Midterm Practice Exam

At an apartment complex, a tenant keeps leaving trash bags in the hallway. Neighbors grumble and post sticky notes, and then the property manager issues a written lease violation under the complex's posted rules. Which kind of social control is the manager's response?

Select one.

• Informal social control, since the neighbors were the ones to start it
• The criminal-justice system, since a written rule was enforced
• A positive sanction, since the manager rewards the other tenants
• Formal social control, since an official acts under written rules

A researcher surveys members of a small community choir and publishes results that omit names but describe the only member who plays the organ, so readers can tell whose answers are whose. Which ethics rule does the publication break?

Select one.

• Informed consent, since the write-up came after the survey
• Random assignment, since the singers were not chosen by lot
• Review-board approval, since every result must stay private
• Confidentiality, since a participant can be identified

In an illustrative study, the hypothesis is that teenagers who hold part-time jobs spend fewer hours on homework than teenagers who do not work. Which variable is the independent variable?

Select one.

• Hours spent on homework, the presumed cause
• Hours spent on homework, the measured effect
• Holding a part-time job, the presumed cause
• The teenager's grade level, the measured effect

At an illustrative middle school, students learn to wait their turn in the lunch line, ask permission to leave the room, and fall silent when the principal walks in. None of these habits is graded. What does this scene illustrate?

Select one.

• The formal subjects listed in the school's printed guide
• A private lesson plan teachers keep from students' families
• The hidden curriculum: unwritten lessons in order and rank
• Resocialization, as students shed the self they had before

Applied to a workplace's unwritten rule that new hires stay late without complaint, which perspective asks whose interests the rule serves and who gains when workers learn to accept it, and at what level does it work?

Select one.

• Structural functionalism, at the macro level
• Symbolic interactionism, at the micro level
• Conflict theory, at the micro level
• Conflict theory, at the macro level

In an illustrative society, people are born into ranked groups that decide which jobs they may hold and whom they may marry, and no amount of schooling or success moves anyone to another group. Which system of stratification is this?

Select one.

• A caste system, since birth fixes rank and achievement cannot change it
• A class system, since each group passes its jobs down to its children
• An open system, since every group holds a recognized place of its own
• A meritocracy, since each group keeps the rank its members have earned

In an illustrative classroom version of a line-judgment conformity task (constructed for this course, not real data), 36% of answers on critical trials went along with a wrong unanimous majority, and 12% did when one partner gave the correct answer. Which statement reads this change accurately?

Select one.

• Errors fell by 24 percent, so the partner erased most of the pressure
• Errors fell by 24 percentage points, to one-third as many
• Errors fell from 36% to 0%, so one partner ended all conformity
• Errors fell by 12 percentage points, the size of the remaining share

A researcher wants to learn how volunteer firefighters at a rural station come to trust one another, and plans to train and ride along with the crew for a full year. Which method is this?

Select one.

• Ethnography, field research that trades breadth for depth
• A survey, which asks many people one fixed set of questions
• An experiment, which compares a treated and a control group
• Secondary data analysis, which reuses records from others

An illustrative county survey constructed for this course counted 40 property victimizations per 1,000 households in one year, of which 14 per 1,000 were reported to police. Select every statement that reads these figures accurately.

Select every option that applies.

• About 35% of the victimizations the survey counted reached police, since 14 ÷ 40 × 100 = 35
• 40% of the county's households were victims of property crime that year
• The 14 per 1,000 reported to police is the true number of property crimes
• Police records and the survey measure different things, and neither is the true number
• The figures show that property crime in the county rose during that year

An illustrative public library posts a policy that patrons must silence their phones, and a patron who ignores it receives a written notice from staff. How should the norm and its sanction be classified?

Select one.

• A mos, with a negative, formal sanction
• A folkway, with a negative, informal sanction
• A taboo, with a negative, formal sanction
• A folkway, with a negative, formal sanction

A city clerk stamps every form exactly by the book and never misses a deadline, but long ago stopped believing the work will lead to a promotion or make any difference. Which of Merton's responses is this?

Select one.

• Conformity, since the clerk follows every procedure without fail
• Retreatism, since the clerk has given up on the goal of advancement
• Innovation, since the clerk found a new way to get through each day
• Ritualism, since the means are kept after the goal was dropped

One family falls behind after its rent goes up. Across the whole country in the same period, rents climb faster than wages for millions of households. Using C. Wright Mills's sociological imagination, how is the nationwide pattern best described?

