend to ignore facts that suggest sex itself is socially constructed.All of the following are outcomes of this sexual dichotomization EXCEPT:
A) the exclusion of those who don't fit neatly into one category or the other.
B) viewing sexual variation as a part of our diversity as a species.
C) the surgical alteration of the genitalia of babies so that they fit into one of these categories.
D) the assumption that sex categories create bodies with male or female characteristics.
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Chapter 9: Race
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Q1) Your text mentions forms that minority-majority group relations can take: assimilation,pluralism,segregation,and conflict.Discuss each form and give examples.
Q2) Modern racial thinking developed in the mid-seventeenth century in parallel with three global changes.Which of the following is NOT one of these global changes?
A) the Protestant Reformation in Europe
B) the Age of Exploration
C) the rise of capitalism
D) scientific innovations
Q3) What was the premise behind eugenics? How did eugenics explain race? What is the problem with this explanation? Give examples.
Q4) Muslims in America have undergone what scholars refer to as the formation of a new racial identity in which new ideological boundaries of difference are drawn around a formerly unnoticed group of people,known as:
A) ethnicization.
B) racism.
C) ethnism.
D) racialization.
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Chapter 10: Poverty
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Q1) What is one fundamental change that critics argue is necessary for reforming the poverty threshold calculation?
A) including all possible sources of income, both documented and under the table
B) using the cost of food as a baseline for poverty calculations
C) reformulating it from scratch every few years to adjust for changes in the cost of living
D) using a measure of absolute poverty instead of relative poverty
Q2) What does Susan Mayer argue are the effects of income on poor children? How could her research affect the programs (current and future)designed to help poor children?
Q3) Government offices administering food stamps:
A) are not always optimally located for recipients.
B) have unlimited employees to assist recipients.
C) are arguing for a universal basic income.
D) are reducing the number of recipients eligible for aid.
Q4) What method is usually used to evaluate poverty?
A) objective analyses of statistics and economics
B) the Gini coefficient
C) subjective evaluations of mathematical measurements
D) evaluation of policies already in place
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Chapter 11: Health and Society
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Q1) Discuss the historical evolution of doctors from a profession of little prestige to the important place they hold in present-day society.
Q2) Which federal government program for children matches the state funding while still allowing states to set their own criteria for eligibility and control the disbursement of funds?
A) the State Children's Health Insurance Plan
B) Medicaid
C) Medicare
D) HMOs
Q3) ____________ 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
Q4) Discuss the social power,political power,and prestige that doctors hold in the United States.Why do doctors have so much of each? What responsibilities go along with social power and prestige?
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Chapter 12: Family (in Core edition)
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Q1) Family life during the preindustrial period differed quite a bit from family life during the Industrial Revolution.Discuss some of these differences.
Q2) About how long do the majority of single mothers stay on the welfare rolls in the United States?
A) 2 years
B) 5 years
C) 10 years
D) more than 15 years
Q3) Sociologist Barbara Risman calls families in which both men and women genuinely share the paid and unpaid labor equally ____________ families.
A) happy
B) fair
C) egalitarian
D) feminist
Q4) Discuss the main findings from research on the chore wars-the gendered division of household labor-as studied by Hochschild (1989,2003)and Zelizer (2005).
Q5) Define endogamy and exogamy as family forms and give an example of each.
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Chapter 13: Education
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT an argument against tracking in schools?
A) Tracking is problematic because there are differences in the content of materials and the quality of instruction among different levels.
B) Tracking benefits students in the upper and lower tracks but does not provide benefits to students who are in a general track in between vocational and college-bound students.
C) Tracking benefits children with less-advantaged backgrounds, but only if their parents can advocate on their behalf to get them into college-preparatory tracks.
D) Children from higher social class backgrounds are more likely to be in college-preparatory tracks, even when other factors like achievement test scores are taken into account.
Q2) Explain how race and social class intersect to affect education outcomes.
Q3) Contrary to popular belief:
A) girls and boys score about the same in national math tests.
B) boys are stronger readers than girls.
C) boys attend college in greater numbers than girls.
D) women and men with equal educational levels earn the same amount of money.
Q4) What are the pros and cons of the sorting/tracking function served by schools?
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Chapter 14: Capitalism and the Economy
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Q1) According to the textbook,what is the major reason unions are on the decline in the United States today?
A) It is felt that unions increase productivity.
B) The government does a better job at collective bargaining for workers.
C) People don't trust unions, saying they are corrupt and outdated.
D) The Freedom of Association Act was repealed in 1949.
Q2) At the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century,a massive transition was propelled by the development of new technologies,including:
A) the cotton gin and distiller.
B) the power loom and steam engine.
C) the telephone and telegraph.
D) motorcars and tractors.
Q3) Lawyers who don't provide a tangible object to their clients work in the A) service sector
B) professional sector
C) idea sector
D) civil sector
Q4) Karl Marx felt that workers in a capitalist society were alienated in four ways.List these four ways and give examples of each.
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Chapter 15: Authority and the State
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Q1) According to political theorist T.H.Marshall,a group of protestors picketing a political speech is exercising ____________ rights.
A) civil
B) political
C) social
D) individual
Q2) Define the three theories-logic of industrialism,neo-Marxist theory,and state-centered approaches-that explain how and why the welfare state developed.
Q3) Define power,domination,domination by economic power,and domination by authority.Give examples of each.
Q4) ____________ is defined by Weber as the probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a particular group of people.
A) Domination
B) Power
C) Authority
D) Control
Q5) Define bureaucracy and its five characteristics.How did Max Weber describe bureaucracies?
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Chapter 16: Religion
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Q1) Which of the following was NOT a social resource of black church communities that Dr.Martin Luther King,Jr.,was able to draw upon?
A) social networks
B) organized church structures
C) funding
D) armies
Q2) The second-largest religion in the world and in the United States is:
A) Hinduism.
B) Protestantism.
C) Catholicism.
D) Islam.
Q3) What percentage of Americans claim a religious affiliation?
A) 11 percent
B) 24 percent
C) 65 percent
D) 86 percent
Q4) What are some criticisms of Karl Marx's view of religion?
Q5) What is the sect-church cycle? How can this help us understand social change?
Q6) Explain the concept supernatural compensators and provide a modern-day example of the phenomenon.
Page 18
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Chapter 17: Science, the Environment, and Society
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT one of the benefits of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?
A) more profitability
B) lower food prices
C) better ability to resist insects
D) more nutritious products
Q2) The Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Program (later CIMMYT,the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center)was established in 1945 to:
A) feed children in developing countries.
B) improve Mexico's agricultural output.
C) develop new ways to increase wheat production.
D) help farmers diversify their crops.
Q3) Ethnographic research:
A) is field research.
B) involves researcher participation.
C) is done by observation.
D) all of the above.
Q4) What are the agricultural trends of the green revolution? What have been the positive chain reactions and risks associated with it?
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Chapter 18: Collective Action, Social Movements, and Social Change
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Q1) A society that relies purely on tradition to choose its leaders would be classified as:
A) postmodern
B) premodern
C) early modern
D) modern
Q2) What are the two types of collective action? Give examples of membership.
Q3) The difference between collective action and deviance is:
A) the number of people acting.
B) the type of people involved.
C) whether you are acting alone or as part of a group.
D) the reaction of others to your actions.
Q4) In the 1830s,Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States from France and called the United States a "land of joiners." What did he mean by this and how did this affect people's individual identities?
Q5) Value-added theory was "borrowed" from the discipline of: A) sociology.
B) economics.
C) history.
D) psychology.
Page 20
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