Final Practice Exam

In an illustrative household, the partners never discuss who handles the bills, yet the partner seen as "the man of the house" always does, because both take that arrangement for granted. Which idea from the course best names this?

Select one.

• Sex, because the task follows the partners' physical characteristics
• Doing gender, the idea that West and Zimmerman describe
• The looking-glass self, Cooley's idea of seeing ourselves through others
• Regulation, the functionalist job of setting rules for partners

A news brief cites a 5.9% private-sector union membership rate for 2025, taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What does that number actually measure?

Select one.

• Members as 5.9% of private-sector wage and salary workers, a rate of workers, not residents
• About six of every hundred people living in the United States belonging to a union
• Members as 5.9% of all U.S. adults, with retirees and the self-employed counted in
• A precise 5.9% chance that any private-sector employee you meet belongs to a union

How does this course present Rosenthal and Jacobson's study of teacher expectations, Pygmalion in the Classroom?

Select one.

• As proof that a teacher's expectations settle every student's grades
• As evidence that test scores stay fixed once a child begins school
• As an opinion poll asking teachers to predict which of their students would do well
• As the classic study of a teacher-expectancy effect whose size is debated

On a scale where 0 means perfect equality and 100 perfect inequality, the World Bank Poverty and Inequality Platform, as published by Our World in Data, gives Slovakia a 2022 Gini index of 24.1 and Germany 33.7. What do these figures support?

Select one.

• Household income in Germany was spread less evenly than household income in Slovakia
• Germany was a poorer country than Slovakia was in 2022
• In Germany, 33.7 percent of all income went to the richest households in 2022
• Slovakia's lower value proves that its own policies caused the more even spread

An illustrative county health inspector shuts a restaurant for code violations and is later promoted to another post. A newly appointed inspector takes over. What becomes of the authority to shut a restaurant, and why?

Select one.

• It disappears, because owners trusted the former inspector personally
• It transfers to the new inspector, because rational-legal authority belongs to the position
• It transfers only if the new inspector is as likable as the one before
• It becomes traditional authority, because the post has existed for many years

A study guide lists four claims about patriarchy and the gender order. Which claims fit the sociological meaning of the terms? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• The gender order is one man's private feelings about the women he knows
• Patriarchy refers to a social arrangement that gives men as a group more power and resources than women as a group
• The gender order names the broad social pattern of which work and positions tend to go to women and to men
• Patriarchy refers to the individual choices that each worker makes about a career

Two accounts explain how schooling hands advantage down through families: one stresses what children bring from home, the other how school routines prepare them for their parents' kind of work. Which pairing of theorist and idea is accurate?

Select one.

• Bourdieu: cultural capital, the tastes, knowledge, and ways of speaking learned at home
• Bowles and Gintis: cultural capital, the tastes and habits children bring from home
• Bourdieu: the correspondence principle, that school routines mirror the workplace
• Bowles and Gintis: credentialism, that degrees stand in for skills they do not measure

An illustrative mine in a low-income country ships copper ore to a manufacturer abroad, which turns it into wiring sold at many times the ore's price. A commentator says the arrangement keeps wealth flowing from the poorer country to the richer one. Which explanation is the commentator drawing on?

Select one.

• Modernization theory, which treats the mine as an early step toward industrial growth
• Dependency theory, which holds that rich nations prosper by drawing on poorer ones
• Symbolic interactionism, which asks what the copper wiring means to the people using it
• Structural functionalism, which asks what task the mine performs for the economy

In an illustrative cotton supply chain, a mill spins raw cotton into thread and weaves the thread into cloth. Which sector does the mill's work belong to?

Select one.

• The primary sector, because the cotton it spins was first grown and picked on a farm
• The tertiary sector, because the cloth is later sold in shops
• No single sector, because the mill's owner also runs farms and shops
• The secondary sector, because it turns a raw material into a manufactured good

A study group is drafting a list of claims made by world-systems theory. Which claims belong on the list? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• It places some countries in a semi-periphery, between the core and the periphery
• It predicts that each poor country will climb through the same stages to mass consumption
• It was developed by Wallerstein as a way to analyze global inequality
• It analyzes countries as linked parts of a single world economy rather than as separate cases
• It defines the core as the group of countries with the largest populations

An illustrative survey constructed for this course asked 1,200 adults in one state whether they had used a public library in the past year, and 64% said yes. Select every statement that reads this figure accurately.

Select every option that applies.

• It shows that using a library causes adults to read more books
• It measures self-reported library use
• It describes a share; it is neither a correlation nor a cause
• It explains why adults in the state choose to visit libraries
• Its population is the state's adults, and its sample is the 1,200 adults surveyed

A classmate asks what the total fertility rate measures, as this course defines it. Which answer is right?

Select one.

• The count of babies born in a nation in one year, taken from its birth certificates
• The average number of children a woman would have if current age-specific birth rates held
• The typical number of children found in each family household in a given year
• The yearly number of live births for every thousand people in the population

In an illustrative society, custom allows one woman to take more than one husband at the same time. Which marriage pattern is this?