Select one.

• a personal trouble, since each household signs its own lease
• a public issue rooted in how the society is organized
• a micro-level matter of how landlords and tenants talk
• a psychological problem of budgeting inside each home

A labor union reports its members' typical yearly pay as the median rather than the mean. Why does the median give a better picture of a typical member?

Select one.

• The median adds every member's pay and divides by the number of members
• The median is the middle member, and a few top earners would pull the mean up
• The median and the mean are the same figure whenever the group is large
• The median counts only the members whose pay falls below a set threshold

In an illustrative example constructed for this course (not real data), a county library system records 24 lost-book reports among its 60,000 cardholders in one year. What is the rate of lost-book reports per 100,000 cardholders?

Select one.

• 24 per 100,000
• 40 per 100,000
• 4 per 100,000
• 400 per 100,000

True or false: the Sapir–Whorf idea has been confirmed as a fixed rule that the words in a person's language set hard limits on what that person can perceive.

True or false.

• True
• False

A warehouse shift supervisor must stay friendly with the crew and also write crew members up when they break safety rules. Which term names this tension?

Select one.

• Role strain, since both demands come from inside one role
• Role conflict, since two separate roles pull against each other
• Role exit, since some workers may leave the crew after a write-up
• Master status, since the supervisor role defines the whole person

During a first week volunteering at an animal shelter, a newcomer pictures the shelter manager thinking, "too timid with the big dogs." Which step of Cooley's looking-glass self is this?

Select one.

• The second step, imagined judgment
• The first step, imagined appearance
• The third step, self-feeling
• The generalized other

Which founder of sociology argued that workers under capitalism become estranged from their own labor and its products, a condition he called alienation?

Select one.

• Karl Marx
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Émile Durkheim
• Max Weber

In an illustrative town, an online rumor claims that a small local bank is about to fail. Customers rush to withdraw their savings, the bank runs out of cash, and it closes. According to the Thomas theorem, what became real here?

Select one.

• The bank's earlier weakness, since so many customers believed in it
• The closure, since people acted on how they defined the situation
• The rumor's accuracy, since any widely shared belief must be correct
• Nothing, since the bank was never shown to be weak before the rush

In an illustrative county constructed for this course, the official poverty rate is 8% and an alternative measure that counts taxes, benefits, and living costs puts the rate at 12%. How should the gap between the two figures be stated?

Select one.

• The alternative measure is 4 percent higher than the other
• The alternative measure is 50 percentage points higher
• The gap shows poverty rose 4 points from the year before
• The alternative measure is 4 percentage points higher

At an illustrative law firm, only students who can afford a summer without pay take its unpaid clerkships, which often lead to paid jobs. Which perspective reads this as passing advantage from one generation to the next, and at which level?

Select one.

• Conflict theory, at the macro level, since the arrangement reproduces inequality
• Structural functionalism, at the macro level, since the firm gains trained staff
• Symbolic interactionism, at the micro level, since a clerkship line signals drive
• Structural functionalism, at the micro level, since each student chooses freely

Which of these is a question a sociologist would ask, as opposed to a question about one person's mind or a piece of folk wisdom?

Select one.

• Why does one fan feel nervous before every big game?
• Opposites attract, so most couples differ in temperament.
• What makes one young child love drawing animals?
• Why do volunteering rates differ from one town to another?

A school's dress code bans certain hairstyles and head coverings. Which question about the code is the one conflict theory would ask?

Select one.

• What job does the code do in keeping the school calm and orderly?
• What does a student's hairstyle signal to classmates in the hall?
• Is the code a folkway or a mos, judged by the moral weight it has?
• Who wrote the code, and whose appearance does it treat as standard?

At an illustrative city permit counter, a clerk who recognizes an old friend in line still makes the friend wait a turn and fill out the same form as everyone else. Which trait of Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy does this show most directly?

Select one.

• Hierarchy of offices
• Technical qualification
• Impersonality
• Specialization

A new retiree remarks that learning how to fit into a group stops once childhood is over. Which statement fits the course's definition of socialization?

Select one.

• It is the physical maturing of the body from infancy to adulthood
• It is the lifelong process of learning a culture and becoming a self
• It ends once a person has finished school and started a career
• It is the set of rewards and penalties a group uses for its norms