Deck 12: Reflections on the Study of Social Stratification

Question 1

Sociology systematically attempts to see social life as clearly as possible, to understand its various dimensions and their interrelationships, and to advance a progressive agenda for society.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

A well-trained researcher's personal experiences, values, and economic interests rarely influence the analysis.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The norms of science direct researchers to try to report findings without regard to their motives for undertaking the study and they require researchers to use the most systematic evidence available and to make logical deductions.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Empirical generalizations represent stable research findings.

Question 5

In order to see any aspect of social life clearly, a specific orientation is necessary, one must:

A) find faith in the supernatural.
B) eliminate as much bias as possible.
C) isolate any tendencies toward mental illness.
D) develop a specific theoretical perspective.
E) have a computer and know how to use it.

Question 6

The elimination of bias is far more difficult to achieve in the social sciences than in other disciplines because:

A) social scientist tend to be more politically active than their peers.
B) social science is inherently more difficult than other sciences.
C) observers are embedded in their subject.
D) the subjects of social scientists do not fit into test tubes easily.
E) social scientists are easily distracted.

Question 7

The reduction of bias requires that sociologists adhere to the __________________, regardless of their personal experiences, values, or economic interests.

A) laws of physics
B) norms of discourse
C) limitations of local and state laws
D) dominant paradigm
E) the norms of science

Question 8

For the purposes of science, stable research findings constitute statements of _______________________.

A) scientific wild-ass guess (SWAG).
B) assumption
C) persistent assumption
D) fact
E) scientific theory

Question 9

No matter how objective research is, no matter how free of bias, if the procedures sociologists use do not take into account the various dimensions of stratification, then a full and accurate depiction of this topic becomes impossible.

Question 10

Social researchers in the United States are prone to focus only on structural dimensions at the expense of individual cases.

Question 11

Thanks to the explosion of research on status attainment over the past twenty-five years, it is clear in this case more than any of the others that the factors affecting individual mobility are different than those influencing the rate of mobility.

Question 12

The effects of one variable on another should be empirically measured whenever possible.

Question 13

Observers should not let either a fetish for measurement or a shortsighted view of what science dictate the practice of research.

Question 14

Sociology, Emile Durkheim said, is unable to cause people to see things in a different way than the ordinary.

Question 15

_________________, C. Wright Mills asserted in The Sociological Imagination, comprise the procedures sociologists use to apprehend social life in all its aspects.

A) Sociology
B) Research methods
C) Premeditation
D) Theory
E) Media and mass communication

Question 16

Sociologists in the United States tend to avoid asking any questions that cannot be answered in ___________________ terms.

A) quantitative
B) English
C) qualitative
D) simple
E) relativistic

Question 17

To use Durkheim's language, social facts (rates) are things and they must be explained by _____________________.

A) individual action
B) social emergence
C) other social facts
D) well-educated professors and scientists
E) logic

Question 18

An implicit counterfactual hypothesis posits that if proposed explanatory variables had different configurations, then the observed evidence would be ______________.

A) unrecognizable
B) consistent with the hypothesis
C) nearly consistent with the hypothesis
D) far different
E) understandable only to people with that angle of vision.

Question 19

The advantage of thinking in ___________________ is that each of the variables must be clearly specified and related to one another.

A) qualitative language
B) multivariate statistical terms
C) rhetoric
D) allegorical terms
E) random order

Question 20

Sociological analyses, including those presented in earlier chapters, often seem to be contradictory; they appear politically radical yet also conservative, liberating for the individual yet also constraining.

Question 21

Sociological analyses show that improvement always follows from change.

Question 22

As a result of the contradictory impulses among sociologists, the study of inequality seems to produce a paradox: that of a person who thinks prudently but acts daringly.

Question 23

Knowledge liberates people by opening up the possibility for ______________________.

A) extraterrestrial life
B) higher awareness
C) change
D) new ideas
E) a more accurate ability to gamble and take chances ("an educated guess")

Question 24

Structural descriptions often reveal _____________________ facets of a phenomenon.

A) hidden or non-obvious
B) strange
C) the common sense
D) secret or disguised
E) irrelevant

Question 25

Few persons, including sociologists, dislike everything about their lives, which means they want to preserve what is good, and retain a sense of orderliness; this orientation . . .

A) inspires most research today.
B) is why inequality exists.
C) creates tension between social scientists.
D) separates social scientists from the public.
E) militates against radical change.

Question 26

All solutions to inequality carry with them _______________________, and it is best to be as clear as possible about each.

A) great costs
B) a universal appeal
C) both benefits and liabilities
D) great hope
E) potential for grant funding