Select one.

• Polygyny, one husband married to more than one wife
• Monogamy, because each husband has only the one wife
• Exogamy, because each spouse marries outside the group
• Polyandry, one wife married to more than one husband

A researcher wants to explain why school funding differs from region to region across a whole country. Select every perspective below that would study this at the macro level.

Select every option that applies.

• symbolic interactionism
• structural functionalism
• conflict theory
• a close study of classroom conversation

A family takes stock of its finances. Select every item below that is part of the family's wealth, a stock measured at one moment, rather than its income, a flow over a period.

Select every option that applies.

• Weekly wages from a part-time job
• The equity in a house the family owns
• Interest payments received over the past year
• Shares of stock held in a retirement account today

A hospital assigns nurses scrubs of a different color for each department. A sociologist asks what a scrub color communicates when a patient and a nurse meet at the bedside. Which perspective, at which level of analysis, is she using?

Select one.

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

In an illustrative example constructed for this course, the share of a town's households with a doorbell camera rose from 20% to 45% over a decade. Which reading of this figure fits the idea of cultural lag correctly?

Select one.

• The share rose 25 percentage points, a material change; the figure says nothing about norms for recording neighbors.
• The share rose 25 percent, which shows that the unwritten rules for filming the street rose 25 percent as well.
• The share rose 25 percentage points, which on its own proves that the norms about recording neighbors are lagging.
• The share rose 125 percentage points over the decade, a change that took place in the town's nonmaterial culture.

In an illustrative set of towns, the ones with more public libraries also report more traffic accidents each year. What is the best explanation of this pattern?

Select one.

• Causation: libraries draw extra drivers who then crash on the roads nearby
• A spurious correlation driven by a third variable, the towns' population size
• Causation: a run of accidents leads towns to open more library branches
• Random assignment, since the towns were sorted into groups by chance

In an illustrative survey constructed for this course, 60 people who found an apartment through a personal contact reported how often they saw that contact at the time: 20% often, 50% occasionally, and 30% rarely. Select every statement that reads these figures accurately.

Select every option that applies.

• The figures show that acquaintances are better people to know than close friends
• 50 + 30 = 80% found the apartment through someone they saw occasionally or rarely
• Most of these renters found the apartment through a contact they saw often
• The survey describes which contacts people used; it does not test a cause
• Because the shares add to 100, the survey proves weak ties cause housing success

In an illustrative example constructed for this course, the north district records 24 burglaries among 30,000 residents in one year, and the south district records 36 burglaries among 90,000 residents. Which statement compares the districts correctly?

Select one.

• South has the higher rate, since it records more burglaries in total
• South's rate is twice North's, since its burglary count is larger
• North's rate is 24 per 100,000, the same figure as its count
• North's rate is 80 per 100,000, twice South's 40 per 100,000

An illustrative group of parents campaigns for several years to get the state to require recess in every elementary school. Under Aberle's model, which type of movement is it?

Select one.

• Transformative: a total change in the whole society
• Redemptive: a total change in the lives of individuals
• Alterative: a partial change in the lives of individuals
• Reformative: a partial change in society

In an illustrative state, the women's-to-men's earnings ratio for full-time workers rose from 74% to 86% over two decades. How should that change be described?

Select one.

• A rise of 12 percent
• A rise of 12 percentage points
• A rise of 16.2 percentage points
• A rise of 14 percentage points

At an illustrative university, students are told that high grades are the path to success. One student buys finished essays online to raise a grade point average. Which of Merton's responses is this?

Select one.

• Ritualism, since the student still hands in every assigned paper
• Rebellion, since the student rejects both the school's goals and its rules
• Innovation, since the student keeps the goal but uses disapproved means
• Retreatism, since the student has given up on schoolwork entirely

In an illustrative pickup basketball game, a player anticipates what every teammate and every defender will do before passing, and plays by the rules everyone on the court accepts. Which description fits Mead's account?

Select one.

• The play stage, taking on the role of one other person at a time
• The preparatory stage, copying others without grasping meaning
• The game stage, with the referee's opinion as the generalized other
• The game stage, with the shared rules acting as the generalized other

In an illustrative plantation region, 75 percent of residents are laborers who may not own land or sit on the regional council, while the other 25 percent own the estates and fill every council seat. Under Wirth's definition, which group is the minority group?

Select one.

• The laborers, since the test is unequal treatment rather than the group's size
• The estate owners, since they are fewer than half of the region's residents
• Neither group, since a minority group has to be a very small share of a region
• Both groups to the same degree, since each one relies on the other to survive

An illustrative real estate agent personally holds no bias against any group, but because her manager tells her to, she steers buyers from one group away from certain blocks. Where does she fit in Merton's typology?

Select one.

