Sociology Chapter 1 & 2 Quiz

Critical race theory is associated with which of the major theoretical perspectives or schools of thought in sociology?

conflict theory

What methodology would you use if you were to conduct a research project investigating the relationship between smoking and gender in blockbuster films?

content analysis

A dishonest judge must pretend to be an honest judge, but even an honest judge must play the role of "honest judge" for an audience in order to interact and work with others effectively. This performance is an example of what theoretical perspective?

Dramaturgy

What term did Karl Marx use to describe the fact that most of the population accepts inequality even when it does not benefit them personally?

False consciousness

Why might Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim be placed far apart on sociology's family tree?

The theoretical approaches they founded are very different

Why might Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim be placed far apart on sociology's family tree?

The theoretical approaches they founded are very different.

In the 1980s, many politicians argued that listening to heavy metal music led teenagers to die by suicide. Though you might find this belief silly, it is a(n)

hypothesis

Howard Becker said that sociology can best be understood as the study of people "doing things together." This definition reminds us that

neither society nor the individual exists in isolation; each is dependent on the other.

Durkheim theorized that the rapidly changing conditions of modern life lead to anomie. What is anomie?

normlessness or a loss of connections to the social world

Which of the following research techniques focuses on gaining an insider's perspective of the everyday lives of subjects under investigation, often dispelling stereotypes about the group being investigated?

participant observation

What is a sociologist's theoretical perspective if he or she argues we have seen the "dissolution of master narratives or metanarratives"?

postmodernism

A graduate student is almost done with his dissertation when he is informed that twenty years ago someone did a similar project and already demonstrated what he had hoped to be the first to discover. What basic step of the scientific method should have saved him from this problem?

reviewing the literature

Researchers usually transcribe responses after they conduct a series of interviews. The transcription process is fairly time-consuming, but it is valuable, in part, because it allows researchers to

look for patterns in their data

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx argued that "the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it." What Marxist principle is defined by this quote?

praxis

Postmodernists are interested in ________, or taking apart and examining stories and theories.

Deconstruction

Jane Addams was an early advocate of applied sociology. This means that she did not just do research but that she also

addressed social problems through hands-on activity in the communities she researched.

If changing one variable seems to lead to a change in another variable, this shows ________ but does not necessarily prove ________.

correlation;causation

Unlike earlier religious traditions that attempted to determine the ultimate cause or source of reality, Auguste Comte developed positivism in order to

identify laws that describe the behavior of a particular reality.

Many Marxist sociologists assume that large-scale economic structures are the most important factors in shaping people's lives. This assumption is an example of

macrosociology

A sociologist performs an experiment designed to investigate the effect of marriage counseling on divorce. He or she divides research participants into two similar groups of troubled couples, provides only one group with counseling, and observes whether, over time, the two groups eventually divorce at different rates. What is the independent variable in this experiment?

marriage counseling

A researcher must identify a target population before engaging in sampling. What is the target population?

the larger group of people about whom he or she wishes to generalize

What are researchers doing when they use a social networking site like Facebook to obtain data?

using existing sources

You are doing a research project on the effects of contemporary media. What are your variables if your hypothesis is "watching violence on television causes an increase in violent behavior"?

violence on television and violent behavior

...

...

Sociologists assert that there is a close relationship between the individual and society. How does Pam Fishman's research on gender and power in heterosexual couples characterize this relationship?

Fishman's data show how macro-level phenomena like gender and power manifest themselves in everyday interactions.

Who coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest"?

Herbert Spencer

The ________ of white supremacy in the United States was a system of beliefs and attitudes that maintained the status quo of racism.

Ideology

Why is the term "queer" used to describe queer theory?

It emphasizes the importance of difference and rejects a single gay or lesbian identity.

Which of the following theories views society as a whole unit made up of interrelated parts that work together?

It makes us realize we lack an understanding of our surroundings so we can perceive what is right in front of us.

Why would culture shock be a useful state of mind for a sociologist?

It makes us realize we lack an understanding of our surroundings so we can perceive what is right in front of us.

Many everyday cultural practices such as greeting a friend, giving someone flowers, or using the thumbs-up sign seem like natural ways of acting. Why does having an awareness of how these practices vary across cultures demonstrate a healthy sociological imagination?

It reminds us that everyday interactions are connected to larger societies and norms.

Which of the following statements best describes the approach taken by macrosociologists?

Macrosociology examines large-scale social structure to see how it affects individual lives.

Why did C. Wright Mills think that it is important for everyone, even people who will never take a sociology class, to develop a sociological imagination?

Many people are unaware of the connections between their own lives and the larger course of history.

Symbolic interactionism argues that people act toward things on the basis of their meaning. According to this perspective, how does meaning arise?

Meaning is negotiated through interaction with others.

What does it mean if a researcher has obtained informed consent from all of his or her participants?

Participants understand the nature of the research and are participating freely.

