Deck 7: Family, Education, and Career

Question 1

In studying the multivariate relationship between career success and failure, Blau and Duncan conceptualized two key aspects of the problem. These are ______.

A) chains of causation and multiple causal pathways
B) correlation and causation
C) chains of causation and correlation
D) multiple causal pathways and dichotomous relationships

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Correlation is measured by a coefficient that ranges from 0.0 to 1.00. What correlation coefficient would demonstrate a perfect relationship between two variables?

A) 0.0
B) 0.25
C) 0.5
D) 1.00

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Two-year community colleges tend to draw their students from the ______ of the income distribution.

A) upper half
B) lower half
C) bottom quarter
D) middle (25%-75%)

Answer 3

B

Question 4

The study of ______ is complicated due to the frequency with which relevant variables are correlated.

A) social mobility
B) socialization
C) social class
D) social structure

Question 5

What two variables did Jencks and his colleagues add to the Blau and Duncan model?

A) wealth and education
B) education and income
C) son's earnings and son's IQ
D) father's occupation and IQ

Question 6

Blau and Duncan found that ______.

A) family background, independent of education, significantly contributes to the career success of a son's SES
B) family background, through education, is a significant contributor to career success
C) education has an independent effect on individual's career success
D) all of these

Question 7

What method did Blau and Duncan use in their analysis which allowed them to sort out the influence of each variable, independent of the others?

A) multinomial regression
B) path analysis
C) correlation
D) crosstabulation

Question 8

Social class has been shown to influence ______.

A) the chance of continuing education after high school
B) the type of school chosen
C) the chance of graduating
D) all of these

Question 9

What did Christopher Jencks and his research team at Harvard say explained the randomness in the causal chain predicting life chances?

A) education
B) birthplace
C) gender
D) luck

Question 10

Which of the following would be considered a "selective institution?"

A) University of South Dakota
B) Princeton
C) University of Florida
D) Loyola University

Question 11

Social standing or prestige, especially as measured by the occupational prestige scores, is known as ______.

A) status
B) mobility placement
C) class status
D) socioeconomic status (SES)

Question 12

How did Jencks say that we could decrease economic inequality in the United States?

A) improve the public education system
B) increase marriage rates
C) decrease out of wedlock childbirths
D) interfere with capitalist markets

Question 13

What percent of college freshmen will never graduate?

A) 10%
B) 25%
C) 40%
D) 50%

Question 14

What is the new market niche that offers expensive SAT courses and advice from independent counselors about gaining admission to selective educational institutions known as?

A) Big Three prep
B) mobility access
C) college prep industry
D) elite perspectives

Question 15

What has happened with the income gap between high school and college graduates in recent years?

A) It has increased significantly.
B) It has decreased significantly.
C) It has increased slightly.
D) It has decreased slightly.

Question 16

Blau and Duncan found that family background, independent of ______, significantly contributes to the career success of a son's SES.

A) occupation
B) education
C) race
D) gender

Question 17

Carnevale and Rose suggest a form of ______ to help disadvantaged students overcome difficulties in gaining admittance to selective educational institutions.

A) economic affirmative action
B) racial affirmative action
C) causation
D) correlation

Question 18

What term explains a series of successive causal influences, especially in occupational achievement?

A) circulation mobility
B) structural mobility
C) chain of causation
D) cutting consistency

Question 19

What is typically invoked when we are trying to measure the influence of a series of prior variables on a single dependent variable?

A) variance explained
B) correlation
C) cross-tabulation
D) path analysis

Question 20

What percent of students from families in the top SES quartile will enroll in a highly selective institution?

A) 20%
B) 30%
C) 50%
D) 75%

Question 21

What was NOT one of the seven background factors Harding et al. (2005) used in their study?

A) child's occupation
B) parents' occupation
C) Southern origins
D) number of siblings

Question 22

What is NOT true about higher education in the United States?

A) The American system of higher education is so big and varied that it provides broad opportunities for youths from lower- and middle-class families to prepare themselves for careers that raise them above the level of their parents.
B) The American system of higher education is so steeply stratified that it stifles social mobility under the politically palatable banner of academic merit. Of course, both are true. The system is relatively open to the ambitious and talented, but it is also remarkably successful at reproducing the privilege of the privileged.
C) Both are true.
D) Neither are true.

Question 23

What is NOT true about college attendance?

A) Class influences the type of college selected.
B) The majority of students at the "Big Three" (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton) receive financial aid.
C) Students from lower-status families are more likely to enroll at 2-year community colleges.
D) Working-class and lower-middle-class students are only thinly represented at the most selective institutions.

Question 24

What is NOT true about college attendance?

A) College attendance rates have increased substantially at all income levels in recent decades.
B) About half of high school graduates from the lowest income quartile enroll in college.
C) About 80% of college students from the lowest income quartile graduate from college.
D) The college completion rate is higher among high-income students than low-income students.

Question 25

Who urged the replacement of the corrupt old "aristocracy of wealth" with a new "aristocracy of virtue and talent?"

A) George Washington
B) Abraham Lincoln
C) Thomas Jefferson
D) Martin Luther King, Jr.

Question 26

Most Americans believe that some inequality in society is acceptable.

Question 27

Most Americans believe in "equality of opportunity" and "equality of results."

Question 28

Most Americans believe that the educational system in the United States is the great equalizer providing all with the opportunity to transcend whatever particular social class they were born into.

Question 29

When measuring variance, the higher the percentage, the stronger the relationship between variables.

Question 30

Jencks annoyed some critics of his work because he called randomness "luck," implying that the course of our lives is more arbitrary than we care to admit.

Question 31

Jencks believed that the best way to address economic inequality in the United States is to improve the quality of bad schools.

Question 32

Education has an independent effect on individual's career success.

Question 33

The gap in college completion between high-status graduates and low-status graduates has decreased since the early 1970s.

Question 34

Affirmative action at selective schools has mainly benefitted middle- to upper-middle-class Black students.

Question 35

Not all people with college degrees have outstanding careers, but few people now achieve important positions without them.

Question 36

Blau and Duncan conceptualized chains of causation and multiple causal pathways by using structural equation modeling.

Question 37

Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan wrote the book, The American Occupational Structure, which analyzed the results of a large-scale national mobility survey.

Question 38

Variance is measured by a coefficient that ranges from 0.0 (there is no relationship between two variables) to 1.00 (we can, with perfect accuracy, predict the second variable by knowing the first).

Question 39

Both simple correlation and variance explained tell us how accurately we can predict the value of one variable by knowing the values of preceding variables.

Question 40

Not all people with college degrees have outstanding careers, but few people now achieve high-status positions without them.

Question 41

On average, there is no difference in SAT scores among lower class and higher class students.

Question 42

Most students from families in the top SES quartile will attend a highly selective institution.

Question 43

The consultant, William "Rick" Singer, arranged to have applicants from wealthy families admitted to elite institutions by what he coined the "side door."

Question 44

Students from lower status families are more likely to enroll at 2-year community colleges.

Question 45

Describe the findings of Blau and Duncan with regard to the relationship between family background, education, and career success.

Question 46

In what way did Jencks and his colleagues at Harvard extend the work on social mobility by Blau and Duncan?

Question 47

Define socioeconomic status (SES).

Question 48

Briefly describe the relationship between social class and college attendance, college choice, and college graduation.

Question 49

Describe the difference between the terms "equality of opportunity" and "equality of outcome." What do Americans generally think about the concept of equality?