• A prejudiced discriminator, because she treats one group's buyers unequally
• An unprejudiced nondiscriminator, because she personally holds no bias at all
• A prejudiced nondiscriminator, because the order to steer came from her manager
• An unprejudiced discriminator, because her action is unequal but her attitude is not

A student claims that Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life set out to decide which faith is true. What did Durkheim actually examine in it?

Select one.

• How a disciplined Protestant work ethic matched the spirit of capitalism
• How religion eases suffering and in doing so props up an unequal order
• The work religion does for a group, such as uniting people in a moral community
• Whether belief in any god was declining in the industrial cities of Durkheim's own time

Which illustrative business counts as a multinational corporation?

Select one.

• A bakery chain with dozens of shops, every one of them inside its home country
• A small software firm based in one country that also runs an office in another
• A regional bus company that employs thousands of drivers within a single country
• A web retailer of any size that ships orders only to buyers inside its own borders

People in a community survey endorse four statements. Which one expresses a belief, a claim about what is true, rather than a value, an ideal held in high regard?

Select one.

• Fairness should guide every public decision.
• Education is the surest route out of poverty.
• Loyalty to one's friends matters a great deal.
• Personal freedom is worth protecting for all.

Looking at neighborhood public libraries, which perspective asks which groups gain when branches in wealthier areas get longer hours and newer books than branches in poorer areas?

Select one.

• conflict theory
• symbolic interactionism
• structural functionalism
• the sociological imagination

At what point along the demographic transition does a population expand most rapidly?

Select one.

• When death rates have dropped while birth rates remain high
• When birth rates and death rates are both high
• When birth rates have started to drop as well
• When both rates are low and holding steady

A high school senior who plans to enlist reads about basic training, practices drills with a recruiter, and starts waking before dawn months before reporting for duty. Which idea does this scene show?

Select one.

• Resocialization
• Anticipatory socialization
• A degradation ceremony
• The life course

An illustrative country's total fertility rate was 5.6 children per woman in an early census and 2.1 in a recent one. Which reading of these figures is accurate?

Select one.

• The rate dropped by more than half, and it is a synthetic rate, not a count of real families' children
• Households in that country now hold 2.1 children each, on average
• The country's population must be shrinking now, since the rate fell so far
• The drop proves that the demographic transition is what caused the change

Workers at an illustrative plant start organizing after they learn that workers at a similar plant in the next town earn more for the same shifts. Which movement theory does this detail fit best?

Select one.

• Relative deprivation theory, because the workers compared themselves with others
• Resource mobilization theory, because the workers gathered funds and volunteers
• Political process theory, because an opening appeared in the town's politics
• New social movement theory, because the workers organized around an identity

Which observation gives the strongest support to the idea that gender is a social construction?

Select one.

• Average body size differs between women and men in most populations
• Children begin to pick up gender expectations at a very young age
• Many people sense that their own gender roles come to them naturally
• The tasks and traits counted as feminine or masculine shift across societies and eras

According to the Census Bureau, women's median age at first marriage was 21.1 in 1975 and 28.4 in 2025. What conclusion does this figure support?

Select one.

• Fewer women marry today, since the median age climbed by 7.3 years
• Most women first marry at exactly 28.4, since that is the median
• Women who marry for the first time now do so later; the figure is silent on how many marry
• Longer schooling caused the delay, since both rose over the same period

An illustrative city office now demands a master's degree for a filing clerk whose duties a two-week workshop could teach. Which idea names this, and what does that idea claim?

Select one.

• Tracking, which holds that workers are placed in separate groups by ability
• Credentialism, which holds that degrees can stand in for skills they do not measure
• Credentialism, which holds that degrees have no value and should be disregarded
• The correspondence principle, which holds that school routines mirror the workplace

In 1979, the first year with comparable data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women working full time for wages and salaries had median usual weekly earnings equal to 62% of men's. What can that raw ratio tell you by itself?

Select one.

• Women earned 62 cents for each dollar earned by a man doing the same job
• Employer discrimination has been proven to be the cause of the full gap
• It compares median weekly pay across all full-time jobs, describing a gap without its cause
• The occupations women and men chose fully account for the size of the gap

Two illustrative island nations each report GDP per capita of 9,000 dollars across four households. On the first island, every household earns 9,000 dollars; on the second, three households earn 3,000 dollars and one earns 27,000. What lesson about GDP per capita as a development measure does the pair teach?

Select one.

• Because it is an average, one very high income can mask hardship among the rest
• It reports the income of the middle household, so both islands are equally well off
• It gauges how evenly income is shared, so the second island has the higher value
• It folds in health and schooling, so the two islands come out with the same rank

The Census Bureau counts a family household as one where the householder lives with at least one person related by birth, marriage, or adoption. Which of these illustrative homes are family households? Select all that apply.

Select every option that applies.

• Two friends who split the rent on a house
• A grandmother raising her granddaughter
• A married couple with no children
• A graduate student who lives alone
• Two adult sisters who share a condo