Charles Darwin suggested that, rather than being superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, human beings are simply one part of a larger system governed by natural laws. This radically changed how people thought about almost everything. What would we call this?

a paradigm shift

What is paradigm?

a set of assumptions, theories, and perspectives that makes up a way of understanding social reality

Structural functionalist theory is concerned with the ways in which structures contribute to the stability of society. What is a structure?

a social institution that is stable over time and helps meet the needs of society

Frances is assigned a research project in which she is to attend a celebratory family meal and analyze her experiences as she participates in the meal. She is asked to make a detailed account of the meal that includes her thoughts and feelings about the event. What type of research is Frances assigned?

autoethnography

What did Karl Marx think the lower classes needed to develop in order to end their oppression?

class consciousness

Maria is worried about the representativeness of her study. She is conducting interviews, but each one seems to last at least five hours. What strategy might she use to increase her sample size given that she only has one month to collect her data?

conduct a focus group

A reality television show called Wife Swap exchanged the mothers from two very different families and filmed the result as the participants are exposed to radically different ways of life. Although the television network was simply trying to be entertaining, the show also demonstrates the sociological principle of

culture shock

Which method of social research might involve shifting between participating in a social situation and being an observer?

ethnography

In their ethnography Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood before Marriage, Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas studied the realities of single motherhood for poor, urban women. Before beginning their research, they immersed themselves in the community. Edin moved her family to the city and they both volunteered in community programs. Immersing themselves in the community is an example of

gaining access

Survey research tends to produce quantitative data. One key advantage of this kind of data is that it

is easy to transmit to the public.

Which of the following is a latent function of the educational system in the United States?

keeping children out of trouble while parents are at work

Harriet Martineau supported many ideas that were radical for her time including

labor unions and the abolition of slavery

When it comes to understanding everyday life, one of the weaknesses of being an everyday actor is that you

make assumptions and fail to investigate or verify those assumptions.

According to Robert Merton, which of these statements about manifest functions is true?

manifest functions are intended and obvoius

A social research methods class wants to study smoking. First, the professor asks how many people in the class are smokers. Two people indicate that they are. Then she asks how many people have smoked a cigarette in the past week and ten people indicate that they had. From this, the class decides, for the purposes of the survey, a smoker will be anyone who has smoked a cigarette in the past week and currently owns a pack of cigarettes. This is a(n)

operational definition

What do you call broad theoretical models of the social or natural world?

paradigms

In her ethnography Wheeling & Dealing, Patricia Adler investigates the social and professional worlds of midlevel cocaine and marijuana smugglers. Her research started unexpectedly when she discovered that her next-door neighbor and friend was a drug smuggler. This was a huge advantage for her because it meant that she already had ________ with one of her informants.

rapport

In his research, the ethnographer Richard Mitchell kept his identity a secret while studying militant survivalist groups. Sometimes he even presented himself as a believer in the survivalists' paranoid, racist ideologies, in order to establish

rapport

According to Karl Marx, the most important factor in social life is a person's

relationship to the means of production

The consistency of a measurement tool, or the degree to which the same questions will produce similar answers, refers to

reliability

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim argued that religion was a powerful source of social solidarity because

religion reinforced collective bonds and cultivated shared moral values.

In order to verify what the everyday actor might just accept or assume to be true, the social analyst must take the perspective of the

stranger

What school of social theory believes that society is a stable system of structures, which contribute to the equilibrium of the whole?

structural functionalism

Which of the following theories views society as a whole unit made up of interrelated parts that work together?

structural functionalism

A simple random sample is defined as a sample

that provides the same chance of being included to every member of the population.

Even though we are not all trained academically as sociologists, we can all be considered "everyday actors" because

we are all members of society and have background knowledge about how society works.

After studying the indigenous peoples of Australia, ________ concluded that any form of religion is united in its definition of what is considered to be ________ and ________.

Émile Durkheim; sacred; profane

In eighteenth-century Great Britain, a series of Enclosure Acts were established by Parliament that broke up small farms, forced many small farmers to move to large cities in search of wage labor, and increased agricultural profits for landowners. Of what large-scale social system was this a part?

Capitalism

The application of economic logic to human activity is known as

Weberian theory

What economic system emerged during the Industrial Revolution?

Capitalism

A famous social scientist tells you that the most important task in her research was entering the social world of the people she was studying. What can you say about this researcher?

She's a qualitative researcher.

Macrosociology and microsociology approach the study of society from different perspectives. How does the discipline of sociology deal with these two very different approaches?

These two perspectives are on a continuum with each other and sociologists can adopt the perspective most useful for a particular problem.

A sociologist wants to study popular attitudes and perceptions about astrology among college students in California. She believes that people who have astrological signs associated with fire will have a greater knowledge of astrology because fire signs tend to have more interesting and attractive symbolism. What are the variables in this study?

astrological signs and knowledge of astrology

Unlike sociologists, the knowledge that most people possess about the world can be described as

practical